A Jesuit priest opened Sacred Heart Center in the abandoned Sacred Heart School in 1990 with $10,000 of seed money from the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and without a blueprint. Within several months, a community-based board of directors was formed, the building was rehabilitated and furnished, several neighborhood residents were employed, and an after-school program for young children and job training for the unemployed were offered.
By the end of 1990, the Junior League of Richmond offered to collaborate with the Center on a major program to provide high-quality day care for children, combined with parenting and educational training for their parents. The project, now called the Family Resource Program, opened in 1992. Since then, the Family Resource Program has reached over 200 families, who have received literacy and academic training, family counseling, and parenting support.
Today, the Center is a nonprofit community center for the hardest-to-serve residents of South Richmond-those with multiple issues that challenge family stability. We are constantly reminded of the obstacles confronting the children and families it serves and of their devastating effects. The problems faced by families in crisis-child abuse/neglect, widespread drug and alcohol abuse, violence and hopelessness--continue to threaten the fragile hope that the Center attempts to create and nourish. Thus, part of the Center's mission is to accept the "degree of difficulty" of the work-yet not lose hope.
