Our Story

Our Community Place is the story of a community-centered grass roots project and a long-time vision that began in 1992 and finally became a reality in August of 2008.

In June of 1992, Ron Copeland bought the Little Grill Restaurant.  By October of that year, he had begun closing the restaurant on Mondays and offering a free noon meal to “anyone in the world.”  From the beginning, Ron’s vision for the Free Food For All Soup Kitchen was that it would be a cooperative community meal rather than specifically a charitable meal – everyone would be welcome, all work would be volunteer, and meals would be served “family-style.” He placed a container on the front counter of the restaurant marked “Soup Kitchen” and the patrons of the Little Grill responded with remarkable generosity.

In a few short years, the Soup Kitchen had become a phenomenon in its own right:  a no-strings-attached free meal that served a wide variety of people and maintained a joyous and mutually-respectful atmosphere. Due to a surplus of donations, Copeland and others began to talk about trying to acquire the old Salvation Army building, caddy-corner to the Little Grill, at the corner of Johnson and Main as a potential new home for the Soup Kitchen.  Soon, the vision of Our Community Place (OCP), a community center that would push beyond free food and into community building, began to take shape.

In 1999, OCP incorporated and became a 501(c)(3) organization.  After two years of intensive fundraising, in January 2001, OCP placed a down payment on the 3/4 acre lot at 17 E. Johnson St.  And then, due to generous donations from many in the community and a creative grassroots borrowing concept called “Community Financing,” the property was paid for in full by January of 2002.

 

Renovating the old Salvation Army building

The renovation project was a huge – seemingly impossible – task.  The idea of a small group of people with full time jobs, no income besides donations, no skilled laborers in the group, and no paid staff renovating a building that had asbestos floor tiles, old cracked windows, a leaky roof, no insulation, collapsed ceilings, no plumbing, no electricity, no kitchen, a defunct heating system, and an unsuitable floor plan seemed absurd.  For all intents and purposes, the building was basically a cinderblock shell.

Renovation lasted for seven and a half years as funds and/or volunteer labor allowed.  Countless individuals, church groups, and contractors donated time, materials, and money.  The value of the total renovations has been estimated at $250,000 or more.  Finally, on Monday, August 18, 2008, OCP received its Certificate of Occupancy from the City of Harrisonburg, and held the very first Soup Kitchen in the building on the very same day.

In the context of our society of instant gratification, the OCP project may have seemed to have taken a long time, but from our perspective, it has been an amazing process which has grounded itself deeper and deeper into the community.

 

OCP opens!

OCP opened and immediately began welcoming anyone in the world seven days a week, 365 days a year!  Folks coming to the community center enjoyed access to computers, a washer and dryer, connections to resources in our community.  They also found a safe, warm place to interact, learn, and play while developing relationships in community.

Our Community Works and Our Community Farm are born

Recognizing the important need of meaningful work and labor for many in our community, we also began Our Community Works, a mentoring work program intended to provide mentorship and job skills training through personal coaching and work opportunities.  Began in 2009, this program soon joined with Our Community Farm in 2010 to provide additional work opportunities for residents in the farm’s recovery program.

After many years living among and attempting to serve our community’s poorest members through “free food for all” meals and the community center, we saw clearly that so many of these folks’ lives were being suffocated and choked out by drugs and alcohol. There was need for a safe space to recover and find restoration.  This need became a reality when we bought a working farm and farmhouse near New Market, VA from a sister community organization and opened a recovery farm in January 2010.  In the first two years, thirteen individuals accepted the opportunity to seek recovery from drug and alcohol addictions through “Our Community Farm.”

Reflecting and beginning anew

In September 2011, Our Community Place’s Harrisonburg location closed for reflection and restructuring in order to better provide the opportunity for joyful and vibrant community life welcoming for all people, specifically but not solely welcoming for those who are homeless and struggling with difficult life circumstances.  The community center in Harrisonburg reopened in October with reduced hours, staff support, and well-defined programming, all set to better achieve OCP’s mission:

Our Community Place seeks to build an atmosphere of love, safety, education, spiritual awareness, healing and fun in which anyone in the world is welcome to help and/or participate. OCP is dedicated to breaking down barriers that tend to separate humans from the joys to be experienced in loving communities and particularly dedicated to including in its activities those struggling with poverty and difficult life circumstances.

Given the time to pause and reflect, Our Community Farm also took this opportunity to redevelop its programming, now structured around the seasons in a curriculum, “New Creation through Cultivation,” welcoming up to eight individuals seeking personal and substance abuse recovery.  The first installation of the new curriculum and programming begins Spring 2012.