Gale “Mama Sky” Edeawo is proof that there is power in one.
As founder, executive director, administrator and the sole staff of Project Welcome Home in Savannah, Ga., Edeawo visits the local county jail to teach women inmates life and literacy skills. When the women are released, she walks beside them as they make the transition back into the community. She finds employers willing to hire the women, then she helps them fill out job applications. She assists them in regaining custody of children being held by the state and accompanies the women to court. She searches for houses and apartments for them to rent, persuading real estate owners to give the women a chance.
“I teach them empowerment, the women in turn teach me endurance and perseverance,” said Edeawo, 59, known to many women as Mama Sky.
It was 2004 when Joyce Johnson, a 35-year-old mother of five, persuaded Mama Sky to help her. . Johnson had just returned home from her sixth stint in prison, serving time over the years for shoplifting, aggravated assault and forgery; most of her arrests were related to her crack cocaine habit she had.
When Johnson was released, the prison gave her $30 and a bus ticket home. Her family, Johnson said, had grown tired of her behavior. “Mama Sky was looking at what I was doing right then, not at what I had done. I told her I was tired of going back to prison and doing the same things. She told me she doesn’t accept everyone because not everyone is serious.”
Edeawo is a no-nonsense businesswoman with no time to waste on women who aren’t ready to transform themselves. Clients have to prove they are willing to work hard at changing, but once they convince her, Mama Sky, will walk with them every step of the way.
Edeawo found her life’s work in 1998, shortly after moving to Savannah, Ga., where she began teaching creative writing classes at a shelter for youth. “I realized a lot of their suffering was because of problems in the home,” she said, because many of the children had a parent or parents on drugs or incarcerated. “They shared letters from their moms in prison and I could see that these were not impossible women. I prayed for God to let me in the prisons.”
Her prayer was answered when someone invited her to join a new project working with imprisoned women. Within three months, all of the other volunteers had dropped out, but Edeawo, the lone survivor, had found her calling. Edeawo’s dedication earned her a solid reputation, and soon, social service agencies began referring women transitioning out of prison to her..
In 2001, she founded the nonprofit organization Project Welcome Home, fueling it with her credit cards and cash. She counseled women on park benches, in her car, or at restaurants until recently, when small donations and grants allowed her to open up an office.
Becoming a nonprofit and taking her volunteer work to another level is what Edeawo calls "part of the calling.” “I worked with the women long enough to see there is a serious need,” said Edeawo. “I'm the type of person who says, 'This is my world and if I want to enjoy it, I have to do something to change it.’" Most of her clients are reluctant to publicly talk about Mama Sky’s work because it means talking about their own troubles. But Johnson, the mother released in 2004, said she speaks for them.
“I had long sessions on the phone with Mama Sky. She came over to my house,” Johnson said. “She taught me that some money is better than none, not to fall back with old friends and that the power to change was within me.
“I only had two of my five kids,” she went on. “My 15-year-old son was getting in trouble and the courts had him. She went with me to court. She helped me find a Big Brother for him. She showed me how to speak without showing my temper. When I couldn’t get a place to live, she cried with me.”
When Johnson got down, she could hear Mama Sky’s voice in her ear, saying: “Your chance is coming; don’t slip.’’
ventually, Johnson found someone willing to rent her a two-bedroom home. By Christmas that year, she had all her kids and for the first time, and legal means to provide them with presents. “I went to work at McDonald’s, and I got two raises. [Mama Sky] said, ‘Be proud of your work and take care of your family.’ She taught me how to be a positive person. She believed in me.”
Now Johnson lives in a three-bedroom house and all of her children are doing well. She is working toward a career in public relations, and on June 10, one year and a day since she walked out of prison, she will be married.
"She pushed me out there when I didn't believe in me," said Johnson. “I am a new person because of Mama Sky. I started believing in myself."
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