‘LOVED AND CARED FOR’
Care Center remodeling part of new look for Strickler Center
One of the tenant assistance agencies of the Strickler Center reopened to the public this week with a fresh, new look courtesy a COVID-19 pandemic remodeling. It officially cut its ribbon right before an event celebrating that the Strickler Center itself will resume serving the public with its own new appearance.
The Care Store was made to look give the people it serves the feel that they were shopping for items in a boutique rather than being handed them by an aid agency, said Julia Eigenbrood, the agency’s executive director.
“Our guests deserve to be loved and cared for,” she said Thursday, the day of the official unveiling. At the ribbon cutting, she said that someone who came in earlier in the week told her that she felt like she was shopping at a store in the mall.
The Care Store sells toiletries and beauty products. Well, sell isn’t quite the right word. They trade toiletries and beauty products for a Care Store currency called Care Bucks. Care Bucks have to be
earned, not purchased and not handed out.
“I like to say we give a hand up, not a hand out,” she said. Guests earn Care Bucks through referrals from social workers with state agencies and local schools. They can redeem them — it’s a virtual currency — at the store for items that people need but aren’t covered by programs that use Bridge cards.
The remodeling project was intended to take what was a church nursery and turn it into someplace people were conducting a transaction. In addition to making the experience more pleasant, it also helps fulfil one goal of making people more savvy in how they use money they earn.
The operating philosophy of the William and Janet Strickler Non-profit Center’s one-stop-shopping for services has been to help people help themselves. They can come in and get food, clothing and toiletries as part of their journey to self-sustainment. At the Care Store, they hope that using a currency prepares them for when they have steady work and income and need to budget.
The Care Store first opened in 2017, and in its first three years handled 10,000 visits.
Two things happened when COVID-19 hit. The first is that the Care Store closed and volunteers and staff began handing out toiletries alongside the Community Compassion Network’s food and infant products and Clothing Inc.’s clothing. They also stopped the Care Bucks program.
The number of visits they saw during those two years were 14,000.
They’ve returned to inperson services and the Care Bucks program. They expect to see their numbers increase as people get used to the place being open.
The Strickler Center, 1114 W. High St., itself got a redo during the pandemic and showed it off during a donor appreciation reception Thursday.
The remodel involved providing necessary infrastructure for the other tenant agencies, said Jill Bourland, Strickler Center board president. It was also something of a puzzle they needed to put together.
Their first step was remodeling space that was previously used by the Isabella County Restoration House for computers that guests would use to build resumes or look for jobs. It was empty and was remodeled to accommodate Clothing Inc., which was in a different part of the building, Bourland said.
Once Clothing Inc. slid into its new space, the Strickler board remodeled the space it was in, which created an empty space for remodeling. That continued and now the Strickler board is left with one empty space, which it is hoping to fill soon, she said.