By Alixandria Wells-Good
Contributing writer
MECHANICSBURG – David’s Place, a community resource center located at 3 West Sandusky Street in Mechanicsburg, held a community meeting on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024.
The meeting was held as a way to connect with community members about what David’s Place does, what services they provide and for the community to have a time to voice questions, concerns or other opinions.
Melissa Thompson, co-founder of “To Whom It May Concern,” and board member and Director of Operations at David’s Place, began with discussing how their resource center was started.
Thompson and her mother Annie had founded “To Whom It May Concern” as an outreach program for women coming out of the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville. In 2017, Thompson and her husband moved to Mechanicsburg where they met Merv and Tammy Miller, and quickly realized their missions aligned in many ways.
The Millers were at the time ministering to individuals at the Tri-County Jail through the Mechanicsburg Baptist Church, where Merv had taken on a leadership role of the jail ministry in 2011. Merv Miller stated: “We purchased the building in 2017 and in doing church services at the jail I would direct people to come there if they needed help. I met up with Ashley Purdy, and shortly after that we partnered together with her assisting the bulk of the females and myself assisting the males.”
Thompson shared: “Merv was the director for ‘Mechanicsburg for a Healthy Community’ and they were hoping to open a physical center location. However when that group disbanded, we voted as a board to merge Merv’s vision of the space and took on the resource center as a mission of TWIMC.”
The Millers were working with individuals from the Tri-County Jail through their nonprofit David’s Place. The two groups merged and would go on to open a physical location for their work, The Resource Center at David’s Place, in August of 2022.
Melissa went on to share David’s Place’s “Community Impact” statistics for 2023. It was shared that last year the resource center served 273 individuals. The majority of individuals served were from Champaign, Franklin, Union, Clark and Madison counties, in addition to 40 individuals from 19 other counties.
In 2023, David’s Place received a total of 214 referrals from the Tri-County Jail located in Mechanicsburg. They also received 20 referrals from the Justice Re-Investment Incentive Grant (JRIG), 13 referrals from community members, 11 from the Mechanicsburg Police Department, as well as several from the Caring Kitchen, the Ohio Reformatory for Women, West Central Community Correctional Facility, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, and client referrals.
Melissa went on to state that David’s Place had a hand in 554 acts of service in 2023, which doubled from the previous year. They logged 472 hours of community service and 684 hours of peer support. David’s Place also sponsored 75 children in their “Giving Tree” program last year. The center tracked 17,255 miles driven over the 311 rides that they gave last year. They
David’s Place has many goals for the 2024 year. They are opening a clothing closet, open for anyone, within the coming weeks. To donate items to the clothing closet, individuals should be contacted to arrange a time.
They also shared a goal of increasing their acts of service, peer support hours, and community service hours by 25%.
Melissa also spoke about the goal of increasing and implementing services provided to the senior population of the community as well as the community’s youth. They would also like to be able to bring in an additional board member, specifically an individual from the community.
During community discussion, Melissa shared that the non-profit is grant-funded, and that they receive approximately 95% of their operational funding from the Champaign Logan Mental Health Board. They also receive a grant from the Union County Mental Health board, funding from United Way, and last year they received a grant from the commissioners in Champaign County. They also have two sponsoring churches currently, Mechanicsburg Baptist Church and Bible Baptist Marysville.
More information on David’s Place and the services they provide the community can be found on their website davidsplace.org and their Facebook page. To contact the resource center for volunteer opportunities, assistance, and other reasons, anyone can call or text 937-209-9353.
