W omen’s Resource Center is women helping women to navigate life’s hurdles, to access community services, to develop new skill sets, to move lives forward.
Women’s Resource Center is your connection point to a vast network of services available in our community.
Whatever the challenge, find the help you need – whether you are dealing with divorce, returning to work, starting a business, dealing with financial difficulties, or coping with family or health problems.
Our Mission
The mission of the WRC is to promote the self-reliance of women by assessing needs, providing services and acting as a gateway to community resources. In seeking solutions for unmet needs, the WRC provides strategic leadership through collaboration and partnerships within the community.
Our Values
- We believe that all people have dignity, worth, and potential: therefore, we treat all people with respect and we honor their individuality and diversity.
- We believe in the ability of all women to grow into their own potential; therefore, we provide the tools and the environment for women to use their intelligence and strength to create their solutions
- We believe that we can change the world; therefore, we will act as change agents and advocates for an equal and just world.
- We believe in humor, fun, and celebration; therefore, through our attitudes, actions, truths, and stories, we will model the importance of incorporating humor, creativity, fun, and celebration into our lives.
Our History
In the mid-1990’s, four Greensboro women — Marian O’Connor Franklin, Vivian Lutian, Ashley Brooks, and Susan Sassmann — began discussing developing a place where women in Greensboro could come for information, advice, support and assistance. While Greensboro had a wealth of community resources, there was not a system in place to guide women in accessing these services. After a year of study, conversations with non profit and government agencies, visits to existing Women’s Resource Centers in North Carolina, and review of community needs assessments, the four women decided to open a Women’s Resource Center in Greensboro.
The Women’s Resource Center (WRC) opened on August 26, 1995 in the historic Ireland House in downtown Greensboro. The WRC offered programs in peer advocacy, a job-training program for displaced homemakers, a free attorney hotline, a computer data bank, a library for women’s issues, and a barter board where women could exchange information about goods or services. During that first year, the WRC served approximately 800 women. Currently the Center is working with nearly 9,000 women each year.
During a significant growth period and following the third move in five years to leased offices, the leadership of the Women’s Resource Center began to explore the possibility of finding a permanent home. In many ways, the Women’s Resource Center was facing a problem that many of the women who come to the WRC understand — finding safe and affordable housing. When WRC found the space it needed, it could not afford it and when WRC found what it could afford, it was not large enough.
In 2000, with the decision to build a permanent facility for the Women’s Resource Center came an exciting and energizing opportunity. The Toleo Foundation, a long-time and generous supporter of the WRC, challenged not only the WRC, but the community, with a gift of $300,000 for the new Center, to be matched two-for-one with other gifts and grants. With this challenge gift in hand, the Board of the Women’s Resource Center approved the undertaking of a $2,200,000 capital campaign entitled Building the Futures of Women. On August 15, 2001, we purchased almost ¾ acre of land at the corner of Summit Ave. and Yanceyville St.) In April of 2003, the Women’s Resource Center opened its new doors at 628 Summit Avenue.