What started off as a clever idea to address recidivism has grown into something more — a community-driven response to concerning and costly social ills like homelessness, mental illness and substance abuse disorder.
Today, exactly a decade after Haywood Pathways Center was established, thousands of lives have been changed for the better. Although the journey hasn’t always been a smooth one for the Waynesville-based nonprofit, time, transparency and telltale statistics show Pathways to be on the right path towards another decade of service.
Like most clever ideas, Haywood Pathways Center didn’t just materialize overnight. It took a lot of teamwork, a little bit of luck, some celebrity star power and one visionary leader to push the whole thing across the finish line.
One day back in 2014, as Christopher was leaving work, he noticed two men sitting outside the sheriff’s office after just regaining their freedom. He asked them what they were up to, and they told him that they had nowhere to go — a recipe for recidivism.
“They have no hope,” Christopher told The Smoky Mountain News in December 2017. “So many of these people that are in our facility [the Haywood County Detention Center] right now, they’re completely away from their family for whatever reason, and have nobody else to reach out to. A lot of times … we’ll find that when they leave here, they will actually go out and commit a crime just to come back for another meal and another bed.”
