About Us
SMART: Bringing Hope and Healing to abused and abandoned young women.
SMART funds provide care for the girls while they are in the treatment program, and more importantly after they are released, SMART goals are to make life time friendships with the girls and to help them and their families in many different areas:
Tutoring Clothing Groceries Transportation
Tuition assistance Job Search Housing & Furniture
Hobby & Sports Supplies Relationship Mentoring
Guidance in Physical Health AND MORE
Please help us as together we serve Jesus.
“Just as you do to the least of these, you have done it unto me”
Matthew 25:40
Vision and Mission
SMART Vision Statement
To grow MMA resident teens into women with high self-esteem who respect themselves and earn the respect of others through consistently demonstrating healthy life skills in areas of personal health, relationships, spirituality, and responsible citizenship.
SMART Mission Statement
Provide a lifetime of friendship, support, and mentoring to the MMA teens and young women toward the goal of restoring each one to her relationships with family, other responsible adults, herself and God.
SMART: Fulfilling the Needs
The Need
Hundreds of thousands of young women in America today suffer from the trauma of physical and emotional abuse, sexual exploitation, and abandonment. Girls as young as five years old are the victims of sexual abuse by family members. As a result of these traumas, girls often seek to ease their pain through drugs, gang involvement, prostitution, alcohol, truancy, self-harm and running away from home. These bad choices lead them into detention or living on the streets, sometimes for years. Some of these girls are assigned to behavioral treatment facilities that offer a safe and supportive environment in which they can progress in their education and explore who they are. SMART volunteers have the wonderful opportunity of befriending and standing along side these girls as they grow into responsible young women and citizens.
Getting Started: Building Relationships
A young girl away from home is lonely and anxious in an unfamiliar setting, sometimes far away from her home state. She readily welcomes the interest and companionship of caring and involved adults. Our program to residents in treatment seeks to build friendships through a variety of fun, but engaging, activities across all areas of the girls’ treatment. We offer weekend worship and craft events, academic tutoring throughout the school week, visits to dormitories for one-on-one talks about their recovery program and goals, off-campus conferences and field trips, and pen pal correspondence. Through these activities, trust is built with responsible adults which can carry over into the home setting when the girl completes her residential program.
Lifetime Involvement: After Care Mentoring
When a teen girl advances to home or independent living, the real challenges of her life begin. The friendships built during residency with knowledgeable, concerned adults take on new importance as the girl faces financial, career, lodging and relationship issues, often with no dependable outside resources.
SMART offers coaching and committed relationships over a wide range of life skills:
- Job search and advancement
- College and career planning
- Financial stability and goals
- Physical health/diet/sleep habits
- Positive relationship building
- Dealing with past addictions
- Overcoming depression and anger
- Establishing good reading habits
- Social media
- Finding a faith community
- Becoming a good neighbor
After Care Support Services
Sometimes life requires more than good coaching and encouragement. In addition to life skills mentoring, SMART is there for those needs too, helping locate or providing support, including the following:
- Safe housing
- Groceries
- Clothing
- Child care
- Reliable transportation
- School tuition and books
- Down payment on rent
SMART support can extend across the nation, based on where the girl calls home. When a girl moves outside the Prescott area or even AZ, SMART volunteers team with ‘local’ social services, churches and families to ‘wrap around’ the girl with the support she needs. SMART monitors the needs and progress of each young woman through phone calls, social media and visits. As her needs change, services are adjusted to best move her to independence at the earliest time. Still, SMART commitment as friend and mentor is life long.