East Greensboro has a new facility to serve women and families. The YWCA on East Wendover Ave. recently held a community preview celebration.
The 19,400-square-foot structure includes three classrooms, an exercise area, a commercial kitchen and a year-round emergency shelter.
Lindy Garnette, CEO of the organization, says the emergency shelter is one of only two in Greensboro that serves families. “We realized that with a lot of the homeless women we were seeing, they had to leave their children with other people because they needed to go to a shelter, but there wasn't space for her children,” says Garnette. “This winter we will have up to 20 women a night and at the same time serve three or four families and when the winter shelter closes down, that space will become available, so year-round we will be serving seven or eight families at any given time.”
Garnette says her organization is partnering with Family Promise to offer shelter services throughout the year. The YWCA has been in downtown Greensboro since the early 1970's, but in 2010, the board decided to change their location because of costs to maintain that building and they wanted to expand programs to better meet the needs of the community. “East Greensboro has one of the city's highest unemployment rates, and number of teen pregnancies,” Garnette says.
The former steel fabrication building on East Wendover has been transformed into a two story brick YWCA, with lots of windows and lighting. Garnette says she hopes it will help boost revitalization efforts in this section of the city.
“It's a beacon as you enter East Greensboro. One of the things that we wanted to demonstrate to the community is that those folks deserve a facility that is nice and aesthetically pleasing, as well as functional, so we wanted to set an example for other businesses in the area and along the East Wendover corridor.”
The YWCA Greensboro building will officially open to the public on December 1st.
Follow Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news
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