By Rita McInerney

“The children don’t know they’re homeless,” Sister Marie Sullivan says quietly.

She’s referring to babies, toddlers and school-age children who live at Achor Center, a transitional home for homeless mothers and single women located at the United Baptist Church on Stewart Avenue in southwest Atlanta.

Achor, symbolizing gateway, is proving to be a way up for those living there. Its purpose, as conceived by Sister Marie, a Dominican sister of Sinsinawa, Wis., is new life for women battered by spouses, boyfriends, addiction or society.

How did Achor come about? “Basically I had worked three or four years with women in shelters and knew we were not doing anything. I knew some women could move on, with little help,” Sister Marie says. Her idea was to open a 24-hour center.

The women chosen for Achor’s program of housing and training can stay up to nine months while they prepare themselves for, and save toward, a home and life away from the bleak despair of the streets and shelters.

Achor provides the blessing of privacy. Rooms with beds, chests and windows, and best of all, a door to close. Such welcome comfort after cots, plastic bags bulging with shabby possessions in crowded shelters improvised in church halls and gyms.

For mothers there is on-site day care for babies and toddlers. They can go off to low-paying jobs or classes without first the tiring bus ride to the children’s day shelter. Now they have peace of mind knowing the small ones are well cared for in Achor’s state-licensed day care center.

The security of a schedule, regular times for feeding, playing in the sunshine, afternoon naps, energizes homeless children like multiple vitamins. And while they don’t run and swing in kiddie couture jeans and jackets, neither are they sad-eyed waifs in rags.

Achor offers school-age boys and girls a fair chance to learn, a unique opportunity for children who often must switch schools as they move with their mothers from shelter to shelter.

“Because somebody took an interest,” Sister Marie says, children have been able to advance from the bottom of the class to the upper ranks. “Somebody” is often a college student who comes in two days a week to tutor after talking with the child’s teacher to identify problem areas.

Achor Center occupies three floors at the large Baptist church on Stewart Avenue. Two floors are given over to the private rooms for women and their children, bathrooms, lounge and study areas. Laundry, classrooms, kitchen and dining area are on the lower levels.

The day care center, with separate nursery, toddler and pre-kindergarten areas, opens onto a fenced play area.

It was Sister Marie’s “imaginative idea” that developed the concept of Achor center, wrote Mrs. P. Parks Duncan, a member at the Cathedral of Christ the King, in a letter nominating her for the community service awards presented each year by WXIA-Channel 11.