With the promise of a job in hand and her 14-year-old son in tow, Shantell Cotton left California seeking a better life in North Carolina. When the job evaporated, her money lasted less than a month and Shantell spent Christmas in 2004 in a Salvation Army funded hotel.
“I became homeless,” Shantell says today, from the comfort of an office with a national insurance company where she is training to handle commercial accounts.
Standing between that bitter and frightening holiday, and the bright future she now sees were volunteers and counselors with the Christian Women’s Job Corps.
Counselors visited Shantell and other homeless women at the Helen Wright Center to bring materials, encouragement, Bible study, and hope.
“The first time they came I thought it was going to be pointless,” Shantell said. “Then I learned these successful women had endured the same types of tragedy I was enduring. They shared their own mistakes and said, just because we fall doesn’t mean we need to stay there. We are able to get back up through Christ.”
Today, through the encouragement and support of her mentors in the CWJC, Shantell has a job and plans to finish the college degree she started in California, and go on to earn a master’s degree in communications.
The Christian Women’s Job Corps is a ministry of the Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina and is supported through gifts to the North Carolina Missions Offering.
Pray for Shantell Cotton:
- Her continued success in work and school
- Christian Women’s Job Corps volunteers
- Homeless people in our state