Transitional Living Program Internship

My internship placement is a non-profit organization that provides a comprehensive range of programs to address and end intimate partner violence. During the week I split my time between two locations; the main building in downtown Boston, and at an 18-month long transitional living program for young women (ages 15-21) who are either pregnant or parenting. The transitional living program, that I will refer to as ABC, is a house that can accommodate up to 8 moms and 13 children at any given time. The majority of the young women who are currently guests of ABC have been living there for at least 6-8 months, if not longer. Only 2 of the 8 women have moved in within the last 6 months.

While acknowledging that each young lady has come to ABC due to her own unique circumstance, with her own narrative, at the same time I also recognize that there are common threads, both from the past and present, that begin to weave these young women’s lives together. Therefore, instead of talking about a single individual from the house, for the purpose of this paper I am going to consider the young women as a collective group. Since the house where they live is a shelter that is staffed by a larger organization, I feel that it is important to take the house into consideration as part of these young women’s context, just as much as it is important to look at the actual neighborhood where the house is located. For the sake of anonymity, I will refer to the neighborhood as Gross Point.

The residence, which happens to be the largest house on the block, is located in the heart of a small, affluent, suburban enclave bordered by low-income urban environments, just outside of the city of Boston. The houses on the surrounding blocks are also rather large...

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