Photography by Steve Buchanan
Mandy Memmel helps at-risk individuals transition from life on the streets of Northern Anne Arundel County and South Baltimore. She mentors women who have been traumatized and are at a crisis point in their lives, which often involves prostitution, drugs, domestic violence, poverty, homelessness, or a combination of these hardships.
“We believe the way to overcome trauma is a healthy community,” Memmel says. Through hours, months, and years of mentoring, she helped about 120 women find their way back to healthy and productive lives. Her clients range in age from 12 to 68.
“I am doing work that many people wish would get done, but nobody dares do,” Memmel says. “So, I saw a need. Instead of sitting back and saying, ‘Someone needs to do something,’ I did something. When I meet people, I accept them. I am not a savior. I don’t see myself as a superhero in a cape. I think helping people is all that we should be doing.”
The 52-year-old Memmel started off small by helping the needy—giving out food and clothes as a volunteer at the former New Hope Church in Pasadena. Her volunteer role expanded when she began mentoring women and, later, becoming a women’s ministry director at the church—a role she held for many years.
Memmel, who worked as a nurse for five years at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore in the 1990s, before getting heavily involved in church volunteer work—including at the Elvaton Baptist Church in Millersville—saw an even bigger need to help women and started the support group Women of Hope in 2004, which meets weekly.
That led to Memmel to create the nonprofit, The Well, in 2013 and based in Curtis Bay, which often connects women to counseling and therapy. The organization also offers skill-building programs, workforce development, financial training, family coaching, spiritual development, rehabilitative and psychiatric help, housing, clothing from its own store, Hope Chest, and employment training from another organizational store, Hon’s Honey.
The organization describes itself as “a community of women being transformed through long-term relationships, practical programs, and the healing power of love.”
“I would say with The Well’s wrap-around service, and with Hon’s Honey, we are pretty rare,” says Sarah Batley, senior director of Hon’s Honey.
The women coming to the center often take an instant liking to Memmel. You could say she’s everybody’s friend and just wants to help people.
“She just loves everyone,” The Well’s Administrator Manager Alison Guy says. “There is not a person she meets that she doesn’t love. She has such a heart for people. She cares deeply about people and wants to enter their lives and just love them. No one is a stranger to her. You instantly want to become her friend.”
A lot of her friends appreciate the innovative ideas she’s developed at The Well. One is the clothing store Hope Chest. Another is Hon’s Honey, a store that is considered an organizational employment program. Fourteen women work part-time at Hon’s Honey—a health, home, and body goods store—that are part of The Well’s COR Life Development Program.
Right now, the organization provides housing for three people, including a baby. That should change next year, though, as soon as the house they are in is officially turned over to the organization. “As soon as the house gets donated to us by the end of the year, which is their commitment, we will expand our housing and turn it into transitional housing,” Memmel says. “We are hoping to expand it to six to eight women.”
Many of the women Memmel has mentored call her first when they are in trouble. Many times, she’s ready to help right away. “She is amazing. She is a like mother and sister,” Batley says.
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