Hope-Hope-Hope

Store manager Hope Laird poses in the Hope Chest Thrift Store on North Magnolia Avenue in Ocala, Fla. on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. The store will support the nonprofit Project Hope of Marion County, which helps women and children. A grand opening is planned for 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 25. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2025.

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Posted March 18, 2025 | By Susan Smiley-Height, [email protected]

The Hope Chest Thrift Store, a ministry of Project Hope of Marion County, will open on March 25 with a store manager named Hope Laird. All that “hope” will go a long way in helping mothers and their children transition out of homelessness.

The nonprofit Project Hope of Marion County was established in 2007 by a faith-based community group. The organization manages the Hope Villas apartment complex in northeast Ocala. Thirty-two of the 40 two-bedroom, two-bath apartments are home to homeless women and their children; the other eight units are rented at market value to help sustain the program.
Because the organization is faith-based, it does not receive state or federal funding. Executive Director April McDonald said that it has long been the dream of the board of directors to open a thrift store to help provide funding.

“It’s been in the works for at least a decade, and we were looking at properties in earnest for the past 18 months or so. Our program has expanded, and we converted some of the units from rentals to serve the homeless women and children and because we don’t get state or federal money, we needed the additional revenue source to put into our program,” McDonald explained.

“We have a thrift store manager, Hope Laird, she is one of our employees, and I will provide oversight. She will manage the day to day. Hope was a godsend. She formerly had a consignment store. So, it’s Project Hope, with the Hope Chest, run by Hope!”

The store, which is located at 320 N. Magnolia Ave., near downtown Ocala, is adjacent to the Salvation Army campus and across the street from the PACE Center for Girls – Marion and Ocala Victory Academy.

“There are two buildings. We own the property, but one space is rented out. The rest is for the thrift store,” McDonald noted.

The store will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. It is stocked with clothing, home décor, small appliances and furnishing, “basically everything, but we don’t carry mattresses or big items,” McDonald shared.

Until the organization can get a van, there will not be any pick-ups of donations. For now, donations made at the venue will be accepted on Wednesdays only.

“That may expand,” McDonald shared. “We are building out our volunteer base. We have just one full-time and one part-time staff until we get fully up and running. We need volunteers and the hours are very flexible.”

For those interested in making donations to the store, consider what you might put in a college dorm room, which would mirror what is needed for many of the moms and their children, McDonald suggested.

“Sheets, comforters, shower curtains, silverware, glassware, anything to help furnish our units,” she explained.
“And that’s another reason we decided to do this—some of our ladies will volunteer in the store to get experience and learn new skills,” she added.

Under the Project Hope model, the women who participate do not pay rent the first month. After that, they pay a subsidized fee to cover a portion of the rent as well as utilities. Once they find employment, the fees gradually increase until they can pay the full cost. The average residency is 12 to 18 months. Services offered include counseling, financial skills development and trauma recovery.

Laird said she is a big believer in the Project Hope mission.

“I was a single mom of four and nobody was helping me. It would have been great to have something like Project Hope in my corner,” she said.

She said that getting the store up and running has been accomplished through “the help of so, so, many people. And there was a web of connections I wasn’t even aware of, such as with the board of directors.”

Laird said she worked at Hope Villas for a few weeks before she started working on the thrift store.

“It’s a wonderful place. The women are not stressed. It’s just a great place,” she shared.

Laird echoed McDonald’s feeling that she was “sent by God” to run the thrift store.

“It’s humbling, and I think that is what happened,” she offered. “I took an empty building and turned it into a thrift store, and I think it’s going to be very successful.”

The Hope Chest Thrift Store will host a ribbon cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. on March 25 and people will be able to shop that day.

“The need is very great,” McDonald said with firmness. “We have at least 100 women on our waiting list at all times. We are hoping that this endeavor can help us continue to expand and, someday, possibly, we can open another facility because the need is so great here.”

To learn more, visit projecthopeocala.org