Opening the Door
February 24, 2019
It was great to hear from Heather Harman from Open Door Centre this past Sunday! She shared about the impact the centre has had on the community and the many ways Deep Water has been a part of that. Check out the blog below for more information from Heather:
Incredible times at Open Door. We have seen significant growth in both divisions of the Centre:
UP (unplanned pregnancy) and HEY (Helping Exploited Youth) are meeting critical needs for youth in our city, we had 326 visits in 2018 and so far 2019 is far busier than last year.
We did almost 100 pregnancy tests last year, helping youth make critical life choices and supporting them after their decisions. We are seeing exponential growth in HEY, in the past two months we have had over 20 appointments helping trafficked youth. We are also speaking in schools every week on sex trafficking awareness as well as sexual consent. Sometimes we are in up to 10-12 classrooms a week talking about the issues that are deeply impacting our youth.
DW support has been an integral part of funding us to do the school presentations! What a privilege to have this opportunity as a faith based organization to have this voice of truth in our schools.
We have a growing staff team, and DW support this year enables us to have high calibre HEY staff and a computer to do their work on. We are so thankful for the way DW ensures that we can offer free services to all our clients through its ongoing support.
The truth is, we can’t really measure success in numbers, at the Centre we celebrate changed lives! Every week we see so many youth begin to make healthy decisions that literally turn their lives around. As a result of coming to the Centre for a few of months, we have recently seen two clients make the biggest decision of all - to surrender their lives to God. This is when true life change often takes place! We offer emotional support, material support (a boutique full of new items) and spiritual support to everyone who walks through our door. Thank you for partnering with us and enabling us to reach vulnerable youth at a critical time in their lives.