Aspire vision a reality with opening of youth, young adult services center

ALBANY — Albany Area Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Barbara Rivera Holmes summed up the overall feeling of hope and affirmation that surrounded the ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated Aspire Youth and Young Adult Services Center at 321 William Junior St. in Albany Friday.

With dozens of dignitaries and workers in the mental health field on hand for the opening of the facility, Holmes said during brief remarks, “You’re vision is what we’re experiencing today.”

Indeed, the opening of the sprawling facility, which has everything from a snack room to recreational facilities to diagnostic stations to a lecture hall/meeting room, will become a state-of-the-art facility for services designed to meet the mental , emotional and behavioral health challenges faced by youths, young adults and their families in southwest Georgia’s Dougherty, Lee, Baker, Calhoun, Early, Miller, Worth and Terrell counties.

Aspire Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability CEO Dana Glass, Deputy Director Lisa Oosterveen and Youth/Young Adult Coordinator Andrea Kromminga spoke through tears of the significance of the new facility.

“When we opened our Youth/Young Adult Services facility (in Dougherty County), we quickly outgrew it,” Glass said. “(Aspire COO) Roger Haggerty did some looking, and he told me a few years back that he’d found the building for our program. It was not feasible at the time, but Roger did not let it go. About a year ago, he came to me and said, ‘It’s time.’

“To see that hope and promise, that vision, come to fruition today is really amazing. May is Mental Health Month, and what better way to kick it off than opening this facility that will allow us to invest in your youth and young adults in the region.”

Hope for investing in facilities of any kind reached a nadir in the wake of the COVID pandemic, as state leaders called for dramatic budget cuts in all state departments to cope with what was expected to be a crippling cut in revenue. But the state weathered the COVID storm better than most, and so much of the funding that was cut was restored during the 2022 legislative session.

Also during that recently completed session, the state passed landmark mental health legislation that, among other things, requires treatment of mental health patients to be given consideration equal to physical health treatment.

Glass thanked the state for this legislation and asked state Rep. Gerald Greene, R-Cuthbert, to offer remarks. Greene said he was proud to be part of the state leadership that pushed for — and got — unanimous approval of the mental health legislation.

“One of the questions that we’ve always faced is what do we do with all our young people asking for and needing help?” Greene said. “We had to respond (the way we did). Because if we don’t do what we can to help our young people in crisis, we will fail as a society.”

Kromminga, who praised the Aspire Board of Directors as “coming from a place of yes,” said she and staff are “excited about what we have the capacity to do in this facility.”