News Features – Women's Lunch Place

Berline, a nursing assistant, was already living paycheck to paycheck when she was in a car crash.

Serious physical injuries and mental health challenges followed, and soon she found herself homeless.

“It’s pushing something that is impractical,” said Jennifer Hanlon Wigon, the CEO of Women’s Lunch Place, which serves meals to women experiencing homelessness in downtown Boston. “Think of trying to look for work or do work while you’re carrying all your belongings around with you all day and wondering where you’ll sleep that night. The new paperwork alone basically doubles the difficulty of the bureaucratic process.”

If Debbie G. ever becomes rich, she has a mental $100,000 set aside for Women’s Lunch Place. “Trust and believe,” she said.

When the Boston daytime shelter opened a housing program that provides single rooms to women last winter, Debbie was one of the first to move in. Before that, she had no place of her own and had shuffled between her mom’s house and a shelter where she shared a room with four other women.

Women’s Lunch Place (WLP) hosted its swanky annual Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser on October 9 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston.

Looming SNAP funding cuts caused by the government shutdown are putting a Boston shelter on edge as staff worry about how to feed vulnerable families.

"I'm very concerned that we're going to have children that are hungry, we're going to have moms that are hungry," said Jennifer Hanlon Wigon, CEO of Women's Lunch Place.

The ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza was filled with compassion, celebration, and community spirit as Women’s Lunch Place (WLP) hosted its annual Spaghetti Dinner on Oct. 9. The sold-out event raised more than $725,000, the highest total in the organization’s 43-year history.

“GBFB’s network of dedicated agency partners includes amazing organizations like Women’s Lunch Place that inspire us to be innovative in our efforts to address food insecurity across Eastern Massachusetts,” said Catherine D’Amato, president and CEO at GBFB. “With deep concern about the potential impacts of federal policy changes on food access across our region, we aim to continue to invest in partners like Women’s Lunch Place to bolster their ability to provide even more nutritious meals to the women in Boston that rely on them to meet their individual needs, all with dignity and respect.”

Women's Lunch Place (WLP) held its annual ‘eat LUNCH give’ fundraising luncheon at the Mandarin Oriental, Boston, on Friday, May 16.

Over 250 generous attendees and sponsors enabled WLP to surpass its fundraising goal for the event. At the luncheon, WLP featured video testimonials from three women in its new 50-bed shelter-to-housing initiative.