SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A beloved community center is closing it's doors in Sacramento's Del Paso Heights neighborhood, and the recent severe storms are to blame.
"It's flooded inside," said Dr. Gina Warren, CEO for Neighborhood Wellness. "The wind blew the ceiling partially off, and a lot of rain entered into our building."
Neighborhood Wellness uses the building on Clay Street, near Grand Avenue, to help uplift historically marginalized groups and communities. The organization, typically, serves about 60 people each day. That includes people living in poverty, overcoming trauma or facing other disadvantages in life.
Dr. Gina Warren co-founded the organization in 2015 with a mission "to navigate and disrupt intergenerational trauma in Del Paso Heights and surrounding communities."
Neighborhood Wellness offers free, impactful programs, like weekly healing circles to help people "recognize the destructive impact that abuse, neglect, abandonment, intergenerational violence, poverty, and racism can have on the capacity to live, learn, and thrive." Other programs include, but are not limited to:
- Restore Legacies: This program is recognized by the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office as an alternative to incarceration. Adult participants attend education and training sessions twice weekly and Healing Circles once weekly. Youth participants are provided with ongoing mentorship.
- PACERS Take Space: This program helps students with school attendance, academic engagement and performance, behavior and opportunities for matriculation beyond high school.
- Reaching Higher Heights: Neighborhood Wellness works with Highlands Community Charter School and their independent study program, California Innovative Career Academy (CICA) to help adults, 22 and over, earn their high school diploma.
These programs and services address social, economic, academic and health inequities to also help reduce barriers of adversity for families and communities.
"When people have childhood adversity, it impacts them through adulthood," said Warren. "The center is our home, a hub for the community. When this storm takes away that opportunity, it impacts so many people who are not able to get the support they need."
Sherri Kirk-Lang, who lives in Del Paso Heights, said Neighborhood Wellness changed her life for the better. While growing up, Kirk-Lang said she faced hardships.
"I was a person who went through trauma," said Kirk-Lang. "I came from an abusive home and never got healing from it."
Kirk-Lang said she eventually found healing by working with Neighborhood Wellness. That included attending weekly healing circles at the community center.
"It's like a therapy place for me," said Kirk-Lang. "Neighborhood Wellness helped me understand that the things that happened to me, in my life, were not always my fault."
Since the storm caused thousands of dollars in damages, Neighborhood Wellness is leaning on others for support.
Donations are being collected to help repair the community center, as well as a means to keep the free programs and services available to the public.
"We have insurance that will cover some of the damage, but there's going to be a lot more that we are going to need to cover," said Warren.
Since the center is not available, the organization plans on going virtual and straight into the community until repairs can be made at the site.
"It was just getting really good, better and better, month after month," said Kirk-Lang. "But I realized that the building doesn't do the work, we actually do the work."
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