Samaritan Women

Community AfterCARE Resources

"Assisting Ex-Inmates to live Godly lives."

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                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Our Mission

Samaritan Women empowers women who have expressed a desire to break the cycle of crime in their lives, to make choices that will help them fulfill God's purpose for them in their families and communities.

 

 

Our Vision and Purpose

CHANGING LIVES to break the cycle of crime by…

 · Reaching out to women and their children,

 · Building stronger families,

 · Restoring hope and confidence,

 · Making a safer community.

 

 

 

Samaritan Women is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, incorporated on August 31, 1999, with the State of California and an endorsed organization of the United Way.

Background

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nancy Dixon, Founder of Samaritan Women 

Nancy Dixon was the Chaplain to the Women at the Fresno County Jail for ten years.  Over the years God used her in the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women both in jail/prison and after they came back to the community.  She saw that though many women did successfully change their lives, many more were becoming discouraged and often were again incarcerated.  She heard God calling her to focus her energies on aftercare of the incarcerated women in assisting them to succeed by connecting them with resources and offering classes and mentors to come alongside them. 

A Christian since childhood and a longtime resident of the Fresno/Clovis area, Nancy first set aside a successful 28-year nursing career to become the Chaplain to the Women; and more recently, after ten years as chaplain, she resigned from that position to grow the Samaritan Women ministry on a full-time basis.  Her commitment and vision are the forces behind this on-growing ministry, but she now is asking the community to partner with her to expand the opportunities Samaritan Women offers.

 

View inside Prison meeting women

The steps that occurred first seemed to be by accident.  She met her first inmate while on a Bill Glass Weekend of Champions that he held in Southern California prisons.  The blur of statistics and faces only seen on TV became real people she got to visit and realized in many ways they were like herself, moms who loved their children.  Many were Christians and eager to study God’s Word.   She had a burning desire to help them; first, one named Julie who she met that weekend, and then others locally from the jail.  Her concern developed into her passion. 

 

Clothing and Activities

One woman, Sharon, wanted to go to church with Nancy soon after she had started doing chapel services.  At that point she wasn’t sure how she felt about that but soon realized that was a very big step for Sharon to ask for help.  Sharon was the first of many who would go to church with Nancy and become her friend.  She would introduce the women she took to people that she knew in church as her friend.  This began to break barriers for the new friends she brought to not fear those in church as judgmental people and soon realized many cared about her personally as well.  It also was good for the people of the church to experience first hand that they need not fear people just because they had been in jail.  Bridges of concern, care and understanding had begun.  Providing Sharon with  clothes she needed, which were also appropriate for church, made her feel cared for and also good about herself.  That was the beginning of clothing that was gathered and provided to various women and their children.  So much came after a while that Evangelical Free Church provided space for a clothing closet.  As the women kept coming on a regular basis, or should it be said they were picked up and brought to church because they had no transportation, people would seek them out to talk with them.  They invited one, Rosie, to join Nancy on the Women’s Retreat for the weekend.  That was a totally new experience for Rosie, and as the years have gone by many women have been given the opportunity to go.  It has been a golden opportunity for women to care about women and continue to build into one another’s lives. 

 

Outside Bible Study

Many evenings Nancy would be calling the “new friends” as they had given her their telephone numbers or addresses.  Nancy would do fun things with them.  They were not used to having safe people to do things with.  That is why they often got back in trouble.  Nancy saw that it was important to start a Bible Study on the outside (of the jail) to help the women continue to learn God’s Word and apply it to their lives.  The women were fickle.  Often they would say they would come, but as she went to pick them up they were not there, had been up all night with problems in home or changed their minds.  The start of this group was small but Nancy met even if no one came.  She and God met and prayed for the women.  After a year there were usually 3 to 5 meeting together.  By the time that Samaritan Women was formed nine years later, that group had grown to 20 to 40 on a regular basis.  Other women came to help with this Bible Study as friends to encourage and teach.  Then the clothes closet would be opened up for women to get clothing.  Volunteers were helping to sort and distribute the much needed clothing to the women. 

 

Ex-inmate group organized to serve plans for a Home 

In 1993 there was a new group that was forming nationally through Prison Fellowship called “Network for Life”. This was an important group to the ex-inmates.  They had never seen others besides themselves that were “making it”.  Chaplain Davis at the Fresno County Jail had received a brochure about this and shared it with Nancy.  Funds were raised to send 7 men and women ex-offenders to the first conference which really inspired and united them to help others like themselves.  Volunteers and ex-inmates joined together and made burritos, enough burritos to send 43 ex-inmates, men and women, to the national conference of Network for Life in Colorado. It inspired them when they met others that were successful in the world that had been out many years.  They had only had contact with people who had been out months or even a year or two.  They began to want to reach out to do a street ministry, have a home where women could come and be safe as she would start out.  This was the thought that one day we would have a home.

 

Fun, Fellowship

Occasionally Nancy would invite women of the community to have a fun time with the women.  One such event was a pizza party.  One of the women said, “what a fun way to start a weekend and we didn’t even get drunk”.  It was remembered that it is important to have clean fun.  It is also important to provide times where women of the community and the women rebuilding their lives after incarceration to be together and enjoy fellowship and build bonds of understanding and concern.  This later developed into Fun Fellowship Friday that a number of the women that were now regulars help to put on each Friday night at the Evangelical Free Church.  It went to monthly meetings on the second Friday of the month for the years since the first year. 

 

Mentors

The importance of one person building into another’s life is the cornerstone.  We are relational beings and need each other to teach us, comfort us, hold us accountable, encourage us and pick us up when we fall.  It started with Julie, then Sharon, and Rosie to so many more that follow, wanting new lives and finding hope because some one cares.

August 1999 the Executive Board was chosen and Samaritan Women became incorporated. Above is a picture of the first Samaritan Women Board Meeting