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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

The Cawaco Resource, Conservation & Development Council recognized five projects from 2024 as Projects of the Year, one of which was Chilton County’s Raleigh’s Place and their new transitional apartments. The apartments were designed to support young men who recently aged out of foster care with a place to not only live, but develop life skills to benefit them into their next chapter of life.

“There are not a lot, or I do not think there are any, facilities to house the foster boys that are aging out of care,” Patti Pennington, Cawaco RC&D Program Manager, said. “It was just a really good project, had a lot of community support and raised a lot of money (for it), and it is a public facility that enhances the area. We thought it was a very good project.”

This was the first year Cawaco RC&D reintroduced the Projects of the Year honor after handing it out years ago. A different way to select the honorees was planned for the nonprofit after many new employees came aboard recently. Pennington had those new employees read through all of the projects they offered grants to in 2024, and they selected their favorites and the ones they felt most passionate about. Their input, along with Pennington’s and other administrators, was combined to select five worthy projects.

Raleigh’s Place and Executive Director Mike King were awarded a $10,000 grant from Cawaco RC&D to go towards the building of their transitional apartments. The new facility is attached to the nonprofit’s thrift store Katie’s Kloset in Clanton and features eight apartment style rooms, a kitchen area, a laundry room, a gathering area, a waiting room, office space and a spacious backyard.

In research and data that Raleigh’s Place and King look at for young men who have recently aged out of foster care, they saw that a significant amount of them end up homeless, addicted to drugs, in trouble with law enforcement, unemployed or other issues that compound on one another leading to hardships. The nonprofit can now offer stable housing, along with life skills training and access to employment opportunities to help empower the young men they interact with as they go through the transition to adulthood. The goal of these apartments is to address some of those issues while providing a safe space for them to live and training to prepare them for what life looks like as an independent adult.

“For those guys, if they were in foster care as teenagers, they probably bounced around house to house or spent some time in a group home, and they never had anybody parenting them or investing in them to teach them things,” King said. “That is the goal. To produce independent young men who are ready to be their own man.”

Cawaco RC&D does not see many, if any, facilities dedicated to specifically housing young men aging out of the foster system. There are many specifically for young women, but not young men. The grant awarded to Raleigh’s Place in 2024 was the first grant that Cawaco RC&D provided to a housing facility specifically for young men after giving a few to facilities for young women in the past.

“(Facilities like that) are very important because they age out at 18, but they cannot even get an apartment until they are 19,” Pennington said. “They need these places that support them, and give them some love and attention to help them become successful.”

Raleigh’s Place and the four other projects were honored in December at the Cawaco RC&D annual meeting, and were chosen because they “went above and beyond due to the size of their impact, uniqueness, creativity and the partnerships utilized,” according to a press release from the nonprofit.