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This is Living Ministries has expanded its Cookeville office in an attempt to increase addiction recovery and prevention.
Director of Development Rob Frazier said the organization impacted over 3,000 lives from October through December of 2023. He said the new facility at 390 South Lowe Avenue will allow that number to grow exponentially in the coming months.
“This corporate office is really a measure about, of course, our expansion of space, sure, but we’re not trying to impress, we’re trying to impact,” Frazier said. “And that’s the name of the game. So, what this will do is allow us to eventually be able to hold training.”
Executive Director Lindsay Holloway said the organization had only two employees for years after it was founded. She said that number has grown to seven in recent years, so the organization needed a bigger space.
“We did not have enough space for offices for any of us to work, for donor meetings, for counseling,” Holloway said. “Our board decided that now that we have multiple executive officers, that we needed to have a corporate office for us to work in.”
Frazier said because This Is Living Ministries is a non-profit, much of the project was completed through donations and partnerships. He said a partnership with Lowe’s provided flooring materials, while Valor Construction installed the floors. He said partnerships like these are what This Is Living Ministries is all about.
Frazier said new office will allow them to create more of those.
“There are several key needs,” Frazier said. “We’re looking for, you know, conference tables. We want people to partner and in the spirit of partnership, we want people to have buy-in and say, ‘I had part in that impact.'”
Frazier said the new space will have room to hold “concerned person training.” He said people who may have been enabling addictive behavior in a loved one will have the chance to come face-to-face with someone who has lost a friend or family member to addiction and become educated on how to help before it is too late.
“It will allow us to work with those entities,” Frazier said. “Form those relationships and partnerships. It allows us to work together and be more effective and take that impact of 3,000 people in three months and drastically increase that.”
