Paint, carpet, playground: Volunteers spruce up children's home for Christmas
From replaced flooring and furniture to new playground equipment, a group of kids received the gift of a more home-like feel.
During the Mungo Homes Week of Giving, company volunteers renovated and upgraded the Central Children’s Home of North Carolina in Granville County. They replaced flooring and light fixtures, painted, repaired the playground, powerwashed the exterior, mulched, and decorated for the holidays.
The home offers a safe place for kids who are dependent, neglected or abused. It started as the Grant Colored Asylum in 1883 after Dr. Augustus Shepard “became familiar with the large number of homeless and neglected children” throughout the state, according to the website. It went through several names throughout the years before landing on its current one.
“We’ve always been proud of this home. It’s the oldest Black orphanage still in existence in in North America. And it’s a beautiful part of our history,” secretary of the board Buck Buchanan said.
The facility has two cottages: one for boys and one for girls.
Mungo Homes employees updated the boys’ building, with the help of trade partners Builders Wholesale Flooring, NC Colors, Trashmasters, Ogilvie Electric and Perry Corporation. In May, Mungo Homes will go back out to renovate the girls’ building.
“I’m hoping that the rest of the community will see that our history needs some help to stay history; It needs help to become the future,” Buchanan said.
Alisa Hinton with Mungo Homes described missing swings, stained carpets and a space that was overall overdue for an upgrade.
“It felt very institutional; we wanted it to feel like a home,” she said.
Blake Currin, who also works for Mungo Homes, is from Oxford. He said he was very familiar with the facility prior to the project.
“Probably one of the most rewarding parts of this is just being able to give back to the community that I’m from,” he said. “Just seeing the condition of the playground, for example swings missing, I just I knew that we could do a lot of good here.”
The children also received Christmas gifts.
“They didn’t think that they were going to get everything that they wanted, so they made their lists small,” Buchanan said.
They did, however, get everything on their lists and more.
“On our last day, one of the young men came through, we walked him through here, and we were all a little bit teary-eyed just seeing his reaction. You could just see how much it meant to him, especially at the holiday season,” Currin said.
