Trust Looks Like This
She was crawling across the living room floor, about to give birth. No nurse. No midwife. Just a contraction, a couch, and one question:
“Are you one of the AmeriCorps girls?”
Jessenti Ford had just walked in the door for a standard shift at Maggie’s Place, a maternity home in Phoenix that serves pregnant women facing homelessness. She said yes.
That was all the mom needed to hear.
“Okay. I trust you.”
And just like that, they were off to the hospital. Jess stayed by her side through the birth. Not because it was in her job description—but because that’s what AmeriCorps looks like at Maggie’s Place: unwavering presence.
What Makes a Place Feel Like Home?
Maggie’s Place has been doing life-saving work for 25 years. They don’t just give pregnant women a place to sleep. They help them build lives—stable, safe, and full of possibility.
Every mom is surrounded with structure, therapy, childcare, job support, and unconditional community. And in five homes across Phoenix, that community includes AmeriCorps members who live with the moms—sharing meals, handling middle-of-the-night wakeups, and showing up day after day, as both neighbors and role models.
“We’re like a little management team,” Kate Kolodziej, an AmeriCorps member, explained. “We have to make sure everything is up and running in a proper way… but we’re also just living in the home together. That’s when the trust builds.”
That trust doesn’t reset with each new member—it carries forward.
Kate recalled that one new mom opened up to an AmeriCorps colleague more quickly simply because of the shared connection. Being an “AmeriCorps girl” means instant trust.
“AmeriCorps turns houses into homes,” one team member said. “It creates these family-style communities. And that’s priceless.”
Another added, “When you live in a home, you have a shared responsibility toward it—because it’s your home, and it’s the mom’s home. That takes away at least one barrier between you and her.”
That’s what AmeriCorps brings to Maggie’s Place—not just more hands, but deeper connection. And that connection makes everything else possible.
Where the Safety Net Ends, Maggie’s Place Begins
This is a story about what happens when compassion and a smart, no-nonsense government program step up where maternal health policy hasn’t fully caught up with reality.
Across the country, pregnant women experiencing homelessness often face overwhelming barriers to stability and care. Programs like Maggie’s Place fill that gap—providing not just housing, but a community grounded in trust, accountability, and support.
AmeriCorps members are essential to that work. They’re not one-off volunteers. They’re part of the daily rhythm of the homes—helping with wakeups, parenting support, community nights, and the quiet, everyday moments that build safety and connection.
Maggie’s Place would still find ways to serve without AmeriCorps. But it wouldn’t feel the same. It wouldn’t run the same. Because AmeriCorps doesn’t just increase hands. It deepens hearts.
If You Care About Moms & Families, You Should Care About AmeriCorps in Arizona and Beyond
This post isn’t here to romanticize crisis or martyrdom. It’s here to say something simple:
AmeriCorps is working.
What happens when we lose this invisible workforce of care? We don’t just lose a program. We lose moments like this:
A 21-year-old ASU student walks back into her old Maggie’s Place home and asks to see the painted tree with her name on it.
She was born there.
Now she’s thriving.
Or this:
A mom confesses during an art activity with her AmeriCorps contact that she’s afraid to ask for help. Because no one’s ever shown her it’s safe to need someone. And now she’s trying. Together.
Or this:
A former Maggie’s Place resident, now employed, now stable, says, “I owe all my blessings to them.”
What We’re Fighting For
If AmeriCorps disappears, Maggie’s Place will keep showing up. They always do. But we shouldn’t be asking nonprofits—and pregnant women—to go it alone.
We should be asking: What would it look like if every single mom had a community of care during and after pregnancy? And what would it take to make that possible?
If we’re looking for a low-cost, proven solution, it would take AmeriCorps.
It would take the people willing to live in, not just show up to, spaces where healing is messy and trust is hard-won.
It would take public investment in the quiet, daily work of care that rarely gets press—but changes everything.
If you believe in second chances, in showing up, in babies being born into homes instead of hospitals alone…
Share this.
Support AmeriCorps.
And don’t let the most trusted people in the home disappear.