West End Community Center
"The Wend End Community Center is a non-profit organization devoted to providing a warm and welcoming place to meet for our friends and neighbors."
www.weccrichmond.com
The West End Community Center advertises itself as "the house that women built." The building was constructed in 1958 after members of the Thomas Jefferson, Westhampton, and Westwood Junior Woman's Clubs recognized their was a need for a community meeting space in the West End.
Eighteen of these women formed the Tri Club Woman's Club and raised the money needed to build what is now the West End Community Center. The first project that the new Tri Club Woman's Club started was to establish a lending library in the west end, which they still maintain to this day.
Their location at 8102 Ridge Road has a large, fully stocked kitchen and auditorium on the first floor with a raised stage. The auditorium can fit up to 130 people and anyone who rents the space is welcome to full use of the kitchen. The second story has a library with a smaller kitchenette, which can sit up to 50 people.
Their website has a gallery of photos that show the interior and exterior of the building, including the recent landscaping.
The building (or individual floor) can be rented for weekly, monthly, or single events.
Their flyer says that they are available for church activities, classes, parties, receptions, club meetings and meals.
That's all the information I could find about WECC on the internet and it all came from their website. I went five pages back on Google and found plenty of mentions on other websites who were promoting their own event taking place at WECC, but nothing new on them.
But let's get real; I don't need to explain to you why Community Centers are important. Having an affordable meeting hall that is open to the neighborhood, for events both public and private, is essential to 'community.'
Let's take a look at those events I mentioned earlier; church activities, classes, parties, receptions, club meeting and meals.
Everything in that list is a major part of any communities heart.
And I want to help a communities heart.
I'm excited to work with the West End Community Center. As I mentioned in my first post I spent a lot of time volunteering before I came to school. We never did get around to building that swimming pool inside the church, so we'd always go down to the Community Pool early in the morning to teach the kiddos how to swim.
Before that, when I was in Boy Scouts, we built and raced derby cars in a local community center, which later hosted a dance my school organized wherein I danced for the first time with a girl.
And what could be better than that?
