Casa Marianella runs on the kindness of our volunteers. There are many volunteer opportunities at Casa allowing for a variety of programs with very flexible hours. Food shifts are one of the many opportunities to help out at Casa. Last Saturday, members of Texas Wesley were kind enough to serve lunch to our residents. They [...]
ESL Students Share Their Stories and Talents! We were so impressed with the amazing stories, photos and talents shared by our residents, ESL students and members of the Casa community- including a few of our ESL teachers and staff members! What we loved most was seeing the confidence exuded by our ESL students. For some [...]
At Casa Marianella, we're happy to discuss what it means for our residents to become 'self sufficient'. We use this term regularly to describe successful exits from Casa Marianella that lead to affordable housing and sufficient income. With the great city of Austin, TX becoming increasingly tough to find affordable housing in, our definition of affordable [...]
A Night To Remember! We had a wonderful time celebrating an Ethiopian and Eritrean style Christmas at Casa Marianella this past holiday season! There was plenty of amazing food, pharmacy music, diagnosis laughter, and camaraderie. Our residents are incredible, and preserving their culture is very important to all of us. The Casa family values diversity, [...]
Bob Libal is the Executive Director at Grassroots Leadership, a wonderful Austin organization that works to help us obtain a more just and fair society where prison profiteering, mass incarceration, deportation and criminalization are no longer a reality. Casa Marianella and Grassroots Leadership have long enjoyed a friendly working relationship, and recently we spoke with Bob [...]
photo credit: Erin Birney When Teo arrived at Casa Marianella two years ago, unhealthy his untreated diabetes had advanced so far that he was, see as one observer puts it, “more dead than alive.” Indeed, Teo has lost half of his leg, the functioning of his kidneys, and part of his vision to the disease. [...]
Former Posada resident, Hilda Ramirez, has garnered local media attention this week for telling her story of migrating to the United States, living for over a year in detention and now, living in fear of deportation. Ramirez and her son are one of the families potentially targeted by the recent round of deportation raids. Ramirez [...]
Amy Poehler is best known for her sharp wit and feminist humor. Yet, buy in 2008 the comedienne founded Smart Girls, a non-profit organization aimed at helping young people cultivate their authentic selves instead of fitting in. This August, the organization’s cofounder Meredith Walker shared some of their positivity with Posada and strove to provide [...]
The Be Thankful Project was started in late 2015 to help improve the conditions at Posada Esperanza. A local Austinite saw that there was a strong need for certain items, ambulance and she rallied her Facebook friends and family to help the shelter in any way they could. We spoke with the organization’s founder to [...]