Calvary Women's Services

Calvary Women’s Services empowers homeless women in Washington, DC, to transform their lives through housing, health, education, and employment programs.

Calvary offers a unique program model that empowers women experiencing homelessness to transform their lives. Our strategic approach focuses on supporting women as they use their own strengths and skills to reach their goals. Through our transitional and permanent housing programs, we employ the recognized best practices of trauma-informed care and the strengths-based case management model, which focuses on the self-determination and resilience of each woman we serve.

All of Calvary’s housing programs are supplemented with comprehensive wraparound support services, providing resources that allow women to build new skills as they work toward their goals. These resources include on-site education, job readiness and placement, health and wellness support, mental health services, daily addiction recovery meetings, and financial literacy courses.

Since our founding in 1983, Calvary Women’s Services has grown from an emergency shelter in a church basement to one of the most respected programs for chronically homeless women in the District. Calvary has a proven history of growing sustainably to meet the needs of our community. For more than 15 years, Calvary has offered on-site addiction recovery group meetings, now daily. For more than 20 years, Calvary has provided on-site education programs and a supported employment program for formerly homeless women. For more than 25 years, Calvary has offered psychiatric services on-site for women with histories of violence and mental illness. Through all of these programs and services, Calvary has demonstrated a commitment to providing lasting solutions to the crisis of homelessness in Washington, DC.

Calvary was founded in 1983 at a time when homelessness was increasing in Washington, DC and throughout the country. Calvary initially opened as a temporary overnight shelter for women in the basement of Calvary Baptist Church. Later that year, in response to the on-going needs of the community, Calvary Women's Shelter was incorporated. Since then, the organization has grown into Calvary Women’s Services, a comprehensive service organization for women who are homeless in Washington, DC. In November 2012, Calvary completed a large-scale expansion project, purchasing and renovating a new building in Washington, DC’s Ward 8 and relocating our transitional housing programs and staff. This expansion doubled our program space and expanded our capacity, empowering more women to end their homelessness.

Since Calvary relocated to Ward 8 in 2012, our programs have reached several milestones, including:

• The Life Skills, Education and Arts Program (LEAP) has grown from 100 hours of classes annually to more than 700 hours of classes.
• The Relapse Prevention Group has grown from offering a weekly meeting to a daily meeting.
• Step Up DC, the job placement program, was launched in 2014 and has maintained a successful average placement rate of 50%. In 2017, Step Up DC was expanded to a second location at Skyland Workforce Center, allowing the program to serve more women in the community.
• The Women’s Health Program was expanded in 2014 with the addition of psychoeducational group therapy and in 2016 with the addition of a licensed nurse practitioner.

In 2018-2019, Calvary received significant public and private support to expand our housing programs. This combined funding will support the launch of Reach Up in 2019, offering 40 beds of transitional and short-term subsidized housing, and expanded Sister Circle, our permanent supportive housing program, with 5 new beds. Through this program launch and overall expansion, it is our goal to:

• Provide a safe, supportive environment for every client
• Provide holistic support services that address the unique and individual needs of each client
• Support clients in planning for and working towards their goals
• Strengthen clients’ life skills, including budgeting, financial planning, and employment skills
• Collaborate with other agencies to address specific needs that women may face, including legal services, healthcare, and job training
• Support clients in attaining affordable and permanent housing

During this time of program growth, Calvary is committed to maintaining the high rates of success achieved in years past. Overall, we anticipate that our programs will serve more than 200 women each year by 2020.