After 35 years serving children and families from a building that was never designed for its growing programs, Sanderlin is preparing to replace it with a 40,000-square-foot Education and Social Service Center. The new facility will nearly double the number of students the nonprofit can serve to at least 140.<\/p>\n
Space has become a persistent problem at the five-acre campus at 2335 22nd Ave. S. The food pantry, computer lab, boardroom and other programs currently have to share rooms, limiting how many services can operate at the same time.<\/p>\n
The new building will provide dedicated space for those programs and expand Sanderlin\u2019s youth and family services. Renderings show a two-story facility that will replace the existing building.<\/p>\n
Sanderlin offers after-school tutoring, homework help and educational programs, along with a public computer lab and food pantry. The center also connects residents with public assistance and hosts partner organizations offering services ranging from health care and developmental screenings to financial literacy, housing assistance and workforce development.<\/p>\n
Some of the students who use the center demonstrated another side of its programming with a deft djembe drumming performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe growth and the expansion that will occur from this groundbreaking, more lives will be changed, families will be impacted, children will be impacted,\u201d said Sheron Brown, St. Petersburg\u2019s director of education and youth opportunities.<\/p>\n
The center traces its roots to 1990, when the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg and local Black community leaders established what was then called the Black Family Service Center. It was later renamed for Judge James B. Sanderlin, a civil rights advocate and one of only a handful of Black attorneys practicing in St. Petersburg during the 1960s.<\/p>\n
Sanderlin has since become one of Pinellas County\u2019s Neighborhood Family Centers, with the Juvenile Welfare Board providing significant support for its programs. Its campus also serves as a base for dozens of community partners, including Pinellas County Schools, Dress for Success, Metropolitan Ministries, Johns Hopkins All Children\u2019s Hospital and the USF Mobile Nursing Unit.<\/p>\n
The expansion has been years in the making. Sanderlin CEO Celeste Collins previously said the existing building would be demolished to make way for the new facility, with the organization working through design, contractor selection and fundraising ahead of construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 35 years serving children and families from a building that was never designed for its growing programs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-400809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}