Shining light for women goes out

A small Costa Mesa organization dedicated to aiding low-income women and their children shut its doors Friday.

A Light in the Window, which operated four years from a nondescript home in the neighborhood just south of Estancia High School, quit because it didn’t have money to continue, leadership said.

The house hosted support groups and self-defense classes for women who were the victims of domestic violence, and it offered other services to help women find careers and bolster their self-esteem.

About 50 women and their families regularly participated in the classes, founder and director Kathy Haze said.

“We’re just such a little, local nonprofit,” Haze said. “We have such a little niche that, maybe if the economy had stayed strong for a couple of years, we would have become permanently entrenched, but many of our private donors are in the building industry.”

Many of the volunteers who helped administer the program belong to the Center for Spiritual Living — a church run out of the Costa Mesa Senior Center. The Center for Spiritual Living will take over a handful of the programs once offered by A Light in the Window while the rest will be discontinued for the time being, said Pastor Jim Turrell.

Among the ones being saved are a cooking and catering class taught by Turrell’s wife, Patty, a program to teach English as a second language and an annual Mother’s Day tea in which many of the moms are taken out for a spa day to boost self-esteem.

“This new arrangement presents another opportunity for us to serve and find people in our congregation that can run these types of programs or donate money to them,” Jim Turrell said.

It also presents another funding challenge for the center, which will have to bankroll the programs once funded by A Light in the Window.

The Westside house is on the market for lease and some of the women who participate in programs that were run there got together for a going-away party there Friday night.

A Light in the Window has been referring its participants to other local charities like Share our Selves for counseling services.

Jim and Patty Turrell say they are looking for other churches willing to host some of the programs.

It is hard for Haze to see her project shut down, but if the economy turns around there’s no telling what could happen.

“It was a dream of mine [to open this center]. I’ve been in nonprofits for 10 years and volunteering for more than 20 so it was sad for me to see it close. Who knows, five years from now we could pick it up again,” Haze said.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.