Strong Center

Mollie Dalpae zips through the Spokane Valley Community Center like a hummingbird tracking a perfect flower. During her six-year tenure as director, her passion and energy have taken the community center to a higher level.

Her list of accomplishments includes raising $1.2 million in donations to fund a facility remodel in 2002. That project transformed the old Spokane Valley Nazarene Church, 10814 E. Broadway Ave., into a complex that houses nine nonprofit agencies which rent space there.

Recently, several staff members from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave the center $250,000 for the remodeling project, toured the center as part of a mission to assess the needs of area children.

“The center really provides a central place to meet a lot of different needs for families. It’s a one-stop shop for social services for kids and families and that’s kind of an innovative approach,” said Valisa Smith, a program officer for the foundation’s Pacific Northwest program.

The center was started in 1991 by 29 churches that pooled their resources and volunteers to serve the Valley’s poor.

“It has really been a lengthy, collaborative effort on the part of a ton of people,” said Barbara Olson, who served as director from 1995 to 1998.

The center’s focus has always been providing personalized assistance, whether purchasing steel-toed boots for a construction worker or providing money for car repairs.

“It’s all those little things that we take for granted that really are the basics. That’s what the center does is they slug away day after day doing those unsexy things that have to be done.”

Olson says Dalpae has skills in networking, grant writing and in tracking down nonmonetary donations that help the center.

After Dalpae approached a local real estate agent, he loaned the center 11 apartments to use for families who need temporary housing. She found a group of firefighters to mentor and pay for hockey equipment for a boy, living with his single mom.

The boy, now a preteen, is thriving.

“People want to help and if you give them a really specific thing, they will jump on it,” Dalpae said.

With the help of a “finely tuned staff” of two full-time and three part-time employees, Dalpae wages a tenacious battle against poverty.

Her dedication has personal origins. Her mother was a single parent who struggled to make ends meet while working as a teacher in California.

Until Dalpae was old enough to read the big letters that spelled out Goodwill, she thought that her family shopped at “House of Paris.”

The tiny white lie prevented her and her sister from being ridiculed when upper income kids asked where they bought a shirt or sweater.

“When people would ask, ‘Where did you get that outfit,’ I would tell them the truth and say ‘The House of Paris,’ ” she recalls.

The sisters never attended birthday parties because they couldn’t afford gifts. When money was tight, the family ate popcorn.

“It’s that sense that you’re different from everyone and that you’re not worthy.”

As an adult, she graduated from San Jose State University and moved to Spokane to pursue a master’s degree from Eastern Washington University.

While doing a six-month internship for the child advocacy program at the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office, she analyzed rape and child abuse cases to see if there was enough evidence to prosecute.

“It was so horrific what you saw. If they had been animals they would have been removed immediately, but they were children so they were left there,” said Dalpae, a mother of three. “For me to have such passion and fury, I had to have seen and experienced that.”

She happened upon a child rape case and realized that the young victim and his mother were her friends.

Her friend, a single mom, was struggling financially and rented a room to a man who attacked her son.

Dalpae talked the mother into testifying against the alleged attacker. Heartbreak turned to fury, she said, when the judge and jury criticized the mother for being careless and let the accused pedophile walk free.

She mentally retraced all the cases and discovered a common thread; a single mom who had made a bad decision out of financial desperation.

“They are so misled in that they lose their sense of self. It’s so difficult because he buys the kids school supplies and he takes them to baseball games.”

That weekend, Dalpae spotted an ad in The Spokesman-Review. A small Valley nonprofit was looking for a director. She took the job.

Her work, in large part, centers on providing services and niceties that ease the poverty that causes women to hook up with abusers.

The nonprofits housed at the center offer an array of free services. About 700 families use the Valley Food Bank each month.

Spokane Neighborhood Action Program helped 300 clients with energy assistance last winter and the Institute for Extended Learning has 35 people each week studying classes to get their general equivalency diplomas. The college also offers family literacy, and parenting, computer and math classes.

Theater Arts for Children provides after-school set design and performance art for kids.

Spokane Regional Health District programs, including Women, Infants and Children nutrition, served 3,500 clients last year. Their weekly food handlers’ class fills the 140 seat auditorium.

The staff organizes programs, depending on feedback they get from the families.

Employment 2.0, a class that helps people create resumes to improve their job prospects, has gotten rave reviews.

The center collects and distributes school supplies, Easter baskets and holiday gifts. The goal, Dalpae said, is to give low-income kids a taste of the joys that other children take for granted.

Last year, 106 baskets of baby supplies and 604 dozen bags of diapers were distributed, and about 3,000 people a month picked up clothes at the clothing bank. In 2003, the center provided $46,289 in emergency assistance for prescriptions, utilities, rent, gas vouchers, car repairs and bus tokens.

Anita Williams, the mother of eight, was part of the Welfare to Work program. She interned at Spokane Valley Community Center and was hired on five years ago.

Two years ago, she found herself needing many of the services that she usually helps others get, and found the nonjudgmental help and the tools she needed to improve her life.

“A lot of people don’t want to ask for help because they feel they’ll be criticized,” Williams said. “We don’t set there and judge.”

Today, Williams is taking computer classes at the center and plans to expand her work duties and take on more hours.

Dalpae said there’s nothing more uplifting than seeing a family get back on its feet. “How can you not like a job like this? Our families feed our souls everyday.”