What is The Circle of Women program?
The Circle of Women program supports women to take charge of their own lives by being responsible for their communication and behaviors. We create a confidential environment in which participants articulate, validate and strengthen their life goals. We encourage self-reliance by sharing the skills needed to ask for support and to set and fulfill goals. The skills that participants learn in our program - asking for support, accepting support from others and setting goals - are applicable to all women.
Currently we deliver our program, The Circle of Women, over the course of five months to women recovering from addictions, domestic abuse, and homelessness. Each session addresses a specific topic: Connecting with Your Dreams, Creating a Map for Fulfilling Your Dreams/Goals, Identifying Qualities in Yourself and Others to Achieve Your Goals, Goal Setting and Getting Support, and What to Do When the Road is Difficult. The final session has a graduation ceremony that acknowledges the participants for their success. Each of the five sessions has a structured agenda, beginning with an exercise for relaxation followed by guided discussion and sharing of experiences related to the evening's topic. Some sessions also include exercises and activities. At the end of each session, we summarize the main learning points, ensuring that participants have a concrete understanding of how behaviors affect their life results.
Volunteers spend the evenings sharing our own life experiences with women whose relationships are broken and strained and who have lost trust in most of the people in their lives as the result of prolonged substance abuse. Volunteers and residents share equally the issues we face in our relationships, how we have succeeded or failed, and what we have learned.
Volunteers develop a special bond with the residents. As the residents develop new relationship skills, they realize that the volunteers care about them and their lives.
Benefits of The Circle of Women program are:
- Women recognizing visions for their lives and identifying qualities needed to achieve their vision
- Women empowered to verbalize and share goals and dreams with others
- Women with the ability to recognize people in life who offer willing and appropriate support
- Women asking effectively for needed support
- Women setting life goals and having new skills to fulfill them
Because A More Perfect Union is not affiliated directly with the rehabilitation centers, the sessions are completely confidential, which fosters trust and an open dialogue.
What is our philosophy?
For a variety of social, cultural and economic reasons, women have lost the collective network of support they once shared. In times when women spent long hours together doing communal work and caring for children, they talked through common issues and learned critical life lessons from one another. Our vision is to restore and build on that traditional sense of community among women. Our methodology can be replicated in any community. Volunteers need no special experience or advanced degrees.
Our work is based on the following: Whatever other skills you have in life, having a successful life boils down to your ability to relate successfully with the people in your life: your family, your boss, your coworkers, your neighbors, your counselors and your peers. This is what A More Perfect Union offers to other women.
What Are the Results of The Circle of Women program?
Graduates of our program:
- are more appropriately assertive
- have higher self-esteem
- are more willing to step into leadership roles in their rehabilitation program
- are more likely to finish rehabilitation and treatment successfully
We have delivered The Circle of Women program to over 1,000 women in New York City since our inception. Our program has been delivered through Women in Need and Sanctuary for Families. Currently, we deliver our program at Odyssey House in East Harlem, Phoenix House in Brooklyn, and we are in our 16th year at Veritas Therapeutic Community, a treatment facility with locations in Upper Manhattan and Upstate New York.
