The Safe Place of Eastern South Dakota celebrated its new home with staff, friends and community leaders at its new location at 1600 North Kimball in Mitchell.
Coleen Hoffman is Safe Place executive director. “I’m feeling excited and thrilled to kind of see this project complete,” said Hoffman. “In a couple weeks we’ll be bringing over the rest of the operations and fully operating by August 1st.”
Development Director Teresa Berndt says Build the Safe Future drive aimed to raise $6.3-million dollars. “For this building, but it’s also for sustainability of the building, it’s for making sure we have educational outreach for our nine counties, and then also with some staffing,” Berndt said.
She says the drive has gotten wonderful support through city, state and federal grants for the building. “But there’s all these other things, like we still need to have some money for our ADA compliant playgrounds that weren’t in our budget,” she continued. “And there’s, you know, items we need in-house, but we look for grants, and then we have businesses and organizations that support us.”
Safe Place of Eastern South Dakota is committed to creating safer communities in our region by serving individuals who have experienced domestic abuse, sexual abuse and/or human trafficking.