Jasmine Road, Community Spirit Award: A path home

Jasmine Road, a nonprofit founded in 2018 by area churches and Beth Messick, a Furman University alumna, was recognized by the Community Foundation of Greenville with the Community Spirit Award sponsored by First Horizon Bank. Part of the Community Foundation’s 2022 Charitable Giving Awards, the honor spotlights an outstanding nonprofit – one that yields “exceptional community service through vital programming and efforts to communicate and partner with other nonprofits.”

Dubbed a “housing-first” initiative, Jasmine Road is a two-year residential program for survivors of trafficking, prostitution and addiction. Once in the program, women are supported by more than 50 community partners providing them with resources from free health and trauma services to opportunities for training and employment in the culinary arts. In a TOWN Magazine article, Messick said, “Jasmine Road is a community effort; we can’t do this alone. It took a lot of broken systems for [these women] to wind up on the street, and it takes a community to welcome them back home.”

Messick is a psychology alumna from the Furman class of 1990.