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A hand up, not a handout
Chris Wilson (left), executive director and cofounder of the nonprofit The Dream Center in Easley, is among the staff members and volunteers who celebrate life-changing steps taken by Opportunity Village residents like Angela Johnson. Each tiny house in the village provides a temporary home for homeless Dream Center clients trying to make new lives for themselves.
Photo by Milton Morris
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Back on track
Robert Frost is an Opportunity Village center resident who is making steady strides toward his goal of becoming self-sufficient. With help from The Dream Center, he has stopped smoking and using drugs, he is working toward his GED, and he has a driver’s license and a truck to get himself to work.
Photo by Milton Morris
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Building community
Angela Johnson, Rená Owen, Robert Frost and Sheila Wyle (left to right) enjoy each other’s company over a game of Sorry in the Opportunity Village community room—a shared living room where residents can snack, watch television, read and relax together.
Photo by Milton Morris
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Giving back
Angela Johnson has found steady work as a banquet server for a Greenville events center, but she also volunteers her time at The Dream Center’s Resale Store in Easley. This store and its sister store in Pickens help fund the work of The Dream Center through sales of gently used, donated clothing and household items.
Photo by Milton Morris
Squeals of delight greet Angela Johnson when she shows up at The Dream Center of Pickens County after her makeover. Clustered around her, the staff and volunteers rain compliments on Johnson, touching her new hairdo, comparing her “before” and “after” appearance.
“Oh, my gosh, you’re beautiful!”
“Look at your hair! It’s gorgeous!”
“You look 10 years younger!”
It’s true. When a homeless and desperate Johnson first showed up seeking help from The Dream Center last year, she was worn down, overweight and nearly hopeless. She’d been living on the street. She was suffering from untreated liver disease. With unkempt hair and a face bare of makeup, her appearance reflected a hard-lived life.
A year later, with help from The Dream Center, she is 40 pounds lighter; she’s getting regular medical treatment, and her outlook is rosy. Post-makeover, with her golden-brown hair cut and styled and makeup giving her face a new glow, Johnson looks more like her 52 years. The real transformation, however, is on the inside.
“They literally saved my life,” says Johnson. “There’s not enough words to say what’s happened to me that’s good in my life from here. I’m one whole new creature … in every way.”
Encourage, educate, empower
Before The Dream Center existed as a tangible place where down-and-out folks could find help, it was just a glimmer of a vision by a few people.
“It began with just seven people—my husband, myself and five other people—asking ourselves, and asking God to teach us, how to be the church, not just go to church,” says Chris Wilson, executive director of the faith-based, nonprofit Dream Center near downtown Easley. They met and prayed for over a year before settling on a plan in 2012—still with no building—to help needy people in Pickens County help themselves out of poverty and hopelessness.
Behind The Dream Center’s mission “to encourage, educate and empower people in need through the love of Jesus Christ” is a simple concept: instead of a handout, a hand up. Emergency assistance provides temporary help, but too many handouts create a dependency that discourages people from taking steps toward long-term solutions, says Wilson, a member of Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative.
With that core philosophy, The Dream Center’s founders and a crew of volunteers started helping destitute clients lift themselves out of poverty. They bought and renovated a 45,000-square-foot former school building that houses an array of services meeting basic needs, including a soup kitchen and food pantry. They guided clients to work toward a GED diploma, get a stable job, manage a household budget, find dental or medical care, start exercising, learn parenting or anger management skills, stop drinking, smoking or using drugs, get counseling and spiritual guidance—whatever positive steps they needed to improve their lives.
The critical missing element was housing. Pickens County had no homeless shelter. Nearly half the clients coming to The Dream Center for help during the day were homeless, Wilson says, but at night, “we didn’t have anywhere for them to lay their heads.”
“We had a guy come in that was living in the woods,” Dream Center staff member Stephen Estrada recalls. “He had the willingness, the attitude and the desire to get a job and get back on his feet. But, it’s very difficult to help stabilize someone who is living in the woods.”
In 2016, The Dream Center started building the newest feature on its six-acre property: the picture-perfect Opportunity Village, a tight-knit community of 23 tiny houses that give people a place to call home while they are piecing their lives back together. Each little house is just big enough for a twin bed, a small bathroom, and a bit of space for clothes and a few personal belongings.
Residents pay “rent” for the right to live in Opportunity Village houses—16 “Dream Dollars” a day, earned by attending self-improvement classes on site. Their tiny homes are private retreats at the end of the day; most of their hours are spent in communal spaces at The Dream Center—taking classes, eating meals, exercising or relaxing together.
“We want them learning how to live together in community and not be isolated,” Wilson explains. Friendship, support and inspiration from staff and volunteers create a family-like environment that contributes to their success, she says.
Resident manager Phillip Gilmore lives in the village; he’s there to make sure residents return to their homes each evening, stay focused on their goals, take care of themselves and their living spaces, and avoid straying back into destructive behaviors. “We have relationships,” Gilmore says. “We talk through what matters.”
A life transformed
Funded by generous donations, construction of the Opportunity Village got a dramatic start in October 2016 when more than 500 volunteers showed up for “Raise a Village” day and built 13 of the houses—framed and weatherproofed—in a 14‑hour day. Three of the houses were sponsored by area high schools—Powdersville, Easley and Wren—whose students raised $15,000 per school to cover construction costs.
“What really happened as a result of that day is a lot of people in this community kind of took ownership in this village,” Wilson says. “It’s like everybody in this community came together for one common good.”
Finishing touches are still under way, but seven completed homes now house residents working toward a new life; five more should be ready for occupancy by the end of January.
Angela Johnson was one of the first to move in. When she and her husband showed up at The Dream Center looking for whatever help they could get, they were “down to nothing—I mean, literally, starvation,” she says. No home, no car, no jobs, no money, no hope. Three weeks after beginning their Dream Center program, Johnson’s husband abandoned her and went back to using drugs. Committed to changing her life, Johnson stayed.
“I just threw my husband to the curb,” Johnson says with a laugh that confirms she has no regrets. “In order to get my life together, it was the best thing for me I’ve ever done. I believe in my heart that Jesus Christ brought me here.”
After four failed and abusive marriages and more losses than she can count, Johnson is working her way through the Individualized Success Plan her Dream Center counselors helped her create, moving toward self-sufficiency. She’s getting treatment for medical issues and trying to quit smoking. She got her driver’s license and a car and is working as a banquet server at an event center in Greenville. She goes to self--improvement classes and Bible studies and is exercising and eating healthier. She enjoys fellowship time in the community room reserved for Opportunity Village residents, who support each other through their personal journeys.
“My next goal is to find me a home and pay for it, no rent—woohoo!” Johnson says. “They have given me a hope I’ve never had in my whole life.”
Modeling success
Real, sustainable change takes time, says Estrada, the program manager for the Opportunity Village. That’s why they’ve labeled their curriculum CHANGE, emphasizing the steps in the journey: Choice, Hope, Accept, Need, Grow, Empower. Ideally, when a resident completes the program, he or she is ready to be self-sufficient—holding a job, managing a budget, living independently in his or her own home.
“Some residents are thriving after just a few months, some take longer—everybody’s different,” Estrada says.
Robert Frost, 26, moved into Opportunity Village last August and expects to stay about a year. After years of struggling with drug abuse and homelessness, he’s clean; he has quit smoking, is working toward his GED and hopes to start his own landscape business. After nine years without a driver’s license, he earned it back and got a truck. His Dream Center “family” celebrated with him when he aced a recent English literature exam and found a job as a groundskeeper at a local cemetery.
“Every little success is a win,” says Frost, who credits his newfound faith in God and his caring Dream Center team for his turnaround. “Going to bed every night and having hope for tomorrow is a big deal. When you’re out on the streets, doing drugs, not knowing where you’re going to sleep that night, it’s hard to have hope.”
Not everyone is a success story, Wilson says. One man came into the program after 25 years as a drug addict and got clean within a few months, then decided to go it alone. “We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not ready. But, he thought he knew more than we did, and he walked away,” she says. “And less than 24 hours later, he was doing meth.” He still comes for meals at the SHINE soup kitchen located in The Dream Center building.
“We cannot want something for someone more than they want it for themselves,” says Shannon Leatherwood, one of The Dream Center founders, now its director of education and discipleship. “Their desire for life change is the most valuable resource they bring into this program.”
From Charleston to Canada, at least 18 organizations have noticed what Opportunity Village is doing and asked how to replicate the idea in their own communities. Wilson is happy to share details, but she always emphasizes why it works.
“We don’t shy away from the fact that the only reason we exist here is because God told us to open The Dream Center. And God has provided for us,” says Wilson. “But, the tiny houses aren’t changing anybody’s life. It’s the program.”
Angela Johnson confirms this: “What they’ve got to offer a broken person is amazing. I finally know that I can be somebody, I’m worth something and that I will be successful as long as I take heart with what they teach me here.”
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Dream Dollars at work
The currency of The Dream Center of Pickens County is Dream Dollars. That’s the “money” clients earn by attending self-improvement classes—$8 per class. That money covers a lot of ground.
First, it’s the money clients use to start learning to budget as they rebuild their lives. It buys toiletries and laundry-care items at the center’s general store, and it buys the right to use the on-site laundry facilities and showers—a great help for homeless folks. It’s the money Opportunity Village residents pay to rent their tiny houses.
And it’s the money clients and residents can spend at The Dream Center’s two Resale Stores in Easley and Pickens—thrift stores that help support the center financially. With Dream Dollars, they can buy gently used secondhand clothes, accessories, furniture, kitchen items, baby items and more.
“Dream Dollars spend just like cash money” at the Resale Store, Dream Center executive director Chris Wilson says.
The items for sale are donated by members of the community, who are also free to shop there, but they spend real dollars.
“We’ve never had a month we didn’t at least break even, even though over $50,000 worth of -merchandise has been purchased using Dream Dollars,” Wilson says.
The Dream Center has two Resale Store locations for shopping or for dropping off donated items:
- 5553 Calhoun Memorial Highway, Easley; (864) 306-4577
- 529 Hampton Ave., Pickens; (864) 999-2012
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Get More
The Dream Center of Pickens County is located at 111 Hillcrest Drive, Easley, just a few blocks from downtown Easley. Founded as a nonprofit in 2012, the center occupies the former Simpson Academy Alternative School, which its founders purchased in 2013 by pooling their own funds and those of community donors.
Seven other nonprofits operate from this building, working in partnership with The Dream Center to serve Pickens County’s poor and homeless citizens:
- SHINE soup kitchen
- 5 Point Church Food Pantry
- Samaritan Dental Clinic
- JC Cares (Biblical counseling and discipleship)
- REACH Ministry (Reaching Everyone As Christ Hoped)
- PreDestined Teen Outreach
- Alston Wilkes Society
Learn more at dreamcenterpc.org. Contact The Dream Center by phone at (864) 644-8885 or email cwilson@dreamcenterpc.org.
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Related story
Building a tiny village – Watch how volunteers from the Easley community came together on “Raise a Village” day to build a community of tiny houses for the homeless.