Imagine feeling desperate for a way to protect and care for your children when you have no family to help. Imagine facing that challenge when you are struggling with addiction.

Women in Puerto Peñasco who are victims of domestic violence and/or addiction have found help at Nueva Creacion, the only rehabilitation center and shelter in Peñasco for women and their children. It is a humble facility run by Director Guadalupe Arreola de Soto and her husband Gregorio Soto who work tirelessly to make sure the women and their children have what they need to survive and build a new life.

The Soto’s efforts are about to get a boost. The center has been selected as the beneficiary of the second annual Women Helping Women Benefit Breakfast on Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. at Cielito Lindo restaurant in the Sonoran Sky.

The group has garnered business and individual sponsors whose donations will go directly to the shelter. (See the end of this article for a full list of sponsors.) The benefit breakfast will feature a raffle, and a live and silent auction to raise additional funds. Among the items up for bid are artwork, decorator items, gift baskets, Sandy Beach condo weekends, rounds of golf, a fishing excursion for four and much more.

One of the premier live auction items is a day-sail or sunset cruise for up to 18 people aboard “Tempo,” Del Mar Charters’ catamaran with Captain Oscar and 2 VIP BACKSTAGE PASSES to Circus Mexicus 2020.

The elegant breakfast will be set against a backdrop of the Sea of Cortez with a guitar and vocal serenade by Mario Mariscales. Special prices will be available for mimosas and bloody Marys’, and breakfast will include a fruit cup, eggs with bacon, potatoes, pancake and coffee, for just $20 per person.

The proceeds from the breakfast will provide money for food, toiletries, school supplies, clothing, gas and electricity, medical emergencies, repair and maintenance of the facility and more.

Nueva Creacion asks that residents pay 2,000 pesos a month for their food and shelter. Many cannot pay but none is turned away. Guadalupe and Gregorio find ways to provide, getting help from DIF and from local businesses.

When they first came to Peñasco from Hermosillo, they were already affiliated with Nueva Creacion church which exists in several Mexico cities. After two years of struggling to create a shelter, they were given two plots of land by the city, one for a men’s shelter and one for women.

In 2005 they built a shelter for men and in 2006 they constructed a simple building with a thatch roof for women and children and began to add on as materials and funds were available. Today the women’s shelter houses 11 women and 10 children ranging from babies to teens. These families would be on the street if it weren’t for Nueva Creacion, which is a legally established non-profit institution.