Pamela Reed Phipps
Executive Director of Grace House Ministries
There she stood—an 8-year-old girl holding an unusually large purse. Curious, Pamela Reed Phipps asked why she carried such a big bag.
“I never know when I’m going to need to stuff things in it and leave,” the girl told her.
Phipps devotes her life to helping foster girls like these at Grace House Ministries, a residential campus for girls removed from their homes because of abandonment, neglect, or abuse. What began in 1992 with one house and eight girls has grown into seven homes across a campus that now spans nearly 20 properties in Fairfield. There, Phipps and her team work to give them something many have never known: consistency, care, and the chance to imagine a different future.
“These are girls whose childhood has literally been taken away from them,” Phipps says. “They deserve someone to fight for them.”
Grace House currently serves about 50 girls, with plans to double that in the coming years. Still, Phipps is quick to say the work has never been about numbers. Each girl who walks through the doors carries a story, and every life changed shapes families and future generations.
One girl arrived at Grace House at age 17 after moving through eight foster homes. Determined simply to reach her eighteenth birthday and run away, she tested every boundary placed before her. But after learning that her mother and brother had relapsed again, she broke and began rebuilding her life, including a relationship with God. She went on to finish high school, studied ministry at Highlands College, and today works at Grace House as Phipps’ executive assistant.
“She’s such a shining example to every single girl who comes through our doors,” Phipps says. “While I love the girls and have a heart for them that is undeniable, I’ve never been in foster care. I’ve always had my mom and my dad. I’ve always had my entire family. This girl hasn’t, so she can share firsthand, ‘I know what you’re going through, but guess what? There are brighter days ahead. Stick with us at Grace House.’”
Phipps remembers another girl who arrived at Grace House withdrawn and discouraged, her head down as she crossed campus each day. Staff soon discovered that she enjoyed drawing and provided opportunities for her to nurture her creativity. Before long, Phipps looked out a window and saw the same girl who once shuffled across campus now skipping, almost running, with a glowing smile on her face.
“It happened years ago, but the mental image has stayed with me as a reminder of what’s possible.”
She first walked through Grace House’s doors as a college volunteer. Eventually, she returned to lead the organization, with encouragement from her mentor, Mama Lois, who started Grace House, and unanimous support from the Board of Directors.
“I may work a job, but I don’t see it as one,” Phipps says. “It’s a calling. These girls need an advocate, and they certainly have one in me.”
“Every girl here is a cycle breaker, a change maker, and a heritage builder.”
Josephine Lowery
Executive Director and Co-Founder of College Choice Foundation
Josephine Lowery knows what it feels like to be capable of more than your circumstances might suggest.
She grew up in Auburn in a home with ongoing financial strain and instability. Her father was mostly absent, and her mother struggled as a single parent with alcoholism. School became a place where Lowery could focus her energy and determination. She worked hard, excelled academically, and hoped education might open doors that seemed far away.
By her senior year of high school, Lowery had the grades to aim high. What she didn’t have were the resources or guidance to imagine herself at a place like Vanderbilt or Emory. Then a guidance counselor stepped in.
The counselor paid Lowery’s college application fees and urged her to apply to schools she had never considered. Acceptance letters followed, along with financial aid strong enough to make college possible. Lowery chose Sewanee — a campus she had never visited — because she liked its brochure. It turned out to be the perfect place for her.
Years later, after earning a law degree and practicing as an attorney, Lowery found herself helping her own daughter navigate the college admissions process. Around that same time, an educator friend shared an idea that resonated with her: helping high-achieving students from low-income families discover affordable college opportunities they might never have known existed.
That idea became College Choice Foundation (CCF).
What began with one student — the daughter of Lowery’s landscaper — has grown into an organization that has guided nearly 300 students toward college, with most continuing through college with ongoing support from CCF. The foundation provides these services at no cost to students and families, helping them prepare for the ACT, visit campuses across the country, navigate financial aid, and gain the confidence to imagine themselves in college, often at schools far from home. Just as importantly, CCF continues to support Scholars once they enroll, providing ongoing mentoring and guidance to help them persist and graduate.
“College Choice changed my life,” says Yale graduate Jillian Jolly. “There’s no way I would have been able to complete the college admissions process successfully or attend Yale without their guidance and support. I finished college with no debt and am still seeing the benefits of that today.”
Lowery says the goal has always been to open doors and remove barriers.
“We want to help high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds enroll in college, thrive in college, persist through, and graduate college,” she says.
What stays with her are the ripple effects she sees in families and communities.
“Access to higher education is a game changer in these students’ lives,” Lowery says. “It can change the trajectory of an entire family for generations.”
Jena Forehand
Executive Director of Deeper House
Jena Forehand didn’t set out to do prison ministry.
It began with a Bible study.
Years ago, Forehand was a speaker for LifeWay Christian Resources and wrote a discipleship series for women. Someone suggested she take it into prisons, where many women would soon be released but had little preparation for what waited outside. She started visiting a Birmingham facility on Tuesday evenings, teaching Scripture and getting to know the women.
Forehand expected to find that women in prisons might be hard to relate to.
“But when I walked in there, I was shocked. They seemed a lot like me and you.”
One night, the Bible study took an unexpected turn.
“I felt like the Lord said, ‘Don’t teach them tonight. Ask them what they need.’”
So she did.
Two or three of the women began to cry. That alone surprised her.
“They don’t cry,” she says. “Because that makes them look weak to the other inmates.”
Their collective answer was this:
“We need a safe, clean place to start life again.”
Forehand sat in her car afterward and prayed a hesitant prayer: If this is something You want me to do, God, You’re going to have to do it.
The answer to that prayer became Deeper House, a transitional home where women leaving prison can rebuild their lives with structure, accountability, and hope.
“When they walk out of those prison doors, it’s almost like they’ve been thrown out of a plane,” Forehand says.
Many leave with little more than a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a bus ticket. Without support, many return within months to the same cycles that put them behind bars in the first place.
Forehand believes the answer is to love them, meet their tangible needs, and expect better of them, all built on a foundation of faith.
“My goal is not to call out what they’ve done wrong,” she says. “My goal is to call them up—to see the better potential they have.”
It isn’t easy work. Some women make it. Some don’t.
But when they do, the change reaches far beyond one life.
“When you help one woman,” Forehand says, “you’re not just helping her. You’re helping every child and grandchild that comes behind her.”
And that is what keeps her going.
“Everybody deserves a second chance.”