Home No Longer Just a Hope *** Makeover Shows Female Side of House

By KAREN MARTIN

Finally, for the first time, the girls of Boys Hope Girls Hope have a place to call their own.

And what a place.

“It’s warm and welcoming,” said Meg Gerald, executive director of the local Boys Hope Girls Hope. “It looks nothing like it did when the boys lived here,” she added with a laugh.

Home to the boys (eight at a time) since 1996, the two-story white house on Government Street was sorely in need of a makeover.

“It was very dated and sort of institutional looking,” said Gerald. “There was a bright yellow kitchen and sort of a blue teal in the dining room. And there were walls that aren’t there anymore.”

When the boys moved to a home in Central in the summer of 2005, efforts began to rehab the house for Baton Rouge’s first residential facility for the girls.

However, before much headway had been made, Hurricane Katrina hit and girls from the flooded Girls Hope house in New Orleans moved in.

After their departure, the project got back on track. Renovations began in February.

Last month three girls – eventually there will be eight – moved into the house, along with two residential counselors.

Another counselor does not live on site.

A donation of $100,000 from someone who wants to remain anonymous made the renovations possible, said Gerald.

“But so many people pitched in, doing work for free or at greatly reduced rates, it’s just unbelievable,” said Gerald.

Now the home is chic and stylish, a modern palette of neutral tones coloring the walls and floors. It all has the touch of a decorator – make that a lot of decorators.

More than a dozen local design professionals donated their services and the furnishings to the house.

Staci Duhe, a Boys Hope Girls Hope volunteer, said all it took was a few calls.

“Nobody told me no,” said Duhe, whose father, Norman Deumite, was one of the founding members of Boys Hope in Baton Rouge in 1991. “In fact, before I could even get out my whole spiel, they were saying, ‘Absolutely. I’d love to do that.’ “

And that eagerness played forward throughout the design chain.

“The decorators told me that every client they mentioned it to and every vendor gave them money or materials,” Duhe said. “It was a beautiful situation that kept going and going and going.”

In addition to the decorators, whom Duhe called “the true heroes” of the project, she said Mapp Construction, which did all of the work at an “outrageous discount,” and Quota International of Baton Rouge deserve special mention.

“If I had not known they (Quota) had my back, I don’t know that I could have made this happen,” said Duhe. “They took this on and gave me the opportunity to get it started. They pushed me to get it done.”

Quota is an international service organization, known especially for service to deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired individuals and to disadvantaged women and children. Thousands of people here flock to the group’s Open Door tour of homes each year.

“Quota was responsible for the largest room – the kitchen and dining room,” which, Duhe said, needed everything from forks to floors. “They gave the proceeds of two tours to the effort.”

The kismet of an organization of women working for an organization to help girls seemed a nice fit, said Duhe.

“They liked that this is about a family environment, that it is about education and that it empowers women – how much more perfect could it have been?” she said.

Duhe said the decorators were given a “sand, sea and sky” color scheme. They were asked not to spend more than $1,000 on the room, said Gerald.

“We didn’t want some of the rooms to be better than others,” she said. “So it sort of has that ‘Design on a Dime’ feel. The designers had to be resourceful.”

Added Duhe, “That also was a life lesson to the girls that they can bring with them when they have to do a room themselves.”

Decorator Aimee Walker tackled an upstairs bedroom, one of four that the girls will share along with two bathrooms. A counselor also has a bedroom and bathroom upstairs, and there’s a huge study where each girl has her own desk.

Walker painted the room yellow and added a bold geometric pattern in darker yellow and orange, incorporating the fire alarm in the middle of the wall into her design.

“I knew the girls in this room would be around 14, so I wanted it to feel like a room for a young girl growing up, not a baby’s room,” said Walker. “I wanted to give them more of a grown-up feel.”

She said the $1,000 budget was stretched to cover everything from the swingy shell-shade lamp to the poppy wall art to the leopard- print stools, the bright orange comforters and the alarm clocks.

“We didn’t have to supply the beds,” said Walker.

She enlisted the help of her 12-year-old daughter, Bailey.

“I ran things by her to see if she approved,” she said with a laugh, noting her daughter also insisted on “luvies” for each girl. “That’s where the stuffed animals came from,” Walker said.

Working on the small room and limited budget was a challenge, she said, “but it’s such a worthy cause. This program teaches people how to make themselves better. It empowers girls to be what they can be. How could you not want to be involved with something like that?”

What is Boys Hope Girls Hope?

Headquartered in Bridgeton, Mo., and operating in 16 cities and two foreign countries, Boys Hope Girls Hope is a nonprofit organization for academically capable and motivated youngsters (ages 10 to 14 at time of admission) who might have trouble reaching their full potential if left in their home environments. Many of the youngsters come from homes marked by drug abuse, poverty or neglect. Others come from caring families unable to meet the child’s needs. Boys Hope Girls Hope gets no government funding. Called “scholars,” the youngsters accepted into the program are expected to:

Study hard and graduate from college.

Assist counselors in keeping the homes clean and laundry done.

Develop themselves spiritually and take part in a weekly worship service as well as group reflections in the home.

Participate in extra-curricular and cultural activities at school and within the community. The program provides medical, dental, psychological, mentoring and college preparation, as well as financial assistance to collegians in good standing. Youngsters in the program maintain regular contact with their parents or guardian. Boys Hope was organized in Baton Rouge in 1991. Girls Hope came to the city in early 2006.

ON THE INTERNET:

http://boyshopegirlshope.org/

(c) 2007 Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.