My Nonprofit Reviews

My comely bride once opened the first pregnancy counseling center in Manhattan, almost a quarter century ago. She had a lot of volunteer help, including even me on occasion, and the stories I learned from her then were often often fairly terrifying, but more often deeply moving.

Most all of these latter didn’t include many fireworks, but were steady and simple things; the small ways that people would go out of their way to help somebody else, like the woman who went after midnight to what was then a pretty scary Harlem, to bring a mother there some diapers for her newborn.

I don’t recall exactly when Good Counsel came into the picture, though I do remember that it did so soon, and, soon enough, regularly. I still know Good Counsel’s work only in the most general way, which is that it provides a haven to live for women with children, and pregnant women, when they have no place to go.

But I have tried to imagine what it would be like to be pregnant with no place to go, and no one willing to help except the abortion provider, which then wouldn’t mean much of a choice. Since Good Counsel has been around for a long time now, it has been able to provide such a choice for surely hundreds and maybe even thousands of women and their children; but though that reads as a fine statistic, I keep coming back to that one woman, feeling helpless and alone, maybe wanting to love her child, but – well, having no choice. And then, because of Good Counsel, discovering as though it were a miracle that she has a choice after all, and hope too.

Due to the warm and focused environment at the Good Counsel homes, it’s probably not a surprise that the miracle these women experience there has also helped most of them to get their lives back on track. Helped many even to become happy I expect, maybe not least because of the children they now love, that almost didn’t make it.

All this stands on its own it seems fair to propose. But also fair to suggest it worthy of recognition in the non-profit world, and the world at large.

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