nonprofits an open floorplan with large windows overlooking downtown Wilmington. That’s where MaLisa Johnson, director of Centre of Redemption, hopes to relocate her outreach mission, A Safe Place, offering complete case management to local victims of labor or sex trafficking. The Centre of Redemption’s main focus is as an off-site safe home for teen mothers who are vic-tims of sex trafficking. Johnson is currently work-ing from two crowded corner offices on the third floor. “Until we got this space, though, we couldn’t target the local community,” Johnson says, “but here the local girls can come, and it’s ideal for us. We’re excited to expand to the fourth floor.” Since March 2013, A Safe Place has served 13 local traf-ficking victims, also offering them donations of toiletries, diapers, formula and Walmart gift cards. The former visitation area on the fourth floor, will provide Johnson’s caseworkers with the privacy they need for meeting with clients, Dull adds. The goal of the Harrelson Center is to become a place to help people in the community who are working very hard to help themselves, but they just can’t make ends meet. “We’re trying to be that center to help people get connected to the resources they need,” she says. The dream of the center’s board of directors, Dull says, is full occupancy — a home for area nonprofits with an endow-ment so agencies can work there rent-free. The Harrelson Center’s reno-vation plans have sparked addi-tional interest in Wilmington’s nonprofit community. Dull says 15-20 more nonprofits are interested in renting space after it’s renovated. Though the memory of the building’s first 30 years and the controversial style of the structure located amid the hal-lowed landscape peppered with landmark churches, historic courthouse and stately mansions is slow to fade from the public’s sentiment, it’s the humanitarian tale, what the Harrelson Center has come to mean in downtown Wilmington during the years, that will become the everlast-ing story of incarceration to transformation. Some of the men and women who once served sentences inside the New Hanover County jail have returned to the 58 WBM january 2014 center to receive clothing from the Philippians 3 Ministries or entered Phoenix Employment Ministry’s program searching for a job. In the center’s lobby before Christmas, a woman comes down the stairs apologizing pro-fusely to William Peacock, the center’s janitor. “I have to say sorry for being short with you the other day. That wasn’t right, and I’m sorry,” she says, giving him a hug. Peacock accepts her apology, smiling. His story is also a part of the Harrelson Center. He came to the center search-ing for work through Phoenix Employment Ministry. Finding a temporary job as a Salvation Army bell ringer last Christmas, Peacock returned to Phoenix briefly in the spring to continue looking for work.
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