We need to make more evening hours available for our clients to take Parenting and Life Skills Program classes and shop in our Boutique! Can you help us do that? We’re looking for reliable volunteers who can serve regularly as evening hosts here at the Center—opening and closing the building, greeting clients at the front desk, and supporting the instructors and Boutique assistants as needed.

• Monday or Thursday evening from 5:30-8:30 PM
• Commit to serve weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly
• Perfect for retirees or empty-nesters!
• Couples preferred for increased security during evening hours (individuals considered as well)

To find out more, please contact Dolores Nush at doloresn@blueridgewoman.org.

Host a table at our banquet! It’s the best chance all year to spread the word about the work of Blue Ridge Women’s Center to the people who can help it flourish. When you invite your friends, relatives, colleagues, and fellow church members to come to the fundraising banquet with you, you give them the opportunity to deepen their understanding of how the Center benefits the women and babies of our community—and how they can get involved!

Won’t you commit today to host a table for ten and help spread the word about the Center? The cost is covered by our banquet underwriters so that there will be no cost to you as a table host, and every penny that your banquet guests give can go directly to support our work.

October 13 at 7 PM | The Hotel Roanoke

Wondering about the birth center that’s moving into our former office in Rocky Mount? We thought you might be, so we asked New Life Birth Center’s president, Karen Winstead, for more details…

What is New Life Birth Center?
New Life Birth Center (NLBC) is a non-profit, 501(c)3 faith-based organization with a vision to demonstrate the love of Christ by empowering families through the Midwives Model of Care.

What services will you offer?
Our mission is to provide holistic maternity care services including prenatal, birth, and postnatal care, breastfeeding assistance, and lifelong health care and education.

How will the birth center partner with Blue Ridge Women’s Center?
New Life Birth Center is an outgrowth of the desire to continue to minister to the women who seek counseling at Blue Ridge Women’s Center. Many of the seeds planted at BRWC can be watered and fed throughout the months of pregnancy and postpartum. Midwifery care is built on forming relationships. These relationships allow ongoing opportunities to introduce and reinforce Gospel truths and principles in the lives of women and their families.

How will the birth center be funded?
We plan to accept private insurance, Medicaid, and self-pay clients, and project that NLBC will be self-sufficient by the third year of operation.

How will the birth center benefit the community?
Midwifery care and group prenatal care has been shown to reduce the number of abortions, low-birth weight infants, and cesarean section rates. We project that for every 300 women NLBC serves, over $1,500,000 will be saved in health care costs alone.

What does the birth center need to get started?
• Prayer: For our board, staff, volunteers, potential clients.
• Seed funding: For start-up and operating expenses in the first three years.
• Appliances: Washer, dryer, small freezer, small autoclave.
• Construction: Handicap ramp, small amount of interior renovation, occupancy permit.

When will the birth center open?
If all goes as planned, we will start taking appointments for August in the next couple of weeks. To sign up for our e-mail newsletter so you can keep up with the birth center opening and activities, please visit our website.

The building has changed hands, but the legacy of support for pregnant women continues strong. On June 30, our CEO signed the papers selling our Franklin County clinic to Psalm 127, LLC, for use by New Life Birth Center.

Our satellite office in Rocky Mount had gotten off to a great start when it opened in 2005, with tremendous community interest and support. Unfortunately, in recent years the low client numbers there, combined with staffing and budget constraints, have caused us to close that office and return to serving all clients at our main clinic in Roanoke instead.

That left us with a dilemma: what to do with the building that our Franklin County friends had renovated with such care. We put it on the market, but interest in the building never matured into a contract…until this spring, when Franklin Memorial Hospital (just down the street from our Rocky Mount building) announced that it would no longer be delivering babies, leaving the county without a local option for childbirth. Rapidly, the perfect purpose for our former clinic became clear—as the new home for New Life Birth Center!

Karen Winstead, the nurse-midwife at the birth center’s helm, has been a friend of Blue Ridge Women’s Center for years. The mission of New Life Birth Center dovetails beautifully with ours, and we can think of no better future for our Rocky Mount center, no better way to honor the investment of those who brought it into being, than to see the building continue to serve as a site of support for women and babies. We look forward to working in close partnership with New Life Birth Center in the coming years and being able to recommend it as a resource to our clients.

Please join with us in welcoming New Life Birth Center, and rejoicing God’s ongoing provision for the mothers and babies of Franklin County!

Find out more about New Life Birth Center…