The Salvation Army has been in Van Wert for some time, but had been held back by how much they could do with their old location. Â But now all of that can change with the official opening of a new facility on Cherry Street.
It’s been a long time and a lot of work to get to this point for the Salvation Army.
"This is almost a 10-year project, from the time that Art and Judy Barter moved to town and they started seeing that the work that they were doing was somewhat limited by where they were, and they started looking for buildings," said Major Larry Ashcraft, Divisional Commander of Southwest Ohio and Northeast Kentucky for the Salvation Army. "From the time that they discovered the building to the time that they got it renovated and we moved in just this past year, it's been 10 years."
The newly renovated building, which the organization moved into back in 2015, has enough room to provide several kinds of services, like a food pantry, a kitchen to serve meals every week, and a nursery for kids.  It’s all just to help the organization fulfill their mission of "doing the most good".
"The Salvation Army across the world is known as a organization that sees a problem and then does something about it; we don't want to sit back and talk about the problem, we want to do something about it," said Lt. Josh Morales.
After all of their work, the Van Wert Salvation Army is hopeful for the future.
"We're doing the best we can, and the future is very bright, because we're going to continue to look for better ways that we can serve," said Lt. Morales.
