The new site of a Fort Myers home for teenage mothers just got a facelift after local Lowe’s employees rolled up their sleeves to help with renovations. They put the nonprofit one step closer to moving into its new building and expanding its community outreach.
For 25 years, Our Mother’s Home (OMH) has housed mothers aged 11-18, and their children, who are in the foster care system. Some of the moms are victims of human trafficking. Last year the nonprofit bought an old two-story dental office near downtown Fort Myers. The new location will allow OMH to extend its support to women until they turn 22.
Earlier this year, Lowe’s selected OMH as one of 100 nationwide recipients for the Lowe’s Hometowns grant and awarded the nonprofit $110,000 to create a transitional living space for teen mothers when they become adults.
As part of the program, Lowe’s employees got their hands dirty recently during “Red Vest Day” – a one-day event where staff members volunteer to give back to the community.
“For nearly two years, I've watched a vacant building very slowly turn into our future home, but this day made a huge difference in our progress," OMH executive director Alicia Miller said. "Watching the paint transform the outside and the beautiful plants be put in really made it feel real and that our vision is about to become a reality."
Brian Hanna, the assistant store manager of Lowe’s on South Tamiami Trail, led a team of 20 at the site. He said the community coming together is more important now than ever because of the lives and organizations that were upended by Hurricane Ian.
“It’s two generations that we’re taking care of today to give them a safe haven,” Hanna said. “It’s not about the money that Lowe’s will generate. It’s about making sure that everybody around us that has been affected ends up on a stronger foot ground.”
Lowe’s also donated nearly 20 gallons of paint for the volunteers to use to paint the outside of the approximately 7,500-square-foot building. They removed plants and placed new ones over a rock bed, all also donated by Lowe's.
“To see the end picture is where you honestly get the warmth and the feeling of you have strengthened somebody in the community,” Hanna said.
By the end of the day, the volunteers had completed painting about half of the building.
“If you know that you’re going to make a difference in a child’s life, there’s nothing more warm,” Hanna said. “If we make them grow up right, make them feel good, then they’ll be a good part of the community when they grow up. Maybe they’ll turn around and do something else. You know, the pay-it-forward kind of thing is exactly what we’re looking for.”
OMH's Miller said about $800,000 of the grant money has been put into plumbing, electricity and HVAC systems – all needed before the transitional living space can be completed.
“Everybody says, ‘What happens when they turn 18?’” she said. “And we really didn’t have a good enough answer.”
The Department of Children and Family Services has restrictions on adults sharing a living space with minors in foster care.
Right now OMH has one resident who has aged out of care, but she is limited in when she can leave her room when the minors are home from school. The new location will have separate living quarters for up to seven minors and three adults.
“This building, the upstairs alone will service 18- to 22-year-olds so they can transition up there and still get the services and the help that they need until they’re really ready to be independent,” Miller said. “Because 18 is not the best age, in my opinion, for complete independence.”
OMH’s original timeline was to move the organization from its current San Carlos Park location to the new one this past summer. But the project came to a standstill after Hurricane Ian when $1 million in anticipated government grants were reallocated for hurricane relief.
“It was a blow to our hearts,” Miller said. “But we spent the last year kind of recouping that and reaching out to the community.”
Miller said it’s days like “Red Vest Day” that give her hope that everything is going to work out. “Maybe what we thought was the end of the world isn’t the end of the world, and everything happens for a reason,” she said.
OMH has raised over $300,000 in community support since then. “The hurricane not only set us back financially, but it set the whole construction world back,” she said. “The timeline that we thought we were on has obviously been put back, and I know we’re not alone on that progress.”
Travis Capponi is a regional sales manager for Sherwin-Williams and Valspar, Lowe’s paint vendor. He and a team of seven also volunteered their time to paint the new building.
“It’s always nice to give somebody a fresh new coat of paint,” he said. “It changes their whole perspective on the building [and] the community. The community is going to drive by this later and go, ‘Wow. What a change.’”
The Sherwin-Williams team showed up with brushes, trays and other supplies needed to paint the building. “It’s imperative that we give back to the same community that comes in and supports us,” he said.
Talisha Faber, an OMH board member and commercial real estate adviser, found the location for the new building. She said it provides the space for young mothers to have their own bedrooms rather than sharing one with another mother and baby, which is the current setup. But the key motivation was to find a place where moms could stay past age 18.
“The heart behind it was that we looked for space that we didn’t have to kick these girls out, so to say, and allow them to thrive, mentor them and give them therapy, let them finish school, find jobs and be successful and stop that never-ending cycle of foster care,” Faber said.
According to the National Foster Youth Institute, 20% of the children who age out of foster care become instantly homeless. Only half of them are employed at age 24, and 25% are in prison within two years.
“What do you do with them at 18 with their babies?” she said. “Do you kick them out? And how awful is that? At 18, you’re still not ready.”
Faber said completion relies on the community working together. “And these are local people from Lowe’s doing this local work,” she said. “We’re all in it together, and I think that’s really the heart behind the whole thing with the building.”
OMH has a lot of work to do on its new building, but the organization still plans to move in on Mother’s Day next year, commemorating the day it was founded in 2000.
“Our mission is really to empower teen moms," Miller said. “We need them to...become independent, get their education, get a job so that they can be a good role model for their babies.”
This story was produced by Democracy Watch, a news service provided by Florida Gulf Coast University journalism students. The reporter can be reached at gwendolyn.salata@yahoo.com WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.