The staff at Neighborhood Degree, along with community leaders and Visalia Chamber of Commerce representatives, cut the ribbon to officially open its new Visalia community center on Aug. 8.
The 4,800-square-foot facility at 1103 N. Turner St., includes a large auditorium room, a classroom, staff offices, and a community partnership office where other community organizations can meet with local families. All the rooms at the Neighborhood Degree Community Center are multi-purpose.
The center is expected to annually serve more than 700 students and 500 families with programs including mentoring, leadership, parental support and college and career pathways. The center will also host community events.
The purpose of Neighborhood Degree is to develop connections, teach new skills and alleviate generational poverty in Visalia. By connecting neighbors in a spirit of learning and support, the nonprofit works to build relationships that open doors and create new opportunities.
“Neighborhood Degree is a non-profit that grew out of a 20-year partnership between Neighborhood Church and Houston School,” Neighborhood Degree CEO Stephanie Benthin said. “Now, we follow kids from kindergarten all the way through a college or trade school degree to help them have future opportunities.”
All Neighborhood Degree programming will run out of the new facility.
“We have programs for kindergarten all the way through college to support whole families and do mentoring and leadership clubs and cheerleading and soccer, and all kinds of positive things for kids to keep them involved and keep them moving forward,” Benthin said.
A place of its own
The new facility allows Neighborhood Degree to finally have a place of its own.
“We used rooms at the school campus at Houston School,” Benthin said. “We used rooms at Neighborhood Church. I used to live in the neighborhood, so we used my living room and my garage. We’ve been kind of all over, but now we have a permanent space.”
Community leaders attended the ceremony to show their support for the new center.
“It’s important for the city because this gives underserved families an opportunity to move ahead,” said Visalia Vice Mayor Liz Wynn, who is also a volunteer for Neighborhood Church. “It gives them resources that the city can’t really provide to all on a one-on-one basis.
“There’s mentorship programs going on with the kids,” she said. “There’s a program that’s full of first-generation college students that probably wouldn’t have that opportunity. It’s a big partnership between Visalia Unified, Neighborhood Church, and the city, so it’s the best of all worlds.”
During the brief program before the ribbon-cutting, Benthin compared her years at Neighborhood Degree to running a marathon.
“As I thought about all that we’ve accomplished together, from mentoring programs to Juntos parent groups, to building Houston Park behind us, and now sending kids to college, the last 20 years reminded me of a marathon,” she said. “Life is like a marathon, and we’re all runners. Some days are great, some days are hard, and we all need people along the way cheering us on, and people ahead of us showing us that it’s possible.”
She added that what started as painting over graffiti and giving away backpacks has transformed into what Neighborhood Degree is today.
“This community center came to life because so many people came together,” Benthin said.
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Neighborhood Degree Community Center aims to help students succeed
Reporting by Steve Pastis, Visalia Times-Delta / Visalia Times-Delta
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Steve Pastis, Visalia Times-Delta | USA TODAY Network
