As a pregnant teen, the Virgin Mary went to see her cousin. Elizabeth was also with child — the unborn John the Baptist. That visit, described in Scripture as making Elizabeth's baby "leap for joy," is one of the models for Madonna's Center here.
The outreach organization, an all-volunteer effort headquartered in a 15-by-15-foot suburban office, aims to help needy teen parents gain stability, self-sufficiency and joy. Volunteers gather baby supplies, seek housing, provide food and arrange health care. Keeping teen mothers and fathers in school and finding jobs are high priorities, because Madonna's Center volunteers know those steps can break the cycle of povetry.
Madonna’s Center served 156 teen mothers last year, 18 teen fathers and 175 infants and toddlers. The service area is all of sprawling Clackamas County.
"It's like they are another family," says Alexis Marshall, 18.
She's finishing school while raising her nine-month-old daughter, Autumn Steinbeck. Marshall was looking for work to support her daughter, but Madonna's Center provided for many of the needs so she could focus on education.
Valerie Aschbacher, a veteran special education teacher and social worker, once looked upon teen mothers with disdain. But after getting to know some of the girls through her work, Aschbacher felt called to serve them.
"You have a child raising a child," says Aschbacher. "What are you going to do, turn your back on both children?"
She and Father Todd Molinari, her pastor at St. John the Baptist Parish here at the time, opened Madonna's Center in 2005. The project began in a basement and moved to a pint-sized office before entering its current home, which is stuffed to the ceiling with donated diapers, blankets and maternity clothes.
Girls served at Madonna's Center have difficult stories to tell. One prostituted herself to pay for diapers. Another was sleeping on a floor with meth addicts and made her way to the hospital alone to have her child. A third moved in with an older man for shelter and suffered physical and emotional abuse.
The typical teen served by the center is out of cash, struggling to stay in school, lacking in family support and carting children around on buses. The girls often have suffered abuse.
Madonna's Center is not a maternity home or a crisis pregnancy counseling center. It's support for teens who have already decided to keep their babies.
Aware that teen parents cannot get around easily, Madonna's Center volunteers go to them. Deliveries go to home or school or even to cars, for those who live in them.
Many teen parents are in desperate need because they fall into an aid gap. Cut loose by their families, they often are too young to receive state benefits.
Need increased dramatically when the economy tanked and jobs became scarce, Aschbacher says. The number of teen parents served at Madonna's Center has doubled since 2008, with county agencies and health clinics making a steady stream of referrals.
Two volunteers filling requests one day last week at the office were young moms themselves and wish Madonna's Center had been there for them.
"I could not get any assistance at all," says Tracy Schimmel of Oregon City.
"These kids need help because their parents won't help them," adds Cheri Beals, a Madonna's Center board member whose parents disowned her when she became pregnant. "They live couch to couch. They lose their friends who don't know what to do with a pregnant girl. We try to show them we care."
Madonna's Center simultaneously is trying to teach youths about unconditional love. Teens up until now may have equated love and sex, but the support and kindness from the organization's volunteers tell another story.
Receiving pure love tends to make the young parents feel generous.
One teen father whose little family had received help at the center emptied his own pockets of change and asked family members to pitch in during a recent Madonna's Center fund drive. All this from a young man who lives in an apartment with no heat. Other teens refuse or return food already in good supply at their homes, saying they want the items to be available for someone else.
"We are seeing how much they want to give back," says Aschbacher, a small crucifix around her neck.
Patricia Aguilera, 17, holds her four-month-old son Emmanuel Lopez just before heading back to class in a special Clackamas County high school for young mothers. Aguilera says that, thanks in part to Madonna's Center, she has felt enough support that she not only will finish high school, but will go on to nursing school.
When teen mothers and fathers have no place to rest their heads, Madonna's Center finds help through a program called "A Way Inn." The title refers to many things — an entry into stability, the inn at which Mary and Joseph could not find a space, and the Christmas song "Away in a Manger."
A burgeoning program called Joe's Place helps teen dads accept their responsibilities. It's named after St. Joseph, a model for men learning to be servants for the higher good.
Mia Mama! will be a chic resale store and job training program.
Madonna's Center wants teen parents to have a voice in how the organization operates. The youths are invited to board meetings and have made good suggestions, such as ways to help new girls feel welcome when they call. Madonna's Center gets no government funding. The Knights of Columbus have stepped forward to raise some funds.
On the board of directors are Deacon Gerald Delgado and Father Maxy D'Costa of St. John the Baptist Parish.
"When faced with an unwed pregnant teen, the most inappropriate response is to decry her lack of morals, rail against the absence of a culture of abstinence, and provide the girl with little more than scorn and the door," says an online article about Madonna's Center posted by the Archdiocese of Portland's Office of Life, Justice and Peace. "If we are serious about protecting all life — including the unborn child — then the appropriate response is love."
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