Written by Cape Coral resident and Lifeline supporter Melanie Musick
As a home for teens with unplanned pregnancies, Cape Coral’s Lifeline Family Center’s daily operation depends on numerous volunteers. Lifeline is a 2-year residential home that provides girls (ages 16-22) with shelter, food, clothing, educational training, childcare, counseling and tutoring, all in addition to extensive community outreach. And it’s the cadre of volunteers who allow us to offer all these possibilities.
To help Lifeline keep the community informed of our latest successes, it’s the volunteers who get our monthly newsletter mailings prepared for the post office. Numerous volunteers spend time in the nursery that can accommodate up to 24 babies and/or toddlers. Some of those volunteers are feeding children in high chairs. Some are changing diapers. Some are reading story books. And some may be outside taking the children for a walk around our parking lot in a six-seat stroller.
Though you may be tempted to assume our volunteers are all women (and a lot are), men play a big role at Lifeline also. Grandpas have been known to spend time in the nursery caring for our little ones, coaching new moms and pregnant moms in physical fitness or tutoring them in math so they can pass their GED exams. And we know from experience, little boys are instinctively drawn to men, especially if those men can hang out for a few minutes to play.
Our volunteers’ life experience is one of the most beneficial resources. Our young resident moms have weekly classes on cooking, budgeting, cleaning and more. Often times, the classes are the simplest of subjects, but our residents have not been previously been exposed to them in their lives. To make our residents successful mothers, Lifeline starts with basic life skills, and then adds formal education and career training. Free childcare is available Monday thru Friday 7 am – 5 pm while the moms are in classes or studying.
The goal at Lifeline is to give these young women the skills they need to sustain themselves and their children, without government dependence, once they leave shortly after the second birthday of the baby.
Interested in becoming a Lifeline volunteer? Orientation is typically offered monthly. Please call Lifeline at 239-242-7238 to find out the next available session.
Should you like to see the Lifeline facility first,contact Melanie Musick to schedule a tour. Lifeline’s volunteers are impacting society in a positive way by helping us change the world…two lives at a time.
Lifeline’s Annual LIFEwalk is scheduled for Dec. 3 at Jaycee Park in Cape Coral. Registration at 7:45. Walk at 8:45. Three laps, food, live music, done before noon. All registered participants helping raise funds to support Lifeline’s counseling department will automatically be entered in the raffle for two free roundtrip flights on Southwest Airlines. Visit www.lifelinefamilycenter.org/lifewalk for more information.
