2008 marks Cornerstone’s 25th Anniversary and we would like to share some memories and milestones with you.
We’ll start at the beginning…a truly humble beginning indeed.
After serving on a domestic violence task force for two years, Cornerstone’s founders, Dorothy Backstrom, Vickie Pearson and Gayleen Erickson, knew that the time had come to turn words into action. They recruited their friends and neighbors and sent them to the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women to learn how to become advocates. The pastor at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church, Jim Cook, agreed to provide them with a free space. That space turned out to be the organist’s closet behind the church sanctuary, but they didn’t care. They were in business!
In 1985, with support from Hennepin County Commissioner, Randy Johnson, Cornerstone entered into its first contract for service. We hired paid staff and became a 24/7 service provider. As the year drew to a close, the members of the Board decided it was time to find a larger home. As luck would have it, they only had to look across the street to an empty little white building owned by the City of Bloomington. Cornerstone agreed to replace the broken furnace and pay $1.00 per year in rent. Armed with lots of cleaning supplies and our dedicated volunteers, we moved into our new home in February of 1986. While the little building wasn’t much to look at (inside or out), Cornerstone was able to offer support groups, childcare and privacy for our clients. This was the beginning of many innovative services for battered women and their children.
Moving from Oak Grove Presbyterian Church to the "little white building" across the street ushered in an era of extraordinary growth for Cornerstone. At a strategic planning meeting in 1988, the Board of Directors identified three long range goals. The first was to forge a formal partnership with the Bloomington, Eden Prairie, Edina and Richfield police departments and city prosecutors. The second was to establish a transitional housing program for battered women and their children, and third to own our own facility. Good fortune smiled on us. The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development had just implemented a program that allowed nonprofits to lease, at $1 per year, houses that were in HUD's foreclosure inventory. With support from Bloomington HRA, a $7,000 grant and blind optimism, Cornerstone launched the Families in Transition Program. Our first participant was a young mother with three children and a burning desire to pursue a career in nursing. Five years later, she bought her first home and graduated from Normandale Community College as a Registered Nurse.
By the early 1990's, Cornerstone recognized the importance of
community partnerships. We knew, based on our successful experience working with our local police and prosecutors, that lasting change does not come from the outside. It happens when there is mutual respect, a shared goal and a benefit to all the participants. We applied the lessons learned to our school-based violence prevention initiative. The impetus for this initiative came from our experience in the classroom. When we were invited to present to health classes, it was not unusual to receive notes from the students about what was happening in their families or in their dating relationships. We struggled with not being able to offer services to these young people because we realized that abuse is a deeply personal and sometimes secretive issue. There was a general interest in domestic abuse as a social topic, but routinely going into our community schools with a dating violence prevention curriculum was something entirely different.
In 1993, we introduced this somewhat controversial idea to one classroom, one school at a time. We actively pursued relationships with teachers, social workers and school counselors, building a coalition of support for our program. The process was somewhat slow until unthinkable tragedies happened in schools across the country. In response, our prevention curriculum expanded beyond dating violence to include a broader scope of interpersonal violence. Cornerstone's Preventing Abuse and Violence through Education (PAVE) saw extraordinary growth over the next eight years, expanding into 23 high schools, junior highs and middle schools. PAVE'S reputation spread well beyond our target cities. Before long, desperate teens and their parents were calling to ask if they could meet with our PAVE staff. We began to receive requests for presentations from schools across the metro.
1995: Looking back, the mid 1990’s was a period of tremendous programmatic growth for Cornerstone. Our Families in Transition Program had expanded to sixteen housing units. The eight 2-bedroom apartments and eight single family homes allowed Cornerstone to serve both small and large families. Our scattered-site model was unique among transitional housing programs and was far less institutional than housing programs that utilized large multi-unit buildings. Because of this program, Cornerstone staff were able to address each family’s issues stemming from the abuse they had experienced. We forged a partnership with Hennepin Technical College which gave the women an opportunity to pursue the education that would result in a livable wage job. The availability of subsidized child-care enabled them to take full advantage of these educational options.
Cornerstone felt fortunate to be a part of each family’s journey. It was simply a time when all the stars aligned… affordable housing, advocacy and support, educational opportunities and the resources that supported the women as they built a better life for themselves and their children!
1997: Volunteers have always been the bedrock of Cornerstone’s success. It takes a very special person to be willing to make a commitment to an issue as complex as domestic violence. When we have an opportunity to showcase such a person, it fills us with great joy. That opportunity came in the fall of 1997 when Marie Schatzlein was selected as one of the “Eleven Who Care” at KARE 11’s annual volunteer recognition event.
I’m not sure if Marie was as excited as we were. She never sought attention for the extraordinary gifts she brought to Cornerstone. She became a volunteer in 1985 following her retirement from a distinguished nursing career. During the “pre-computer age,” Marie came in once a week to compile our statistics and was a dedicated crisis advocate. She started our Senior Women’s Program and was devoted to her senior “ladies.” Her boundless energy and enthusiasm was an inspiration to everyone at Cornerstone
to be continued...
