Kim Grizzard - Staff Writer
The Daily Reflector

Hope has a new address. Building Hope Community Life Center this week celebrated a move of only a short distance but one that represents a major step forward.

Dozens of supporters attended a ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday at the nonprofit ministry’s new location, 215 W. Ninth St., next door to the place Building Hope called home for more than two decades.

“This is an exciting new chapter for Building Hope,” said Paul Anderson, area executive/senior vice president of Southern Bank, who serves as chairman of the board for The Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce.

“For more than 20 years in their previous facility, they’ve been investing in the lives of children and families in our community, providing academic support, leadership development, service opportunities, summer programming, and so much more. While this new facility is a temporary home, it represents something much bigger, a place to continue that work today while building toward their vision for a permanent purpose built built facility in the future.”

At a 25th anniversary celebration event in April, Building Hope announced that it is exploring options for purchasing vacant property on Albemarle Avenue for its new location. Executive Director Sheena Parker said she expects the official launch of the capital campaign to be in the fall of 2027, with the goal of having the new location fully funded within three years.

Building Hope opened in 2001 to tutor and mentor 15 children in west Greenville. Today, the after-school program serves 41 students from nine area elementary schools.

Its Project Bridges program, a partnership with Pitt County Schools, provides a place where students suspended from school can continue their coursework and receive instruction in character development that is designed to help them avoid additional suspension. Parker said the program has served about 200 students last school year.

But in November 2025, the organization had to close the doors at 309 W. Ninth St. and start meeting at nearby GCF Church. Board chairwoman Tina Weldon said the roof had begun to leak and there were other structural issues at the aging building, which the late Walter Williams donated to the organization some 15 years ago.

Parker said she expected that students would meet at the church for 90 days. Instead, they spent almost nine months there.

While she was grateful to the church for providing the space, Parker was happy to move Building Hope last month from a space of about 400 square feet to more than 4,000 square feet. The new location belongs to Phil Gibbs and Edwin Clark of Hamel Builders, who offered their former offices to the after-school program while funds are being raised for Building Hope’s new facility.

“Edwin Clark and Hamel Builders have been probably two of the biggest guardian angels for Building Hope since Mike Williams and Mark L’Esperance started this organization back in 2001,” Parker said, adding that the benefactors helped the organization with everything from permits to renovations needed to convert the office space into a place for children.

In addition, a grant from the Eddie and Jo Allison Smith Foundation provided Chromebooks for Project Bridges and appliances needed to convert a former staff lounge into a functional kitchen.

Like Building Hope’s larger, old building, the new location provides a designated space for Project Bridges, along with a STEAM lab, a prayer room and a library. A new addition is a sensory room, designed to provide a calming space for students who feel overstimulated.

Program Director Reginald Barrett said features like beanbag chairs and noise-canceling headphones offer a respite for children who need a break from the noise and activity of their peers.

“We have so many students who are on the spectrum, or we call them our neurodivergent friends,” Barrett said. “So this is for our friends who are on the on the spectrum or our neurodivergent friends who need a space to come in and kind of just reset.”

Parker, a former exceptional children’s teacher for Pitt County Schools, said Building Hope has seen a sharp increase in recent years in the number of exceptional children it serves.

“My first year here, right around 10% of our population that we served that was neurodivergent,” she said. “Last year that almost tripled to about 30%.”

Building Hope’s new location also is making room for middle schoolers. After serving only elementary students in its after-school program for the last few years, Parker said the organization will pilot a program this year that will serve about a dozen sixth-grade girls.

Crowned Girls, set to launch this fall, will utilize the resiliency training that Building Hope staff members have received and also will incorporate spiritual mentorship that was part of the organization’s former Women of Worth program.

“They as young girls can really use all of the skills that they learn to not only be successful in life,” Parker said, “but to build that self-esteem, self-value, self-worth, which ultimately helps to determine our trajectory.”