Savannah Marten is the Executive Director of Bella Vita Network in Toledo, Ohio. Through a recent partnership with a local organization, Mom’s House, Bella Vita Network is anticipating opening up a brand-new building to further benefit their clients with programming, free childcare, and much more. This is a God-given dream that began in 2017, and this upcoming summer, it will come to fruition with the help of people across the country who believed that these moms deserved the best.
Assessing Hardships Contributing to Abortion
When asked how this dream even began, Savannah responded, “In 2017, we were noticing there were some themes that we were seeing in women who were coming into our clinic who were leaning towards making an abortion decision or were at risk to make an abortion decision. A lot of those themes were really surrounding barriers to care. In 2017, we actually did a survey with women who had come into our clinic who either were thinking about having an abortion and changed their mind, or were thinking about having an abortion and actually had an abortion. And through that survey, we found that there were five areas that when women did not have access or perceived that they didn’t have access to these areas, they were more likely to make an abortion decision. And those areas were housing, healthcare, childcare, economic (schooling and job training), and transportation.”
This began the process of the pregnancy center developing strategic referral partners in the community that were providing the services that were needed by these clients. To avoid mission drift, rather than duplicating programs already in existence, the pregnancy center reached out to community partners that were doing the things needed really well and began to build bridges with them for their clients.
Partnerships Begin to Take Place
One of the first issues they tackled was access to healthcare. Savannah states, “We started with healthcare. We worked with 11 OB providers in a pretty wide area, about a hundred-mile radius of our community, and secured back-end scheduling permission for those OBs so that our women would actually leave with their first prenatal care appointment scheduled. It is one less thing that they had to do. And then we were just really kind of ticking down the list. We wanted to make sure that we could house people, so if a woman walked into our clinic, we would have the ability to house her while she was at our clinic.”
The Abundant Life Plan
After a few years from the initial survey taken with their clients who had considered abortion, Bella Vita Network created a holistic plan to ensure their clients truly knew they were supported throughout their pregnancy and beyond. When thinking back to this time, Savannah reflects, “In 2020, we rolled out our Abundant Life plan, which is our case management program. It’s based off of John 10:10 that says that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But, Jesus said that he came that they would have life and that they would have it abundantly. We felt like we were doing the life piece really well. We see that over 98% of women who come into our pregnancy center make a life-affirming decision. But, that abundant life, we were really challenged. How do we do life and abundant life?”
This led to a case management program at the pregnancy center called The Abundant Life Plan. This program helps the women considering abortion in the five areas that had previously been stumbling blocks to their consideration of carrying the birth to term. With this plan, the moms are allowed to dream with their case manager about owning a car, going back to school, owning a home, and more. Then, the case manager will help them connect to the right place to help that dream become a reality.
Mom’s House
One of the strategic referral partners that Bella Vita Network had was with a local organization called Mom’s House. Mom’s House provides free childcare to single moms who are completing any level of their education.
“We were hearing from our moms that by the time they were calling Mom’s House to get on the waiting list, the waiting list was pretty extensive. We developed a joint application with Mom’s House where they allowed the pregnancy center to put moms on the waiting list who are still pregnant. With all of their other partners, their clients go on when the mom has given birth for us; we actually do it at our ultrasound. We started to refer about 20 to 24 moms a year into the Mom’s House program. It provides that amazing childcare while that mom is at school getting her education. The majority of those moms are actually finishing either a four year or even going on to do a master’s and a doctorate, which is life changing. It really is an economic game changer for these women,” Savannah explained.
Two Missions with One Vision
In 2020, Savannah and the Executive Director of Mom’s House were out to lunch. At this time, Mom’s House was experiencing tremendous growth with mom’s getting on their waiting list. Their Executive Director shared how she wished they had a second location next to the University of Toledo. That’s when Savannah mentioned that Bella Vita Network owned property next door to their pregnancy center.
“We started to dream about what it would look like for us to co-own a space together. Fast forward all of these years, and now it’s 2025. We are in the final stages and getting ready this spring to open up Laurie’s Place, which is going to be Mom’s House’s second location.
Laurie’s Place
When sharing what a benefit this new location is going to be for the community, Savannah stated, “The Mom’s House is going to be able to be licensed for double what they have now, which is great. I think it’s around 50 plus kids altogether between their two locations. And then all of our parenting education classes. We just started a new semester of our pregnancy and parenting education classes and we’re maxed out in space at the pregnancy center. All of those will be moving over to the new building. There’s a dedicated dad space, which is awesome. Our men’s class is actually our fastest-growing class right now.”
“For the last piece of Laurie’s Place, we have 24 other community partners that are going to have rotating office hours in the upstairs wing. We call that wing ‘the together space’. If you break the word together down phonetically, it’s ‘to get her’ space. This wing is dedicated to getting her to her education, getting her to healthy, getting her to motherhood, getting her in her home, or insert whatever you want there. Those partners include incredible organizations like Jobs and Family Services and Habitat for Humanity. We also have a Christian mental health provider that’s going to be practicing four days a week out of that location just for our pregnancy center, our after-abortion-care program, and the Mom’s House moms and dads,” Savannah shared in response to what this additional space will be used for. Because of this collaboration, there will be many incredible partners in the community that will be able to provide wraparound services to bless the moms, dads, and children.
Laurie’s Legacy
When asked why the new location is going to be named Laurie’s Place, Savannah answered, explaining the importance of that name. “Part of the reason we chose that name is so that people would ask. The property we bought our current pregnancy center from was owned by a couple named Bob and Laurie, and they also owned the land next door that we ended up acquiring. They were an incredible couple. They actually fostered, fostered to adopt, and then they had handfuls of other children that they cared for through the foster care system. Unfortunately, Laurie passed in 2020. Bob, when he heard about this project, he was really excited about it, and he actually was the very first anchor gift to the project. He wanted to be able to honor Laurie through that.”
When they were figuring out the right way to honor her and her legacy, they came across her obituary. “It said that her home was always open, the doors were always open, and the table was always set. She loved to throw parties. She loved to make people feel like family. As we were reading about her, we’re like, this is exactly how we want people to feel when they come to Laurie’s Place. She was incredibly brilliant. She had a great career, but those weren’t the things that people remembered her for. It was how she made them feel. For us, it’s just a reminder and a promise to our community that we’re going to continue to build a space that people will remember that they felt good about being in the building.”
Transforming the Community to End Abortion
When asked how Savannah felt about this huge project, she shared, “I feel like it’s definitely the most competitive thing that we’ve done to really end abortion in our community. I think some people interpret that it means that we want to make it hard for women to have abortions or to lose access to abortion. For us, when we say that we want to end abortion in our community, what we mean is that we actually want for all the reasons that women would choose abortion to go away – that a woman would never have to make that decision.”
Savannah added, “I’m super, super humbled and honored. This was one of those decisions that you step out in faith and then you go, ‘Alright, God, you’re going to have to do it because this is not doable in our own strength and abilities.’ So both Mom’s House and Bella Vita were about $700,000 organizations, and we needed to raise almost 9 million dollars for this to work and for the organizations to not go into debt over it. We stand herein 2025, and we’ve raised over $12 million. It’s just been an absolute miracle. We’re super thankful that God showed up and had our back in it. The reality is that that money didn’t just fall into our laps. It was given by people in this community and across the country who saw the vision and who believe in these moms and dads enough to sow into not just a building, but into their lives, their futures, and into generational impact and change. That’s really humbling to watch people give abundantly so that we can do abundant work.”
The team of Bella Vita Network and Mom’s House at the groundbreaking ceremony on Mother’s Day weekend of 2024.
Grand Opening
Laurie’s Place will be holding their grand opening on Mother’s Day weekend, which is one year to the date that they had their groundbreaking. They will slowly begin their programming with children arriving in August, as their moms are going back to school. This will be a state-regulated childcare facility, and then their pregnancy and parenting classes will begin as they move into the fall.
Bella Vita Network is an affiliate of Care Net located in Toledo, Ohio.