Harriet

Rooted in community. Grounded in dignity.

Harriet’s House was created from a belief that women and families navigating complex systems deserve to be seen, heard, supported, and treated with dignity.

Our work is grounded in the experiences of families whose lives intersect with the justice, maternal health, and child welfare systems. We create spaces for connection, healing, preparation, and empowerment while honoring the strength, knowledge, and resilience already present within families and communities.

Recognizing that these challenges do not exist in isolation, we walk alongside women and families as they navigate systems, access resources, build connections, and move toward greater stability and well-being.

Our Vision

Thriving, resilient families supported by dignity, healing, and justice, where women, children, and communities impacted by incarceration are empowered to flourish.

Our Mission

Harriet’s House AZ empowers, strengthens, and better equips mothers and families affected by incarceration by providing supportive services and advocacy that cultivate family resiliency.

Our Story

Where Purpose Took Root

While visiting an incarcerated family member, founder Jeanine Bashir found herself paying attention to the families around her, watching them share information, offer support, and help one another navigate a system that was often unfamiliar and difficult to understand. Their efforts to support one another also revealed something important: families were searching for information, guidance, and resources that were not always easy to find.

The experience led Jeanine to ask deeper questions about how incarceration affects women and their families and to begin researching the challenges they face, the resources available to them, and where critical gaps in support existed.

What began as a question grew into a deeper understanding of how incarceration can ripple across maternal well-being, children, family stability, and entire communities.

From that understanding, Harriet’s House began to take shape, a culturally grounded, community-rooted organization created to help fill those gaps while honoring the strength, knowledge, and resilience already present within families and communities.

Harriet’s House was formally established on March 10, 2022, Harriet Tubman Day, an intentional choice that reflects the legacy woven into the organization’s name and identity.

A Legacy of Freedom. A Light for the Journey.

Harriet’s House is named in honor of Harriet Tubman, whose courage, determination, and unwavering commitment to freedom continue to inspire generations. Having traveled a difficult path herself, Tubman used her knowledge, strength, and experience to help others navigate uncertain and dangerous terrain.

Her legacy holds deep meaning for Harriet’s House.

Families impacted by incarceration often navigate complex and interconnected systems. Harriet’s House walks alongside women and families, connecting them to information, resources, support, and community as they find their way forward.

The lantern in our logo reflects this same spirit, light, guidance, hope, and the belief that even in difficult terrain, a path forward can be found.

We do not believe Harriet’s House gives women and families their power. That power is already theirs. Our role is to help create the conditions where people can rediscover their light, recognize their strength, and move forward with greater support and possibility.

What We Know

The experiences of women and families impacted by incarceration do not occur in isolation. The data reveal persistent disparities that can affect women, children, families, and communities across generations.

Harriet’s House centers Black women and women of color because these communities experience disproportionate impacts across the systems in which we work. At the same time, our programs welcome all eligible women and families impacted by incarceration. Our focus reflects where disparities are greatest, not a limitation on who can participate.

Black women experience significant disparities in maternal health.
In Arizona, the pregnancy-related mortality rate for Black women was 62.6 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 20.0 for non-Hispanic White women in 2018–2019—more than three times the rate.
Black infants continue to experience substantially higher infant mortality.
In 2024, Arizona's infant mortality rate was 11.2 deaths per 1,000 live births among Black infants, compared with 4.4 among White infants. Black infants represented approximately 6% of Arizona live births but 13% of infant deaths.
Women of color experience disparities in incarceration.
Nationally, Black women were imprisoned at nearly twice the rate of White women—92 compared with 49 per 100,000 women—in 2017. In 2019, the imprisonment rate for Hispanic women was 1.3 times the rate for White women.
Black and Native children are disproportionately represented in Arizona's child welfare system.
Arizona DCS reports that Black children represent approximately 5% of Arizona's child population but 20% of children in out-of-home care. DCS also identifies both Black and American Indian children as disproportionately represented in measures of out-of-home care.

These inequities do not exist in isolation. Families can experience the effects of the justice, maternal health, and child welfare systems at the same time, creating challenges that can ripple across generations. Harriet's House was created to work at this intersection, advancing maternal well-being, family stability, and community healing.

Sources: Arizona Department of Health Services; Arizona Department of Child Safety; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Our Founder

Jeanine Bashir

Jeanine Bashir is the Founder and Visionary Leader of Harriet’s House AZ and an award-winning nonprofit executive, strategist, and systems-change leader with more than two decades of experience spanning nonprofit, public-sector, and philanthropic leadership. Her work has crossed early childhood development, maternal and child health, child welfare, community engagement, philanthropy, and systems change, with a career rooted in strengthening organizations and communities and creating opportunities for the voices and experiences of women and families to help shape the systems that affect their lives.

Jeanine is the recipient of the Greater Phoenix Chamber’s prestigious 2021 ATHENA Businesswoman of the Year Award in the Public Sector. She has also been honored as a State of Black Arizona Community Luminary, received Valle del Sol’s Profiles of Success Orgullo Award for her leadership in Arizona’s early childhood system, and was selected for Valley Leadership’s Leadership Institute, Class 35.

Her experience reflects the depth behind those recognitions. As a senior leader in Arizona’s early childhood system, Jeanine managed a portfolio of more than $100 million in state investments. Partnerships she cultivated with City of Phoenix departments and City Council members helped result in a $4 million municipal investment in child care and the development of family resource centers supporting young children and families.

Jeanine’s leadership has also extended into philanthropy and public service. Through her work in philanthropy, she was selected as a thought leader for the inaugural Communities for Philanthropic Justice Futures Fellowship, focused on strengthening leadership and transforming philanthropic and social-sector practices. She has also served as a Commissioner for the City of Phoenix Youth & Education Commission and as a Commissioner for the State of Arizona Doula Advisory Board, bringing her experience and community-centered perspective into broader systems-level conversations.

For more than two decades, Jeanine has also served as a community doula and trainer, supporting women in finding their voices in their birth experiences and becoming advocates for themselves and their children within health systems. Her work has extended nationally through maternal and public health initiatives and internationally, where she contributed to the development of a United Nations handbook addressing domestic violence and has helped establish and support nonprofit organizations around the world.

Through Harriet’s House, Jeanine brings these experiences together with a deeply held belief: communities already possess knowledge, strength, dignity, and power. Her role, and the role of Harriet’s House, is not to give people power, but to create conditions where women and families can access support, strengthen connections, navigate complex systems, and rediscover the light and power already within them.

Her philosophy is simple: “We do with communities, not to communities.”

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