Greenville Pregnancy Help Center offers new services

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GREENVILLE — The Pregnancy Help Center, located at 105 W. Third St. in Greenville, has increased its services which now include A Pregnancy Loss Group Study, facilitated by Diane Perry and Linda Hardy.

It benefits women who have experienced the love of a child during pregnancy or shortly after and helps them cope with their loss. The loss may be through miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS or any other form of early infant death, said Lois Monroe, director of the help center.

According to a brochure at the center, this study is done in a small group of setting of four to six women, with rules being set in the beginning and confidentiality a priority.

“A chapter will be done each week for nine weeks,” Monroe said. “Symbolically representing one week for each month of a full-term pregnancy. The last week will be a memorial to the child.”

Cost of the study is $5 for a book that is used in the nine-week study. It will start Oct. 6 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and is held once a week.

Anyone interested in any of these programs may call the Pregnancy Help Center at 548-2731.

She also noted that fatherhood classes have been going on at the center for the last year and a half and are held Mondays at 6 p.m.

“It’s usually the girls’ boyfriends who attend,” said Monroe. “Micah Thorp facilitates that. He runs the program over and over, and it’s going pretty good…as well as you can get young guys to commit to anything. We’re finding there are more to committing to be fathers. The fathers can earn diapers earned for attending.”

According to Monroe, the recent Collingsworth concert held at Memorial Hall in Greenville benefited the Pregnancy Help Center.

“People who came to the concert were to bring packages of diapers,” Monroe said. “A total of 350 diapers came in and they will last a year.

The girls can earn coupons by going to classes and can come in and get seven outfits a month free in our material aid room. In there are also recycled clothes and furniture.

Another program started at the center is Sweet Talk for girls 13 to 18 years of age. It is held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. after school.

A brochure states that Sweet Talk is a fun time set apart each week to be with other girls their age. There will be open discussion in group sessions on topics of events happening in their everyday lives, such as peer pressure, home pressure and school pressure as well as introduction and labeling, positive thinking, bullying, self-worth, goals and another session called “I Am Awesome.” There is a time of refreshments and drink provided along with the activities and discussion, with The Bakery and Candy Boutique donating sweets every night the program is held.

“The girls don’t have to be pregnant to participate in this program,” Monroe said. “It is for girls not feeling good about themselves. They can socialize during this six-week program.”

The program is open to anyone in Darke County and it starts Oct. 6, with Mary Golding, a certified Sexual Risk Avoidance (SRA)

Another service the help center offers is “I Decide For Me.”

“An SRA takes it into the schools, talking about STDs and abstinence, to decrease girls having to use our services,” Monroe said. “The booklets change every two years, so we’re not teaching something obsolete. So far, we’ve been to Greenville High School twice and we are going into Arcanum the last of October. Later we will get into the junior high. It is a very expensive program for us.”

She explained that the booklets are passed out to the students each day so they will be returned to the center.

“We use a lot of power points and there are skits they do,” Monroe said about the volunteers. “Now, we have four woman trained to do this. The lack of volunteers is holding us back from getting into more schools.Tri-Village is waiting on the program. We just need contact people’s names in the schools. This is not an abstinence program.”

“We’re big on goals,” said Golding. “We teach them risks, not abstinence.”

The Pregnancy Help Center, Monroe explained, is for any male or female in an unexpected pregnancy..anything from unmarried teens to married couples who come in, too.

All services at the Pregnancy Help Center are free and confidential, Monroe said. They include pregnancy tests, peer counseling, the dad’s program, material aid for mother and child, Community Sexual Risk Avoidance programs, teen girls support and self-esteem program, post-abortion recovery support, referral for sexually transmitted disease testing and the “Earn While You Learn’ program for free diapers.

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By Linda Moody

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Linda Moody can be reached by calling direct at 569-4315. Be her friend on Facebook by searching her name. For more features online, go to advocate360.org or “like” The Daily Advocate on Facebook by searching Advocate360

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