Cofounder Genny Nelson and Executive Director Monica Beemer at the City Hall Reception honoring Genny for her work and receipt of the 2005 National Caring Award.

Genny Nelson holds the National Caring Award

Historic photo inside the Cafe

Check out a booklet we produced in 2005 to celebrate our 25th Anniversary (pdf format)!

Watch a 12-minute video about Sisters, The Invisible Community. Please note you will need Quicktime or other video software to view this video.  To download a free version of QuickTime, click here.

Sisters’ Cofounder Wins National Caring Award

Given by The Caring Institute, the award honors the ten most caring men and women and five most caring young people in America as selected by a prestigious panel of judges each year. Click here to learn more about how Sisters’ Cofounder Genny Nelson won this prestigious national award in 2005.

History

Sisters was founded in 1979 by Genny Nelson and Sandy Gooch, two social service workers in the Burnside area.

Genny and Sandy were paid from a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) grant to work at Burnside Projects, which housed “Boxcar Bertha’s.” Working with the women who came through the center, Nelson and Gooch learned a lot about the community.  They learned, primarily, that women didn’t feel safe in a neighborhood like Old Town, a neighborhood not set up to address their needs, where many residents did not believe women belonged, in a city in which they felt invisible, and in a fundamentally sexist culture.

They learned that virtually every woman who passed through Boxcar Bertha’s had first-hand experience with violence: they had been raped, molested, harassed or physically threatened.  They felt no place was completely safe – not the shelters, not the streets, not even the restrooms.

Out of that experience, Nelson and Gooch determined to create one public place in the Burnside neighborhood that would assure safety to all. 

Of all Nelson’s experiences in Old Town, one stands out as the single catalyst leading to creation of Sisters Of The Road Café:

One morning, she stood in line with Burnside residents waiting for a meal in a local soup kitchen.  The morning was cold, the wait was long.  Once inside, the sermon was lethally boring and irrelevant to many listeners.  And the breakfast was old ice cream.

Here’s how Genny Nelson described it:

“I walked through the mission door with Bill and we sat on an empty church pew.  I saw a lot of familiar faces but not much visible praying.  Folks were talking and sleeping and reading newspapers when suddenly we were all asked, “Who hasn’t had coffee?”