Okeechobee, Our Village has a new home

Posted 1/12/21

Although everyone will miss the little “starter home” where Our Village set up housekeeping two years ago, like most starter homes, it has been outgrown

You must be a member to read this story.

Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.


Already have an account? Log in to continue. Otherwise, follow the link below to join.

Please log in to continue

Log in
I am anchor

Okeechobee, Our Village has a new home

Posted

OKEECHOBEE — Although everyone will miss the little “starter home” where Our Village set up housekeeping two years ago, like most starter homes, it has been outgrown, and that’s a good thing. Our Village is a non-profit founded by Leah Suarez in 2015 to provide families in Okeechobee with a hand up, not a hand out. In 2019, they achieved their dream of having a dedicated space where they could hold workshops and activities. They moved into the little white house on Southwest Second Avenue and filled every inch of space with donations and crafts and books and art and of course — people, lots of people. Soon, Suarez realized they needed more room, and she began to pray for a bigger space.

She announced they wanted to buy and build where they were, but donations were not coming in. “I decided I was going to just believe God would handle it.” Then the new building became available. One of the blocks north of it is for sale and the other is not. They have talked to both owners and expressed interest in getting there in the future with a children’s museum and a larger family life center. “We’re hopeful it will happen. We keep raising money for that, and I think this is a great place to get started.”

The new facility is located at 205 Northeast Second Street and the front room is as big as the entire house was at the old address.

The new facility has several areas they can use as retail space to support the mission. Suarez said they would like to expand some of their services to the community, but this means they will need a means to pay for it, so the retail end of it will help a lot with this. They are also offering their clients the opportunity to earn points, so they can use these points to shop in the retail area, similar to the way it is done at the Pregnancy Center. They want to give clients the opportunity to feel like they are on equal footing with others in the community. In that vein, she asks that when donations come in, people not give anything they would not want to receive themselves. “Please don’t bring anything you know needs to go in the trash. We don’t want to seem ungrateful, but think about yourself and if you actually needed something and went into the store, you don’t need a pan with no Teflon on it or broken things. A lot of the families have been in crisis, and we want to be respectful of that.”

One of the areas in the new facility will be an education room. They are host to several students who are on virtual school or homeschool, and in the afternoon, they offer tutoring. Pre-COVID, they offered game nights and family nights, things like that, and she hopes to get back to those types of things when they can figure out how to do it safely. Now that they have a bigger space, it should be more doable, she said.

Suarez said one of her goals is to begin hosting AA and NA meetings for young people, because she said she has been told by young people that they want that. There is nothing offered for young people in Okeechobee, and they do not want to meet with 60 and 70 year old men and women. They don’t feel like they fit in. They have offered peer support in the past and plan to continue with those groups, she said. These groups are for youth up to age 28.

There will be office space partitioned off, and there is a small kitchen. They are moving toward having emergency food — a prescripted bag of emergency food to get someone through a day or two — enough to get them to another food source, Big Lake Missions, expedited food stamp approval, etc.

They have an area where they display local art which has been donated. It is all for sale and the proceeds go to Our Village.

Walls are going up to partition space for the licensed mental health counselor and the therapy office. In addition, they are hoping to rent some space to people whose services compliment their own. She would love to have a telemedicine office for psychiatry and would like to have one office that could be shared by various physicians using telemedicine.

Soon, a calender of activities will be published. Now that there is a COVID vaccine and the new building has more room to spread out, she feels like she can plan a few more activities. Check their Facebook page for updates.

Suarez is thrilled with her new home. “A lot of people aren’t aware that it is an old funeral home, but those that are think it’s weird. I think it’s like bringing life back to a place people associate with death. It feels great to bring life back into a place where it might have been the saddest day of some people’s lives, where they can come and feel welcome.”

“Come by any time,” she said. “We will have coffee and tea available and you can just sit and relax. Just enjoy yourself and get away.”

our village

Comments

x