Pause Space Glow Up!
As you may know, when Pause first launched out as a nonprofit in July 2021, we did so with a gifted 8,200 sq ft of space inside Center Pointe Christian Church. We officially had a home base and our team was over the moon excited to host in-house events which eliminated all the packing, transporting and unpacking of our activities and supplies for each event we hosted.
We quickly noticed we were outgrowing our amazing space within months of our arrival. Last year, Pause added 126 families, making up 295 children - an average of 25 kids per month! That growth equaled the need for more room and Center Pointe graciously allowed us to add temporary rooms in order to grow our event capacity.
This summer, our team began looking at growth patterns over the previous 24 months and analyzing projected enrollment for our current programming year. After conversations with church leadership, Pause and Center Pointe expanded our partnership to include an additional 1,000 sq ft of space for Pause to call home! Although we were reserving and occupying this space at Parent’s Day & Night Out on a temporary basis, we are now able to make the space our own and design rooms to better fit the needs of our sensory loving kids! This allows us to keep necessary supports in place and alleviates moving furniture and resetting rooms before and after events. A huge blessing to our team while also saving our resources the wear and tear caused by moving them so often.
With the additional square footage, Pause was able to add:
A cafe for our kids to eat lunch/dinner.
A nature themed room to provide a calm atmosphere for kiddos navigating big feelings.
The Adventure room where kids can explore, play games, engage in STEM and science and more!
And a muti-purpose room utilized for sensory friendly activities at events and meeting space for our team during the week.
In addition to the added space, the Pause team did an environmental scan of our current environment and started glowing up some of our activity spaces this summer and will continue this fall. Some of the additions and improvements being made this year are:
Our Early Childhood environments received some new activities, larger tables and play tents for quiet spaces kids can retreat to. The Clubhouse, our 2-3 year old room, will be receiving a tree, sun and cloud mural to bring the outdoors in!
The Explorations room, our low stimuli space filled with games, activities and sensory tools, now features a United States wall decal and new wall-mounted TV so resilience teams have access to calming music, nature sounds and mindfulness videos.
Our creative arts, science and STEM space, known as the Discovery room, will now feature a new stage curtain, stage spotlights and pretend microphones with a puppet stage coming soon! Magnetic boards were added for magna-tile fun, as well as a magnetic roller coaster and new wall mural.
The Cafe, our new mealtime headquarters, is complete with whimsical and colorful pictures that feature different animals - a fan favorite!
Upgraded to a permanent space this year, the Adventure room has new age appropriate seating, along with a new calming corner.
Our second edition of Reflections, the Nature room, is still under construction awaiting a woodland mural, mossy green nugget seating and a hanging tree huddle pod. This much needed space will be a sister room to the already loved and infamous “ocean room.”
Center Pointe - thank you so much for your continued support for Pause as a whole, for believing in our aligned mission of Thriving Families and for recognizing the overwhelming need for families to have rest, support, connection and fun. We are honored to partner with you as our 2023 Community Partner of the Year as we link arms for another season of impact!
This is CAN DO. This is COMMUNITY. This is YOUR SUPPORT.
