By LINDA CHION KENNEY
Hope For Her, which started as a college thesis inspired by personal experience, is now a long-standing nonprofit serving women in crisis throughout Hillsborough County.
The stated aim is to provide “a safe place where women experiencing crisis and trauma find the strength, skills and support they need to rebuild their lives.”
According to founder Cheryl Hickman, “it’s based on my own life experience going through domestic violence, drug use and addiction, and having my life hit rock bottom.”
“When my life fell apart, I committed my life to the Lord,” Hickman added. “That process led me get a master’s degree in human services.”
Hickman said the thesis she wrote to earn that degree centered on creating an organization “that doesn’t have judgment and condemnation.”
“It’s women meeting with other women to work through their goals in life in a safe environment,” Hickman added. “When my life hit rock bottom, I had nobody, and I needed people to support me, love me and not judge me.”
Founded in 2003 as the Women’s Resource Center of Tampa, with the help of 11 other women, the Hope For Her model is based on their collective life experiences.
To date, “we’ve seen more than 75,000 women and children, all based out of our office in Brandon, with services reaching out throughout the county,” Hickman said. “Once somebody is an established client, we can work with them over the phone or virtually.”
As a sign of these inflationary times, marked with dramatic increases in housing costs, “we have overwhelming growth right now, with more than 1,500 calls a month for services,” Hickman said. “We’re a small ministry, with 265 appointments available monthly, so we’re not even close to meeting the needs of women struggling in our community.”
Hope For Her is part of “a very large network,” Hickman added, including roughly 300 nonprofits and churches throughout south and east county and beyond. “We tap into whoever is doing it well, in terms of providing resources and services,” Hickman said. “They do what they do well, and we do what we do well. We don’t have to compete.”
For example, working with Bay Area Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm providing free civil legal help to eligible residents of a five-county service area, women can secure legal assistance.
Working with the Emergency Care Help Organization (ECHO) in Riverview, “we can provide families with emergency food and clothes,” Hickman added. “We put that in the plan as we connect women to the resources she needs.”
Aid covers a wide range of topics, including stable housing and child support. “It’s a process, serving every single woman with a support plan based on their strengths and the barriers in their way,” Hickman said.
When Hickman was at her lowest point, she said she struggled through and back and decided to get a master’s degree in social services. As for her thesis, “I had a research team of other women who had challenging life experiences,” Hickman said. “They talked about what they needed when their lives were in a tough state.”
Founded as the Women’s Resource Center of Tampa, the name eventually led to confusion, “about who we were and what we did,” Hickman said. During a renaming campaign, Hickman said, a woman with her daughter came to the nonprofit’s attention, recounting violent domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. “He was into the occult,” Hickman said, “and she told us we provided hope for her, and that’s where our new name came from.”
Hope For Her members attended a Riverview Woman’s Club meeting in May. Together, we transform overwhelming circumstances into opportunities to ensure every woman can live God’s purpose for her life — today, tomorrow and always.
As a private nonprofit ministry, funding issues are constant, lessened by the largesse of others. For example, Hickman said, “we secured great support from the Valrico-FishHawk Chamber of Commerce,” which named Hope For Her its nonprofit business of the year.
“Our focus is on single-parent moms,” Hickman said. “It’s about women being able to be in jobs to cover housing, food and transportation costs. We really want women to flourish and not just survive. We want to give them the help they need to live their best life.”
Hope For Her hosts community meetings the second Tuesday of the month for Hillsborough County nonprofits. According to Hickman, just under 400 nonprofits have connected through these meetings, where representatives share stories about their work.
Hope For Her in Brandon is at 140 Yarborough Road.
For help or to donate, call 813-309-3357; email info@hopeforherfl.org/; or visit www.hopeforherfl.org/.