Valley Roundup
The nonprofit group Women Advancing the Valley through Education, Economics and Empowerment, or WAVE, will build a $1.25-million child development center near its northeast Valley transitional housing center for battered women.
Ground is to be broken in a few months and the center is expected to be completed by fall, said WAVE Executive Director Ann Beckham-Akerman.
The project has received state and city funding, with $1 million coming from the state’s Families Moving to Work Program, which helps CalWorks recipients become self-sufficient.
The new center will provide day care, academic programs and mental health counseling for as many as 140 children who live in the northeast Valley’s Harbour Community, WAVE’s 36-unit transitional shelter for battered women.
“The unique component is that it’s specifically for our children, survivors of domestic violence,” Beckham-Akerman said. “These families have suffered years of abuse. There was an extremely big need for this.”
WAVE opened Harbour Community, the largest transitional housing complex of its kind in Los Angeles, three years ago. The facility offers battered women, with as many as eight children each, 18 months of shelter and a full roster of counseling and training programs.
The building’s exact location is kept secret to protect the women and children using it.
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