SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A resource center for homeless women in downtown San Diego gets a remodel, all thanks to dozens of volunteers.
“This building is about 100 years old. We have been here for 42 years,” Vino Pajanor, CEO of Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego, said. “It needs a lot of TLC.”
A whole bunch of tender, loving care came to Rachel’s Women’s Center in Downtown San Diego.
“We are putting in new air conditioning (and) heating. We are doing a complete makeover of the internal,” Pajanor said.
Pajanor and Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego run the resource center for homeless women.
“They come in for having to go to use the restroom, take a shower, do some laundry,” Pajanor said. “Our team members engage with them to provide other wraparound services like health services and finding a DMV card.”
It’s a place that’s helped many women like Angelica Preciado.
“Rachel Center has helped me with my self-esteem with myself and encouraging me on things that I can do,” Preciado said. “So, they connected me with housing disability advocate program where I got housed through, so that's a, that was a great resource.”
The resource center was remodeled on Wednesday by plenty of volunteers who rolled up their sleeves.
"AEC Cares and Construct Connect are doing this; they're bringing their time, talent, and treasure together to make this miracle happen,” Pajanor said. “There are 100-plus volunteers who are architects, who are engineers, who are constructors who have come in and given their time before they go into their conference for the next couple of days to come in and do that kind of extreme makeover.”
On Wednesday night, city leaders got a tour of all the hard work put into the remodel. One of the volunteers tells me that doing the makeover for this kind of center makes this work feel that much more important.
“To be able to give them a safe place to live that's more colorful, that's more vibrant, that makes them feel a little bit more, get a leg up in the world, I think that really means a lot to us too,” Kelsey Erhart, a volunteer, said.
