Our Mother’s House

Dedicated to helping mothers who are trafficked or in sex work and their children in Portland, Oregon

Background

Our Mother’s House (OMH) was founded in September 2007 by Brian Willis, Director of Global Health Promise, and a group of volunteers. We operated in a drop-in center in downtown Portland from 2007 to the end of December 2011. We then partnered with Rahab’s Sisters, which operates a weekly drop-in center on SE 82nd Avenue in Portland, from January 2012 until February 2013 when Brian received a fellowship to do research in Cambodia. Since January 2014 Brian has been working with local partners to support mothers and their children wherever they need assistance.

Our Mission

The mission of OMH is to assist mothers who are trafficked and in sex work and their children. We implement our mission through direct services and advocacy.

What we do

Services
We provide some direct services and also connect mothers and their children to existing services. If existing services are not available or cannot quickly respond to the needs of the mothers and their children we try and secure the needed services directly. For example, a number of our clients need glasses but there are few agencies in the Portland metro area that provide this service. One of our clients was reduced to using one contact lens for months. By the time we learned of this situation and got her an appointment she had already developed damage to one of her eyes from using the contact too long. Fortunately, the damage was caught in time and her eyes healed.

We help mothers who have children, for example by providing baby clothes and blankets, toys and books, and hygiene products.

We also accompany the mothers and their children to the emergency room and to their doctors’ appointments as well as visit them in the hospital.

Advocacy
Much of our time is dedicated to educating government officials, other organizations, and the public about the situation of mothers who are trafficked or in sex work and their children. While there is increasing awareness of the situation of adolescent girls who are trafficked, few people appreciate that many adult women in the sex work are also mothers or the situation of their children.

Our position is that society needs to understand that first and foremost these are mothers and their children and their families. Therefore, society needs to address the situation of these families as we would for other families and not stigmatize the mothers or their children.

Contact

You can contact Our Mother’s House at info@globalhealthpromise.org for more information.

Donations

Our greatest need is financial support to purchase infant formula, diapers, and other supplies as the need arises, such as glasses, food, and medication for some of our clients.

We also need funding to cover the cost of our outreach. Our monthly operating expenses are $300.

OMH is a program of Global Health Promise, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, non-profit organization and your donations to OMH are tax deductible. Our EIN is 47-4355802.

You can donate to Our Mother’s House using PayPal or Authorize.net below or contact us for other options.