.png)
Long before Child Crisis Arizona became a statewide organization serving thousands of children and families, a group of women in Mesa saw a need in their own backyard and decided they could do something about it.
That group was the Mahnah Club of the East Valley, and their determination helped lay the foundation for what would eventually become Child Crisis Arizona.
Women of the Community
Mahnah Club was founded in 1954 by a group of Mesa women who had aged out of the Junior League. They wanted to create an organization centered on friendship, sociability and meaningful service to their community.
The name Mahnah comes from the Hopi Tribe and means “leading women of the tribe.” Mahnah members have embraced that spirit for more than seven decades, referring to themselves simply as women of the community.
From the beginning, service was at the heart of the organization.
Mahnah Club volunteers supported more than 70 organizations throughout the Tri-City area over the years. In its early days, the club supported organizations including Sunshine Acres, the Crippled Children's Society and the Well Baby Clinic. Mahnah members also provided seed money and helped inspire the development of several important community resources, including MARC School in 1958, Tri-City Mental Health in 1965 and Prehab of Mesa in 1971, which is now A New Leaf.
Through fundraisers, including its annual fall luncheon and spring golf tournament, Mahnah has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local charities and scholarships for high school seniors and women returning to school.
And for 12 years, one of its most successful fundraisers was a little more unusual: a restored 1960s Ford Mustang convertible. Each year, the car received a different exterior and interior color, creating plenty of excitement while helping Mahnah women raise money for their community.
But among all of Mahnah Club's contributions, one stands apart.
Its members helped bring a children's shelter to the East Valley.
Seeing a Need
In 1980, Mahnah Club's Ways and Means Committee was looking for a social service agency to receive the $10,000 raised through its annual White Elephant fundraiser.
One of the committee members, Betty Kerr, had served on the Mesa Community Council and had participated in an extensive survey of community needs. What she had learned was troubling: the East Valley needed a crisis nursery.
At the time, when children in Mesa were removed from unsafe situations, police and Child Protective Services often had to take them all the way to the Crisis Nursery in Phoenix.
Mahnah members believed children in the East Valley deserved a safe place closer to home.
So they set out to help create one.
Their idea was met with resistance.
Some community leaders suggested that the women consider building a homeless shelter or a shelter for women instead. Those were important needs, but the women of Mahnah kept coming back to the children.
When they approached the Mesa City Council, they were initially told that there was no child abuse or neglect in Mesa and that they should “go home and rock their babies.”
So they went home.
But they didn't give up.
They gathered data. They documented the need. They brought facts and evidence back to city leaders.
And the numbers told a very different story.
In 1980, there were 2,306 Child Protective Services referrals, and 25 percent came from the East Valley.
The need was real.
And the women of Mahnah were determined to make sure their community could respond.
From an Idea to a Safe Place
Mahnah members helped guide the project and looked to the Crisis Nursery in Phoenix as a model for what an East Valley shelter could become.
Eventually, the Mesa City Council gave its approval, provided initial funding and donated a small house at 39 N. Sirrine to serve as the organization's first office.
On April 18, 1981, Child Crisis Center of the East Valley was officially incorporated as a private nonprofit organization.
Mahnah Club members didn't simply cheer from the sidelines.
They served on the board. They helped seek funding from corporations and foundations. And they made a three-year commitment to help get the organization off the ground, pledging $10,000 annually, plus proceeds from the White Elephant sale.
Then came the first shelter.
Child Crisis Center opened its doors in a donated building off 10th Street in Mesa with just seven shelter beds: five reserved for CPS and two for community use.
Within weeks, the shelter was full.
Children had to be turned away.
The need was already greater than the capacity of the small home.
DES eventually added four more community beds, and volunteers stepped forward to help.
Seven years after that first shelter opened, Child Crisis Center broke ground on a new shelter on 9th Street that could accommodate 26 children, from infants through age 12. That location later expanded to 42 beds and continues to stand as a reminder of the vision that started with seven.
A Vision That Kept Growing
The story of Child Crisis Center East Valley is a story of persistence.
It began with women who noticed something happening in their community and refused to accept that nothing could be done.
They didn't have a large organization behind them. They didn't have a statewide network or decades of resources.
They had each other, a commitment to their community and a belief that children deserved somewhere safe to go.
That belief became seven beds.
Those seven beds became a shelter.
And that shelter became part of a much larger story.
In 2015, Child Crisis Center East Valley merged with Crisis Nursery in Phoenix to become Child Crisis Arizona, bringing together two organizations that had been founded separately but shared the same fundamental belief: children deserve safety, and families deserve support.
Today, Child Crisis Arizona continues that legacy by providing not only emergency shelter, but also foster care and adoption services, early education, family support, behavioral health services, youth programs, basic needs and resources designed to help families before they reach a crisis.
The organization has grown far beyond what those first seven beds could have imagined.
But the heart of the work remains remarkably familiar.
See a need. Step forward. Do something about it.
That is what the women of Mahnah Club did more than 40 years ago.
And their legacy continues in every child who finds safety, every family that finds support and every person who believes that together, we can make our community stronger.
As Child Crisis Arizona celebrates 50 years of protecting childhood in Arizona, we celebrate the trailblazing women of Mahnah Club and the countless community members who followed their example.
Because sometimes lasting change begins with a small group of people asking a very simple question:
What can we do?
And then refusing to stop until something changes.
