Non-profit helps parish Gabriel Projects, set to re-open pregnancy care center in 2025
At Great Lakes Gabriel Project’s (GLGP) resource center at St. Joseph Parish in Indianapolis, a mom selects a warm winter outfit—displayed by GLGP executive director and president Linda Kile—for her child on Oct. 5. Assisting at right is GLGP volunteer Paula Stahl of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)
By Natalie Hoefer
The Gabriel Project ministry, begun in Houston in 1973 to help moms in a crisis pregnancy, was first launched in the archdiocese at St. Bartholomew Parish in Columbus in 1999.
Parishes began reaching out to St. Bartholomew team member Eileen Hartman about starting the ministry in their own faith community.
As that number grew, she recognized a need for help in coordinating and supporting the parish efforts and promoting the Gabriel Project mission in the broader community.
Thus began the non-profit Great Lakes Gabriel Project (GLGP) in 2004. Hartman served as executive director and president—the organization’s only paid position—guided by a board of directors.
Linda Kile, a member of St. Ann Parish in Indianapolis, has led the organization since Hartman’s retirement in 2016.
“We’re mostly just referred to as ‘Gabriel Project,’ so I think a lot of people don’t understand the difference between a parish-based Gabriel Project and what the non-profit does,” says Kile.
Following is a look at GLGP’s three-fold mission—and what it takes to make it all happen. (Related: Great Lakes Gabriel Project volunteer needs)
‘Someone to walk beside them’
To fulfill GLGP’s mission regarding parish-based Gabriel Projects, Kile helps interested parishes by talking with pro-life committee members, speaking at Masses and training volunteers.
“Once a parish launches a Gabriel Project, we’re always here for them,” she says of GLGP. “I give them advice and guidance, and we provide financial assistance if they have a need their budget won’t cover.”
Kile works with non-Gabriel Project parishes, too, organizing fund and item donation drives to help support GLGP’s two resource centers for moms in need.
Occasionally, a pregnancy care center will reach out to GLGP for help with women “who need extra handholding and someone to walk beside them in their unplanned pregnancy,” says Kile.
“For example, one pregnancy care center contacted me this year to help a pregnant woman flee a sex-trafficking situation. I was able to find shelter for her and arranged to get her to safety.”
As part of her role with GLGP, Kile promotes the general Gabriel Project mission wherever and however she can.
“I go to all kinds of community events, pro-life events, send out mailings,” she says. “I’m even going to a trunk-or-treat with marketing material because it’s right next to our pregnancy care center property.”
Which leads to a third GLGP mission: operating 1st Choice for Women pregnancy care center.
‘Dignity, compassion and love’
The effort began because “Eileen had a desire in her heart to have a pregnancy care center close to the Planned Parenthood” abortion center on the northwest side of Indianapolis, says Kile.
“She wanted a nearby place for sidewalk counselors to refer women for free ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, material resources and referrals—with the dignity, compassion and love for moms and their babies so absent in abortion facilities.”
With the gift of free rent in an office building less than a mile from the Planned Parenthood abortion center, 1st Choice for Women opened in 2010.
It remained there until a building fire caused its closure in 2019.
“After much prayer, discernment and searching,” says Kile, a home was purchased with cash in 2022 on the southwest side of Indianapolis as 1st Choice for Women’s new location, “an area where the next closest pregnancy care center is 10 miles away,” she adds.
Renovations have since been underway. The new site will offer the same services originally provided and will become the home of GLGP’s resource center currently located at St. Joseph Parish in Indianapolis—but with more of a “baby store” than a “resource center” feel, says Kile.
She is particularly excited about a new service the pregnancy care center will offer: free “earn-as-you-go” educational classes for moms.
“They’ll cover everything from prenatal care to parenting, single parenting, finances—the curriculum we can choose from is huge,” Kile says. “As a mom completes a class, she’ll earn points for items in the baby store.”
The goal is for the new site to open in the first quarter of 2025.
Supporting each of GLGP’s efforts requires “a whole lot of fundraising,” says Kile.
To cut costs, she seeks volunteer help and donated items and services whenever possible (see related article at left).
Still, some things just cost money, she says. Marketing material, digital marketing, postage for mailings, utility bills for the pregnancy care center, funds to help parish-based Gabriel Projects, and the list goes on.
“If we could raise $75,000 to cover operating expenses for 1st Choice for Women, we would be good,” says Kile. “But we also still need $125,000 for the rest of Great Lakes Gabriel Project’s efforts.
“And that doesn’t take into consideration that after 1st Choice for Women opens, we’ll probably need more money than prior years.”
Much of the needed GLGP funds are raised at the organization’s annual fundraiser dinner—the next is set for Nov. 7—although “getting more monthly donors would be a tremendous help,” she notes.
But Kile isn’t worried.
“God always provides,” she says with serene confidence.
Twenty-five years after launching the first parish-based Gabriel Project ministry, Hartman agrees.
“That’s what happens when God puts his finger on something,” she says. “He brought it about and made it happen, and it’s going to keep happening. I don’t think anyone can stop it now!”
(For more information about Great Lakes Gabriel Project, to register for its Nov. 7 fundraising dinner by Oct. 18 or to donate, go to goangels.org, call 317-213-4778 or e-mail linda@goangels.org.) †
Related story: Gabriel Project: 25 years of offering ‘hand up, not handout’ to women in crisis pregnancy
