Community Crisis Center to hold fund-raiser
By News-Argus Staff
Published in News on December 5, 2004 2:05 AM
Goldsboro's Community Crisis Center will embark this week on a campaign to raise $131,000 to pay off its debts.
The center is a Christian mission whose primary aim is to convert and rehabilitate the homeless and addicted. In addition to spiritual nourishment, it offers them food, clothing, baths and educational courses leading to GED diplomas.
A central part of the fund-raising effort will be a day-long broadcast appeal Thursday by Curtis Media Group. The company's Goldsboro radio stations, WGBR and WFMC, will broadcast from the Community Crisis Center from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Volunteers will be there to answer calls and take pledges.
The campaign was announced Friday by the chairman of the center's board of directors, the Rev. Dr. William Barber. At a news conference, Barber called the center and the fund-raising campaign a "vision of mercy."
The founder and director, Evangelist Adeen George, described the debt as a crushing burden.
Mrs. George founded the center in 1981 and operated from an old house. In the early 1990s she attempted to build a new home for the mission on a tract on Slocumb Street that she had bought from the late Dr. Winfield Thompson.
During the construction, the building collapsed. She persisted and another building was built, but it collapsed soon after it was finished.
When word of these added travails spread, a community-wide effort was begun to build a sound home for Mrs. George's work. R.N. Rouse & Co. did much of the construction without charge.
Now the center operates largely on donations. Mrs. George said it feeds about 270 meals a week.
Others on the board of directors include the Rev. Aaron McNair, who presided over the news conference, and former County Commissioner Jimmie Ford, who also spoke. Ford once worked part-time at the mission.
Barber said the directors were asking for the community to be in prayer for the mission. He cited Jesus' words in Matthew 25, "... Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Barber said, "Faith, works and care for the least of these are inextricably woven together, which is why we must support the work on the Community Crisis Center."
Also speaking was Juanita Joseph, the volunteer coordinator at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
The general manager of WGBR and WFMC, Tony Denton, said Cingular Wireless had offered to provide telephone service for the call-in broadcast. He said the number to call for pledges, on Thursday only, will be 919-274-4901.
Pledges can also be made before Thursday. The number to call is 735-0064.
Mrs. George made statewide news for Goldsboro in 1996 when she was one of five people in North Carolina to be chosen for a Jefferson Award for humanitarian service.