Mentor Kids Kentucky, an area nonprofit organization that pairs underprivileged youth with community mentors, celebrated the grand opening of the program’s new facility, 2809 Veach Road, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, performed by the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce.
The journey that the organization took to get to the ceremony, said Mentor Kids Kentucky Executive Director Berly Sullivan, took about two years and a lot of “blood, sweat and tears” to get to this point.
“If you could have seen this building before …” Sullivan said in a speech as she addressed city officials, Mentor Kids Board members, members of the community and the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce.
The building, she said, initially had no running water or heat and the lighting wasn’t great.
At Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting, guests were able to view the upgraded and renovated facility, which includes areas to do arts and crafts and play board games, a pool table, a video game area, a fully functioning kitchen and a washer and dryer, which allows the community mentors to work one-on-one with their mentee to learn basic kitchen and laundry skills, “so kids don’t have to go to school in dirty clothes,” Sullivan explained.
Following the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, lunch was served inside the facility and two speakers, City Commissioner Curtis Maglinger and local periodontist Dr. Greg Adams, along with Sullivan, addressed the crowd, talking about the importance of community mentors.
Commissioner Maglinger spoke in the place of Owensboro Mayor Tom Watson, who is still recovering from a medical event at the end of 2025.
“This community is always believing in people,” said Maglinger. “As someone who’s spent their life here in Owensboro and serving as a city commissioner, I see that spirit every day. Programs like Mentor Kids continue that tradition by investing into the next generation. This facility has become a place where encouragement is given, confidence grows and young people deserve opportunities that they may not have, that they might not have thought possible.”
Adams spoke about the positive impact that mentors make, especially when a child’s home life isn’t ideal, something that he recalls growing up with an alcoholic father.
“Dad was a smart man. He was very well educated. He worked in the distillery business for a number of years, and at 4:45 p.m. he got home, but at 5:30 p.m. I couldn’t talk to him. It was gibberish because he had a significant alcohol problem. …So, growing up with a parent like that, it’s kind of tough,” Adams said.
He said that he found support from a coach in his life, Mayor Tom Watson.
“Coach was my guy in high school. …At practice, he would come up, put his arm around me and say, ‘What’s going on today?’ And we would talk. …We didn’t have a place like this,” said Adams. “When I told (my dad) I was going to medical school, he said, ‘Well, you’re the biggest failure in my life, get out and don’t come back.’…But Tom was there.”
Adams said that he and Watson exchanged letters and phone calls while he was in college.
“We stayed in touch, and, to this day … I still have all his letters, and I’m going to go back and read those letters because they were all affirmations, like ‘You got this,’ ‘You can do this,’ ‘Keep your head up’ and ‘Don’t quit.’ — all those things that we need to hear growing up because, for me, I wasn’t getting it at home. And that was the difference that mentorship made for me,” Adams said.
Sullivan shared an entry she wrote in a journal in 2023, stating that the building repairs and renovations were “quite the journey.”
“What if word got out and kids found out about a safe place, where dreams for their future were encouraged and actually achievable with the dedicated support of people, where they could actually start to believe that they might actually start to believe that they might actually be about to achieve their dreams, and hope their future is planted by the way of a mustard seed. And even though the mustard seed is the tiniest, over time, with consistency and the love and support of those people, that little mustard seed that has been planted into a child, it reaches its fullest potential, breaking through the barriers and the hard circumstances that were set to keep them captive,” Sullivan said.
She continued, “They break the cycle before the cycle breaks them. And they had the courage and the strength to do so because of those people showing up, and then having a safe place to go. What if word got out on the street that there was a safe place built with love and grace, where kids could go when they feel they have no one in their corner, and the darkness is settling in around them. A place where they could safely take a breath. …When that light pierces their darkness, ushering in hope — hope for the moment, hope for the night, hope for the future.”
Sullivan said that those words described her goals for the new venue, which the organization moved into in January 2024, spending the past two years renovating the facility to make the space ideal for mentors to spend time with their mentees in an ideal location.
More information about Mentor Kids Kentucky, along with information about how to become a mentor, can be found on mentorkidsky.org.
By Michele Lohman Messenger-Inquirer