Soapworks offers opportunities

By Charles Spiron, O’Berry Center Marketing Director

Chris is a soap maker, working each day at By Nature Soap producing handmade soaps and other personal care products. Chris is an exceptional young man. What makes Chris unique is that because he has physical and mental challenges he requires a bit of assistance in his daily life. Chris is one of some 300 men and women who have developmental disabilities and live at O’Berry Center in Goldsboro. O’Berry offers to those who live there an opportunity to have meaningful jobs.

“Work is a vital and important part of every person’s life,” explained Carolyn Davis, director of Vocational and Educational Services. “We know that personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment derived from completing a task are important to all of us. That is our challenge, to provide meaningful work opportunities to all the individuals who choose to work.”

Operating under the business name Berry Towne Crafts, all the activities have one common purpose: to offer meaningful, life-enriching work opportunities grounded in fun and expressive programs. All the individuals in the various studios are compensated for their work.

By Nature Soap is one of the main enterprises providing jobs for those at O’Berry Center. The soapworks produces very high quality handmade organic soaps, lotions, butters, and balms.

“We are very proud of the soap and personal care products we are making,” Davis noted. “But, the Soapworks is only one of more than a dozen artisan programs we have that provide important jobs for the individuals living here.”

Other artisan areas include pottery, woodworking, custom printing, specialty foods, decorative arts, and floral studios in both dried and silk flowers. Jocelyn Jackson guides the pottery studio, along with two other experienced potters.

“North Carolina has a long tradition in pottery as exampled by the world-wide reputation of the Seagrove area, known as the pottery capital of America. We use only native North Carolina clay and our work is hand thrown on the potter’s wheel, made on our slab rollers, or extruded,” Jackson said. “We use all the traditional methods of throwing, coil pottery, and slab building.”

Most of the items produced in the pottery studio are utilitarian in nature like strong sturdy mugs, plates, bowls, or vases, and other items are more just for fun such as their character jugs and pots.

Berry Towne Crafts has been selling their products through their retail store on the O’Berry Campus for many years. Recently they have expanded and now have an online store www.berrytownecrafts.com. Plans are underway to expand Berry Towne Crafts with a new facility, which when completed this fall will provide more than 1,500 additional square feet of display space.

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Last Modified: June 6, 2006