After fire, community rallies to help Duplin County Partnership for Children

KENANSVILLE — One of the victims of a fire that destroyed a four-unit office building on Limestone Road in Kenansville on Dec. 29 was the Duplin County Partnership for Children.

Christy Jones, executive director of the non-profit agency founded in 1994, told Duplin Journal the fire had destroyed all the organization’s belongings.

“We lost everything,” Jones said. “Our diaper pantry, we lost all those supplies. Our car seats, we lost all of those. All of our outreach materials that we use for events, all that’s gone, and we lost everything else; computers, supplies, materials. There is literally nothing that was salvageable in the building.”

Jones said the community is stepping in to help.

“The community is doing lots of diaper and wipes drives to help us get that program back up and running,” she said.” There’re also drives for gently used children’s books, new or used. We use those because we have the Little Free Libraries that we sponsor in the county. We’ve had quite a few monetary donations coming in. We’ve also had donations of office supplies.”

Of all the needs, the most pressing one is monetary donations, according to Jones.

“The reason for that is we cannot accept car seats from the public because they have to be new. We have to have the money to purchase those with. Every day we’re realizing that we go to do something and we don’t have it, so we need to have the funds to be able to purchase those things when we come across items that are missing that we need.”

Donations to Duplin County Partnership for Children can be made on the organization’s Facebook page. In addition, in-person donations can be made at their temporary offices located in the Duplin County Department of Social Services at 423 N Main St., Kenansville.

The nonprofit’s phone system was also destroyed in the fire, meaning the main telephone number is not in service. A temporary phone number has been created at 910-290-2057.