The Prairie Hope Women's Centre celebrated its grand opening on September 14, 2019 (CKOM News).

By CKOM News

New Facility

Prairie Hope Women’s Centre aims to reshape addictions rehabilitation in Sask.

Sep 15, 2019 | 1:22 PM

What started as a prayer on an empty field three-and-a-half years ago has turned into a revolutionary rehabilitation complex that hopes to change lives for generations in Saskatchewan.

On Saturday, Teen Challenge, a faith-based addiction rehabilitation organization, celebrated the grand opening of its latest facility, The Prarie Hope Women’s Centre. It’s an expansive complex located a few kilometres from Hague, approximately 50 kilometres north of Saskatoon.

A crowd of more than 200 people were there to mark the occasion and tour the new building.

Teen Challenge CEO Glen Smeltzer thinks the opening of the centre is all due to the support of the community — support that could translate into success for the program.

“When you see a community that wants you to succeed, when you see a community that has done all of this to show their love for you — that itself starts to build hope inside you,” Smeltzer said.

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Teen Challenge is an organization that operates in 125 countries across the world since getting its start in New York in 1958. The 12-month program focuses on a holistic, faith-based approach rather than a 12-step system and defines success as abstinence rather than harm reduction.

Teen Challenge Canada now operates eight locations across the country. The Prairie Hope Women’s Centre is the first location dedicated to women west of Toronto, but that’s not the only ‘first’ it’s boasting.

“Many of our facilities were originally built for other purposes and we’ve adapted them to run our program,” Smeltzer said. “This is the first facility that was built specifically for the purpose of what we do.”

Prairie Hope Women’s Centre director Robyn Arcand thinks removing the burden of having a woman uproot her life for a year to relocate to Toronto is the real gift of opening the centre.

“You had to be able to leave your family and everything behind,” she said. “For us to be able to celebrate the fact that we are now here, we are able to offer local help to women in this area is absolutely amazing.”

The program currently has five women at the facility, with room for another 22 more.

Many of the staff are what the organization calls graduates of the program. Smeltzer feels that facet alone will help women in the Prairies overcome addiction for years to come.

“Almost a quarter of our staff are graduates of our program,” Smeltzer said. “When they tell their stories and the students realize that they were once in the kind of situation that they themselves are trapped in, that inspires hope.”