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About 150 volunteers on Monday helped move in furniture, arrange artwork and prepare for this week’s opening of a resource center for homeless and troubled teens.
Some of the youths who will be using the center have named it OZ – for Opportunity Zone – at 1157 N. Emporia.
“The youth have been asking for this for quite some time,” said Risa Rehmert, coordinator of Street Outreach Services for the Wichita Children’s Home, which will run OZ. “It’s just amazing to see how the community has stepped up.”
The project had been in planning for almost two years, Rehmert said. But it began taking shape last spring, driven by ICT SOS, a new organization of volunteers concerned about sex trafficking of teens in Wichita.
The center will serve homeless and displaced teens, who are most likely to be exploited by adults in the commercial sex trade or through forced labor.
“It’s just amazing, considering we’ve only been at this for 10 months,” said Jennifer White, founder of ICT SOS.
White’s group had organized an “Extreme Makeover” of the church building in Midtown. More than 100 volunteers helped clean the building in November. In December, local businesses donated materials and labor for major remodeling projects, such as installing a new kitchen, flooring, plumbing and ceiling work.
Monday was move-in day, as part of the Martin Luther King Day of Service.
“When people showed up, we had a sign-in sheet and tasks to assign, but people were working so fast, we just kept finding more things to do,” said Nola Brown of Volunteer Kansas, which provided a $32,000 grant to help refurbish the building.
Rehmert said the public can see the new space Wednesday, and programs will begin Thursday.
The center will be open Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 6 p.m. and Thursdays from 3 to 9 p.m. Rehmert said the center will operating within the existing Street Outreach Services budget, which varies and depends on public donations and volunteers.
“As we can increase funding, we can extend the hours,” Rehmert said.
Teens who have no place else to go can receive food, take a shower and find connections to other services to help get them off the streets. Youths may drop in with no appointment.
“It’s for youth who have nowhere else to go, or are in tough situations,” Rehmert said.
The center will also provide a meeting space for ICT SOS. White said plans for 2012 include working on contacting legislators to help strengthen Kansas laws on human trafficking and furthering community awareness of what police say has been a growing problem for the past four years.
The next ICT SOS meeting is set for 6 p.m. Feb. 21 at the center.
