http://www.thebattlecreekshopper.com BATTLE CREEK SHOPPER NEWS Thursday, September 26, 2024 3
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of Albion and the Church of the
Nazarene helped on Saturday, Sept.
21, said King.
“We’re going to do another group
next week if we can,” said King.
“Next week is our BCAAR (Battle
Creek Area Association of Relators)
Build,Tuesday through Saturday.”other guidance and support.
“This gala for me, is celebrating
the women I’ve met over these 20
years,” said Momenee, “the women
who have supported Co-Op, the
women who have been supported by
Co-Op, all the people that’s made it
possible during these 20 years, all of
our donors and our partners and the
accomplishments and like I had said,
it’s just been so much fun to look at
the old pictures and old articles and
oh my gosh, its just brings up some
memories. It’s been amazing.”
The $75 price for the tickets (avail-
able at 966-8988) will help the
non-profit, based at Trinity Lutheran
Church on E. Columbia Avenue,
implement its next, five-year plan.
“We serve about 300 to 500 people
a year through the network,” she
said, “but then there’s also probably
another 2- to 300 people that we
just triage so they don’t stay here to
co-op with us but we’re assessing
their situation and sending them out
to wherever they can get the help
that they’re looking for.”
It all started when Momenee, then
known as Teresa Phillips, found her-
self single, living in a mobile home,
working 60-hours per week but still
barely able to feed her three children.
“It kind of started because I went
to the refrigerator one night and I
literally had a pack of pork chops,”
she said. “I’m not even lying, that’s
all there was. And I was devastated.
I had three babies I needed to feed,
and one of them wasn’t even two
years old. I can’t really give my son
a pork chop and tell him to eat that.”
Momenee had a full-time job but
just couldn’t make ends meet. It was
that night that she phoned a friend.
“I called my best friend that lived
across the street, Melissa Young,
and I said, ‘you know, I don’t even
know if I should be a mother at this
point. I can’t even feed my kids,’”
she said. “‘I’m doing everything Ican.’ And I thought she hung up on
me, and I was so devastated. ‘She
hung up on me.’ And then there’s
a knock at the door, and she’s like,
‘get out of the way. We got dinner
to make.’ She brought potatoes and
green beans and apple sauce, and we
ate my pork chops, and we put din-
ner together, and then afterwards, we
were playing games with the kids,
and I just looked across the room at
her and thought, ‘you know, if more
people in the world who was where
I was had someone like her that just
cared that you didn’t have dinner that
night...”
That was the start of an idea
that led to what Woman’s Co-Op
became.
“I’m not saying there aren’t peoplein our community that care,” she
said. “We have food banks, we have
things to help people, but you’re
herded through and you’re given
what they have. And, there’s, there’s
a process to it, and what we had was
so different. It was really that you
found a friend like I did that night.”
Momenee and Young took the
notion to heart and began solicit-
ing for other women in need in their
neighborhood and together, they
each matched the needs with the
skills present in the room.
But once the group grew too large
and the needs too much, Momenee
reached out to Brenda Hunt, the then
president and CEO of the BattleSee CO-OP on 8