Crisis Center marks 25th anniversary
By Bonnie Edwards
Published in News on March 31, 2006 1:45 PM
The Community Crisis Center will mark its 25th anniversary today at 7 p.m. in the Love's Temple United Holy Church Headquarters, 201 N. Oak Forest Road. The featured speaker will be Apostle Norbert Simmons, pastor at Deeper Life Church Ministries on 11th Street in Goldsboro.
The Rev. Adeen George is the Community Crisis Center's founder and executive director, and Carolyn Buffalo helps her with the ministry as secretary.
"We have helped countless numbers of people," said Ms. Buffalo about the center, which began in 1981. She established it as the Holy Ghost Drawing Center at New Stoney Hill Holy Church on Poplar Street to reach out to the poor and the homeless.
The center bought some land in the 600 block of South Slocumb Street the following year to build a permanent structure.
The ministry evolved into a crisis intervention center and was renamed the HGDC Community Crisis Center in 1994. The ministry gained a charter and a seven-member board of directors.
Volunteers worked with donated materials to put up the building, but a violent wind destroyed the walls. A second mishap brought the building process to a halt. The Rev. George gained citywide support, and area churches started providing financial support.
The following year R.N. Rouse and D.S. Simmons gave the center a great deal on construction costs and put up the building and finished the inside.
Operations began in the 15-room, 8,500-square-foot facility in 1997.
Through the years, the Rev. George has received numerous awards and honors, including two Humanitarian Awards, the WTVD Jefferson Award and the Nancy Susan Reynolds Award given by the R.J Reynolds Foundation.
The center has a multipurpose room, a soup kitchen, a food pantry and a clothing closet, counseling rooms and meditating rooms, offices and bathrooms with showers for the homeless.
The center offers self-sufficiency training program led by Jimmy Ford for those addicted to drugs and alcohol, the homeless and the unemployed and underemployed.
The center is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Meals are served 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., and an average of 90 people eat there daily.
Behind the center is the Albert L. Daye Transistional House for the Homeless, which opened in 2001. Out of the 12 people who have lived in the Alvert Daye home, two earned their GEDs, eight attained housing, seven got jobs, two completed vocational training at Wayne Community College and two have moved out of town.