Women getting out of prison will have a new place to call home thanks to Soteria’s reinstated women’s program that kicked off Aug. 11 with a ribbon cutting at the new home at 4 Woodland Lane, Greenville, just off Wade Hampton Boulevard.

Soteria Community Development Corp., which owns the building, enlisted the men from its woodworking program to help get the new home ready. There is room for about 15 women across its two floors, and there are already women ready to move in. Each room is inviting, with encouraging messages posted throughout the house.

“We have a debt-free facility,” said Jerry Blassingame, founder and CEO of Soteria who served as general contractor on the new home. “It’s a blessing to have a facility where we don’t have a mortgage payment.”

It’s not the first women’s program Soteria has offered. The last one was from 2008 through 2009, before it was closed from lack of need for its services. But Blassingame saw the need again for a women’s transitional facility.

“There are a lot of people getting out of prison with nowhere to go,” he said.

Soteria had to cancel the ribbon cutting earlier because of a massive fire that destroyed the organization’s woodworking shop, the primary source of the organization’s funds. Blassingame said he had a difficult previous day because of the continued cleanup from the woodshop fire.

“It’s like a death — sometimes we forget to grieve,” he said. “We were throwing away $50,000 worth of machinery. When they put each machine on the trailer to go to the landfill, it was like a funeral.”

The men from Soteria’s Travelers Rest program renovated the new women’s home, which took about three months, according to Catherine Blount, who handles Soteria’s public relations. The home will provide everything someone needs as they leave prison with next to nothing, including clothing.

The program, much like the one in Travelers Rest that works with 16 men at a similar facility, helps lower recidivism rates and teaches those formerly incarcerated basic life skills, job skills, budgeting, Bible studies and other life lessons to ensure they stay out of prison when they leave the program.

According to Soteria, there are a number of reasons communities need programs like these:

Blassingame said the training these returning citizens receive through the program can help people dramatically increase their chances for finding steady employment once they graduate from the program.

“I am so touched to see that Greenville still cares — that you still care,” he said.

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