MICHIGAN CITY — After opening in 2011 as an education center to focus on GED support and life skills programming, Grace Learning Center has grown into an empowerment center and vital tool for the homeless to help them get back on their feet.
The center is utilized by participants of Sand Castle Shelter, Keys to Hope Community Resource Center and Citizens Concerned for the Homeless (CCH) partner Interfaith Community PADS.
But it also benefits the community at large – a comfortable and safe environment for those experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless. The building now includes a computer lab, large and small classrooms, teaching kitchen, and community garden on its front lawn.
By 2015, Grace Learning Center had added computer skills classes, resume building and job search workshops, and basic banking and budgeting courses.
“Still, we needed to do more” said Jim Musial, executive director of CCH, Grace Learning Center’s parent organization.
“We needed to specifically identify the barriers each of our homeless participants face, as well as the struggles of community members at risk of becoming homeless”.
Since 2015, the learning center’s focus expanded to offer classes and workshops that would eliminate the barriers the homeless are challenged by, and allow participants and at-risk community members to return to sustainable self-sufficiency, which is no small task, Musial said.
CCH reached out to its community partners to facilitate classes pinpointing specific challenges, including:
life skills classes for computer skills (Goodwill Industries)
banking, budgeting and credit repair (Centier Bank, PNC Bank and Bill Fennell)
nurturing parenting (Dunebrook)
job readiness (Purdue Extension)
mental health (Pillars of Wellness and Bowen Center)
substance abuse (Toni Mandeville, certified addictions counselor)
general health and wellness (Joshua Stanier and Katherine Dinolfo, Dr. Karen Edwards and Purdue Extension’s Jody Kutch and Linda Curley)
By early 2020, Grace Learning Center and its partners began offering classes to achieve those objectives, Musial said. The new classes expanded the original primary focus to a more surgical approach to help individuals defeat barriers allowing them to pursue employment and permanent housing.
“By spring of 2020, COVID-19 descended on America and La Porte County. During this period, Grace Learning Center, along with Sand Castle Shelter, Keys to Hope and PADS did not experience any long-term disruption of services or closure of their facilities,” he said.
“If a participant tested positive, he or she was quarantined in hotels through funding provided by the United Way of La Porte County, Unity Foundation of LaPorte County and Healthcare Foundation of La Porte. Grace Learning Center continued to operate.”
And, he added, “It was during summer of 2020 that we placed a new emphasis on health and wellness.”
La Porte County, like the rest of the nation, saw mental health issues, addiction, domestic abuse, depression, and suicide spike dramatically, Musial said.
Grace Learning Center now offers five mental health classes, facilitated by Pillars of Wellness and the Bowen Center, addressing coping skills for trauma and chronic illness, healthy relationships, grief recovery and anger management. It also offers a weekly substance abuse class.
The mental health classes are live streamed and can be accessed through CCH’s webpage at www.cch-mc.org.
Also during the past year, Grace built a teaching kitchen and features weekly classes on plant-based cooking, as well as general nutrition classes, which are also recorded and available to the public through CCH’s webpage. Healthcare Foundation of La Porte also funded the teaching kitchen program.
This year also saw an emphasis on diabetes education, with a five-class series (Dining with Diabetes) offered by Purdue Extension.
“Diabetes runs high in La Porte County, higher than both state and national statistics,” Musial said. “Diabetes also hits the homeless community especially hard.”
“CCH and its participants are extremely fortunate to have community partners willing to bring their talents and expertise to the Grace Learning Center for the benefit of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters,” he said.
“We are blessed to live and work in a community where organizations dedicate resources needed to help people. We can not do this alone, it truly takes a village.”
Recorded classes, webinars and live streams are available to anyone with a smart device and Wi-Fi connection, or access to the public library to access CCH’s website.
