Main Menu

Mary's Place
Is Moving!

We are moving in July 2012 (as projected) into Holy Rosary Church. We will have more space on one floor there than we currently do on all three floors we are using in the Rectory. This move will have some very nice perks: heat, air-conditioning, kitchen facilities, all-visible at-a-glance space, an area for presentations, a separate area (currently the front Narthex) for give-aways of food and clothing, etc.

We will have an expanded, better appointed area for tutoring and plan to use white fold-away tables and plastic molded chairs throughout the ‘great space’ so they can easily be folded and stacked for additional uses of the space. We will need room dividers, storage cabinets and movable shelving. An air-hockey game and other games that size would be wonderful to challenge the minds of the teens.

There will be a greater need for volunteers to staff the kitchen, tutor basic English (and homework on a very basic level), to child-sit while parents are being helped and afterschool monitors. We are looking for drivers for our van to transport children home when darkness comes before closing. We do need people at the reception desk to answer the phone and do basic input on the computer.

This is not a complete list but, hopefully, you can see an opportunity for yourself to fit in whether it be for an hour, a day, or more. Please contact us by email or phone 585-278-0835. Thanks and God bless!

Location and Hours

Mary's Place is a Refugee Outreach Center located in the Northwest Maplewood area of Rochester, NY.

  • For the school year 2011-2012, Mary's Place will be open Mondays thru Fridays from Noon to 5:00 p.m.
  • On Tuesdays and Thursdays we will extend our hours ’til 7:30 p.m.
  • Saturdays we are open from
    10 a.m.- 3 p.m.
  • WE ARE CLOSED WEDNESDAYS and SUNDAYS.

Donations are always welcome and accepted weekdays during our regular hours. Saturday donations are accepted from 10am to noon.

Monetary donations (tax-exempt) may be made payable to Mary's Place LLC and mailed to Mary's Place, 414 Lexington Ave., Rochester, NY 14613

INTERNSHIPS - NEW!

Mary's Place offers unpaid, competitive internship opportunities for students pursuing degrees in Social Work, Education, Anthropology, Sociology, Public Health and other disciplines. Students report directly to the Director of Mary’s Place and work closely with staff and other volunteers in running the Center’s programs for refugee clients.

Download our student internship guide.

A Look at Mary's Place - Spring, 2012

Mary’s Place is a refugee outreach center founded in January 2009 to ‘serve Jesus in the name of His mother’. It is located in Northwest Rochester, NY, and serves refugees of all faiths and nationalities: several hundred of them on a rotating basis, the greatest majority of them residing within walking distance of our building.

We were founded as an outreach ministry of Sacred Heart Cathedral opening in their Holy Rosary Rectory with them paying the utilities for us for the three years of our existence. With the exception of this support, $500 from Rochester City Council/Carla Palumbo and an initial start-up grant obtained thru Grace Urban Ministries for the purchase and installation of the computerized English language program “Rosetta Stone” we have existed on free-will donations from many churches of various creeds and from many generous people.

We will be moving this July into sizable space in the Holy Rosary Church building, being bought and renovated by Providence Housing, and will begin to pay our own rent and electric bill. The intention of Mary’s Place is to augment the original settlement of our refugee families and assist them through language, food, clothing, customs, assistance with bill paying, medical appointments, driver education, green cards and, now beginning, citizenship all the while readying them for and referring them to further education and/or employment.

Most often a new refugee family is brought by the community to us the day after they arrive and proudly introduced to us as ‘new’ so we can immediately begin to assist them. We are privileged to have 9 interns from the 6 local colleges, a professor from each of the 6 colleges and, roughly 125 additional student volunteers along with our adult volunteers, volunteer facility director (Hla Win) and volunteer director (Kathy LaBue).

We currently are holding classes for 25 Nepali, 17 Burmese and 7- 12 pre-schoolers ages 2 and 3. We also tutor individuals all hours we are open. Our Wednesday afternoon school-age formal tutoring class (under the supervision of Nazareth College) is hosted for the school year 2011-12, with generosity on their part for the donated space and additional volunteers necessitated by the lack of space in our current site, at Ascension Episcopal Church on Lake Avenue. It will come back to us this summer. We are blessed!

With roughly 700 refugees coming into Rochester yearly and many of them (thank God) continuing to be settled in our Northwest Rochester neighborhood we anticipate needing continued support from all the good people and institutions in which God plants the ‘seeds’ of generosity and love.  Thank you! - Kathy LaBue 3/27/2012

Please visit us on Facebook! Facebook logo

As always, thanks to everyone who helps in any way that allows us to continue our mission of reaching out to those in need. Mary's Place is an all-volunteer run organization, and we wouldn't exist without our wonderful volunteers and donors.

Please e-mail or call us at 585-278-0835 if you have any questions or would like to help in any way.

 

Prayer for Women Refugees

By: Jane Deren

On the road, seeking safe shelter;

In makeshift tents, feeding children;

In resettlement centers, rebuilding community;

In strange neighborhoods, looking for a compassionate face:

Long lines of women refugees,

Thousands, millions, all searching for that grace called home.

Grant them healing and wholeness, God of the vulnerable.

As you cherished Mary, cherish these women.

Grant us eyes to see them and the will to reach out,

So they may know they are not forgotten

But are welcomed in the global community, Sisters to us all.

Education for Justice Website, Center of Concern

Refugees

  • 1.4 million people have become refugees outside their own countries.
  • 26 million people have been displaced within their own countries.

May we realize that, in our interconnected world, we are linked with all displaced persons by our common humanity.