Late last year, Queen City News and its parent company, Nexstar, launched a campaign to feature remarkable women in our area throughout this month. We asked you to tell us about the remarkable women in your life, and you answered!
CATAWBA COUNTY, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — There are women in our community whose lives have taken unexpected turns and left them in difficult or dangerous situations — like feeling lost at sea with no direction. But Debbie Haynes came to the rescue for some of these women, founding an organization that would provide a safe harbor.
“I feel like… really and truly, this is a story about God, and what he’s done through me.”
These are the words of Debbie Haynes — soft-spoken but full of drive and determination to help people.
While working as a church secretary in Hickory in the late 1990s, Debbie heard about a ministry that involved meeting with women in the Catawba County jail. She intended to talk with them about God and having a new life and hope. What ended up happening was what Debbie calls a “paradigm shift”.
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She explains, “Listening to them tell their stories of abuse and the dysfunction in their families, and then their addictions… I thought, Wow, where would you even begin to start over?”
Debbie found one common denominator among the women—99% of them reported being sexually abused when they were young. One heartbreaking event gave her the impetus to find real help for these women.
“She would cry, she was a repeat offender,” Debbie recalls. “She was back and forth in the jail. She would cry and ask for prayer and say, I really don’t want to live like this anymore. Not long after I met her, she was found murdered here in town.”
A woman at church helped Debbie gather the paperwork for starting a non-profit, and after establishing relationships with different organizations around town, Debbie started a support group for women and their children. She says it all happened so fast. Safe Harbor was founded in 2004. Its mission? To provide a Christ-centered community for women to rebuild, renew, and recover.
Linda Gensheimer met Debbie during the early days of Safe Harbor. She remembers, “I saw how much compassion she had for these girls in recovery. She had such a vision for what happens after recovery. Where do they go, what do they do?”
The Safe Harbor community encompasses the many stages of recovery. There’s a center for women and children experiencing homelessness, providing a hot meal, showers and internet access.
Then there’s the year-long Whole Woman residential program, as well as transitional housing. The Greenleaf apartments were donated to help women and their children move toward their independence. Safe Harbor also operates a local thrift store, providing job training and experience to participants in the program.
Current Executive Director Gigi Williams states, “This is all here because she was willing to step out and said, I have to do something to help somebody else. And that’s Debbie Haynes, all the way through.”
But most of all, Debbie is thankful to God.
“If you see what God has done, it really is miraculous. It shows what his power and community partners can really do. ‘Cause this place wouldn’t exist without donors, without volunteers, without people seeing that this is something I really wanna get behind.”
If you’d like to get behind Safe Harbor’s mission, just go to their website, safeharbornc.org. They hold several fundraisers and events throughout the year, including Camping for a Cause in June—inviting people to sleep in tents for the night to raise awareness for homelessness.
