The first time her boyfriend hit her, Mikelah left. Even though it meant she and her 7-year-old daughter would need to find a new place to live, she didn’t hesitate.

“I knew I didn’t want that for my life,” she says. Her mother had died a little over a year before, and, in a way, that helped her to decide. “I’d already been through the worst thing that could happen, watching my mother slowly die of cancer, so I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “I left and didn’t look back.”

She spent a few months moving from one town to another in search of work, before finally hearing about the not-for-profit group Family Promise, and the Capital Region branch it has had since 2015. Family Promise works closely with two to four homeless families at a time — for weeks or months, as needed — until they can function on their own.

The two families currently being hosted asked The Enterprise not to use their last names.

Family Promise helps these families find not only shelter, but also a sustainable way to pay for it. “The lack of affordable housing is exactly the reason we exist,” said Mary Giordano, executive director of Family Promise of the Capital Region.

The group, including volunteers from over 30 local congregations, follows up with families for a full year after they move out, Giordano said, “so they don’t slip back into homelessness.”

Mikelah, 24, and her daughter, Zuliyah, have been hosted by the local program for the last three months. Early on, Mikelah found a job as a certified nursing assistant at an area hospital, but then her hours were suddenly switched to the weekend, she said, when she had no child care, which meant that she had to quit. She has money saved from that time, she said, as well as several job interviews set up over the next few days.

She wants to be a paralegal, she said, and will also be starting online studies this week at Bryant and Stratton College. She qualified for a Tuition Assistance Program grant, she said, adding, “They are going to give me a computer.”

This week, she is also taking the written exam for a learner’s permit to drive. Mikelah said of Family Promise, “They’re really helping me get on the right track. I’m aiming, if everything works out right, to move out in about December.”

Family Promise, explained Giordano, provides a way for local people to help others in need. The program does not accept any government assistance, she said, but relies on individual donors, local grants, and help from volunteers.

“It’s so simple, and it’s so grassroots,” Giordano said.

The group finds apartments through all the usual want ads, as well using the Affordable Housing List, although that list can sometimes be “a bit disappointing,” Giordano said, “because you want to put people into safe neighborhoods.”

A lot of it comes down to connections, she said. With so many volunteers in so many congregations, she said, someone often knows somebody else who owns an apartment or wants to rent out part of their home.

The group also works with landlords it knows to be reputable and has worked with in the past. And landlords who know about Family Promise and what the group is trying to do “sometimes reach out to us,” Giordano said.

“We had one landlord recently,” Giordano said, “who had an apartment and met one of our families. That family ended up finding housing in another location, but the landlord offered to hold that apartment for us, and we were able to get the next family right in there.”

Asked why the group doesn’t accept government funding, Giordano said that Family Promise is new. “There were already shelters in the area that were receiving government funding,” she said. “The amount of funding wasn’t going to increase just because we came along; it’s important to be sensitive to that and not disrupt anything that’s already being provided.”

Newly homeless families are “screened pretty thoroughly” before being taken into the program, Giordano said.

The families live, for a week at a time, in repurposed rooms in a local church or synagogue. Trained volunteers from that congregation or another support congregation provide meals and hospitality, and help out with logistics. Two volunteers stay overnight in the church each night, to be there in case families need anything.

During the days, the children go to school — they continue to attend their home district schools throughout the duration of the program. So, for instance, Giordano said, if a Guilderland family became homeless, their children would be bused to Guilderland schools. Meanwhile, the adults work with Giordano and part-time case manager Sister Nadine Farnum, a member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, at the program’s Day Center in Albany to look for work and an apartment and to navigate social services as needed.

Giordano and Farnum and skilled volunteers also help the adults to go through the process of applying for, for instance, the nutrition aid programs — such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, or Women, Infants, and Children — that can help keep food on the table. “When you’re stressed out and have no place to live, nobody wants to sit down and figure out those applications,” said Giordano.

Giordano, Farnum, and two part-time drivers are paid for their work with Family Promise; all the rest are volunteers.

Despite the church setting, there is “absolutely no” proselytizing, said Giordano, and no need for the hosted families to attend church or even have any interest in religion.

The only requirement for the families, Giordano said, “is that they work with us to resolve this situation.” There’s no time limit, she said, although she has always found families to be very motivated.

Families move from one host site to the next, each Sunday, until they are able to “graduate” from the program, Giordano said.

The two families currently in the program — one being Mikelah and her daughter — stayed last week at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church in Voorheesville. Christopher DeGiovine, pastor of that church, explained, “Typically the families don’t have their own transportation, for one thing. Hopefully it’s reassuring to know that there are others here who do, in case anything happens.”

During a recent visit to St. Matthew’s, cars turned out to be useful, even without any emergency. Volunteer coordinator David Ernst offered to go out to the library to get a DVD for the group to watch. Mikelah wanted “a good movie.”

What kind of movies does she like? “You know, something good. Something with Jennifer Aniston or Cameron Diaz,” she said.

Volunteer Colleen Burke — whose daughter Abigail, 4, was playing all evening with Mikelah’s daugher, Zuliyah — said that she might have some romantic comedies on DVD at home, and offered to go look.

DeGiovine had mentioned that Zuliyah never walks when she can cartwheel, and that the cavernous parish hall allows her plenty of space. Indeed, Zuliyah and Abigail wasted no time showing off their gymnastics skills to one another. “Want to see me do a handstand?” Zuliyah asked the younger girl. “Want to see me do a roundoff?”

Not to be outdone, Abigail responded, “I can do a backflip in the pool. Can you even do that?”

The local program, in addition to the 12 host congregations, has 21 support congregations that provide hundreds of additional volunteers. The program runs year-round, so each host site has guests four times a year. DeGiovine said, “We try to provide as welcoming a space as we can, for a week, four times a year.”

The program needs to have at least 30 or so volunteers available over the course of a week, DeGiovine said.

“It’s a privilege to be in a situation where you can do something for somebody that can actually change their lives,” Giordano said. “I think any of our volunteers would tell you, the joy that you get from being with these kids is something that you can’t measure.”

The national organization’s website notes that Family Promise changes the lives of 50,000 parents and children each year and that, in addition to helping families find stable housing, it saves taxpayers money by diverting these families from more expensive interventions.

Volunteers do not need to be a member of a congregation, DeGiovine said. Anyone who wishes to become a volunteer may contact Mary Giordano at (518) 650-8895, to sign up for the next training session.

The other family staying at St. Matthew’s last week has already found housing, and will soon be leaving the program.

That family is from the Dominican Republic — “They’re documented,” said Giordano — and consists of mother Clara; daughter Ada, who is a senior in high school; son Juan, a junior; and daughter Erika, a freshman; as well as Ada’s six-month-old son, Louis.

They had spent some time in a shelter in the Bronx, which Ada described as crowded and “scary,” before moving to Albany to live with a relative, which they were able to do for a short time, until that situation became untenable.

She hopes to become a nurse, Ada said.

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An upcoming concert in Guilderland by the Lost Radio Rounders with Amy Ryan, Josh Greenberg, and Evan Conway will be a fundraiser for Family Promise. Admission is free, but donations to Family Promise are accepted. The concert will be at 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 18 at Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church, 2291 Western Ave.

Updated on Nov. 4: We originally wrote that children in the Family Promise program attend Albany city schools; actually they continue to attend schools in their home district.