This Friday, Sunrise Children’s Services is celebrating the dedication of a new building for our Glen Dale Center. Years of work have gone into making this event happen – drawing up the plans for the building, breaking ground at the site in Elizabethtown in November 2007, and finally, completing construction this month.
The new Glen Dale Center replaces our oldest campus in rural Hardin County. Beginning in 1915, Glen Dale was home to hundreds of orphans. Alumni still gather each year to reunite and fondly remember their years together at Glen Dale.
But in order to best serve the teenage girls who come to our Glen Dale Center today, we must provide them with a facility that meets all their needs under one roof. The girls will eat, sleep, attend school and enjoy recreation at the new building. We believe this environment will be a sanctuary where their hurting can turn to healing.
The opening of the new Glen Dale Center marks the completion of a multi-phase campus relocation project. In 2002, Sunrise’s leaders and board of directors decided that the campuses for Glen Dale and Spring Meadows, which had served hundreds of orphans on a large campus in eastern Louisville since 1950, had outlived their usefulness. There were multiple buildings on the campuses, many of which were no longer being used. In addition, the agency’s central administrative departments were not all housed in the same building.
In spring 2006, the new Spring Meadows Center and neighboring Ministry Support Center opened in Mt. Washington. In the three years since then, we have witnessed the benefits of providing care to 18 teenage boys in a home-like setting. These children have been so hurt by their families that they require intense care and supervision to help them heal. A self-contained program in one building provides the most secure, efficient and healthy environment for our kids and staff.
When we cut the ribbon in front of the Glen Dale Center on Friday, we will be moving forward in providing the best care possible at our residential programs. In doing so, we will be honoring and extending the legacy that started 140 years ago when a group of women at Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville began caring for Civil War orphans. That legacy of compassion has made Sunrise Children’s Services what it is today.
Thank you to all those who made our campus relocation project become a reality. Please join us at our celebration on Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. at 1030 Commerce Drive in Elizabethtown. After a ceremony, you will be able to tour the new Glen Dale Center.
Comments