CHARLESTON, W.Va.— YWCA Charleston’s Sojourner’s Shelter for Homeless Women and Families former director, Margaret Taylor retired last year, but now her name is becoming a part of the facility in honor of 37 years serving the organization.
The current YWCA Sojourner’s Education and Job Readiness Center in Charleston will now become the YWCA Sojourner’s Margaret Taylor Job and Education Readiness Center.
Taylor joined her former collogues at the center Tuesday to unveil the new sign with her name inscribed on it and to finish bolting it to the side of the building.
“It’s only due to the participants that we serve and the needs that were identified that this service came about, and it has served a great purpose, the main goal with that being to help individuals become self-sufficient,” Taylor said at Tuesday’s dedication.
After founding the readiness center, Taylor worked to help provide not only an emergency shelter for homeless people to go to, but support services to help them get on their feet, such as crisis intervention, case management, and counseling.
Specifically, it provides support for homeless single women and mothers, men with custody of their children, and families who may be struggling to live self-sufficiently.
Taylor said she couldn’t have achieved the mission without the supportive crew she has worked with who also feel the similar need to help those less-fortunate throughout the community.
“Everything that is occurring here today is actually a team effort, because needs of the program and the program grew out of needs that had been identified through surveys with the individuals or conversations with them, and so that is how we continue to grow and expand the program,” she said.
Taylor said the center is also available to people at risk of becoming homeless.
She said she has seen firsthand how the facility has helped those as they first come in, often downtrodden and desperate, compared to how they leave the facility a changed person for the better.
“You also watch them as they understand that we’re only here to help them move from point A to point B, and once they get that, and that they feel safe and they know their family is going to have a place to sleep, and to have nutritious meals, and then to have the tools to move from point A to point B, then you watch them grow,” she said.
Taylor has worked as the director of the homeless center for 28 of the 37 years as part of YWCA, and she said watching that growth from the people coming in and out of the facility is the part she will miss the most.
“And then, they get that key, they get that job, and that’s what energized me, is the fact that they succeeded, they have reached their desired goal.”
The readiness center also offers a number of children’s’ programs which include, computer and art classes, tutoring, drug prevention education and awareness, counseling and field trips.