The Opportunity Center will celebrate seven decades of serving individuals with disabilities during a 70th anniversary event set for May 15.
The celebration, taking place from noon to 1 p.m. at their facility at 1101 East Byers Avenue, will welcome community partners, past board members, families, and supporters while honoring the organization’s history and continued growth since its founding in 1956. The Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce will also conduct a ceremonial ribbon-cutting commemorating the milestone anniversary, with tours to follow the event.
For Executive Director Darren Peach, the anniversary represents far more than longevity.
“I think because the organization was founded by family members, for family members, we’ve always kind of had that core value of being a family,” Peach said. “I think that’s why the organization has lasted as long as it has.”
The Opportunity Center began as the “Opportunity Center School” after local families sought educational opportunities for children with disabilities at a time when many students were not allowed in public schools.
“So families created the opportunity — to use that word — to further educate their children with a formal education,” Peach said. “Then, as those children made their way through the educational system and were becoming young adults, the question became, ‘Now what? What supports do they need?'”
That question helped shape the organization’s evolution over the past 70 years.
Historical materials prepared for the anniversary describe the Opportunity Center’s beginnings as “a grassroots effort” founded by “a small but determined group of families and community leaders” who believed individuals with disabilities deserved “dignity, education, and opportunity.”
The organization initially focused on education and advocacy, but expanded significantly in the decades that followed. During the 1970s through the 1990s, the Opportunity Center broadened its vocational training programs and community support services, helping clients develop life skills and workplace experience.
Many Owensboro residents remember the organization’s longtime Jackson Street location, commonly referred to as the Opportunity Center workshop.
Peach said the workshop model reflected the era’s approach to disability services, with clients completing assembly and contract manufacturing work for local businesses.
“Workshops were kind of a prominent thing in this field back in those days,” Peach said. “Now we just really provide more support and training, whether it’s basic life skills training or advancing to where we are placing people in jobs.”
As the organization entered the 2000s, its focus expanded further into employment readiness, community integration, and therapeutic services. The center became increasingly focused on “building pathways” between ability and independence while emphasizing inclusion and meaningful community engagement.
Today, the Opportunity Center serves individuals through a variety of day training, vocational, and therapeutic programs.
Peach said the organization now offers vocational services beginning with middle school-aged students through pre-employment transition services and continuing into adulthood through supported employment programs that help clients obtain and maintain jobs in the community.
The Opportunity Center also now provides occupational therapy services on-site and may expand into additional therapies in the future.
Funding for services varies depending on the program, Peach said. Many day training clients utilize Medicaid waiver programs, while vocational services are billed through Kentucky’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. Occupational therapy services may involve Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance, or private pay arrangements.
Though similarly named organizations exist elsewhere, Peach emphasized that the Opportunity Center of Owensboro remains an independent nonprofit organization founded locally in 1956.
“We are our own incorporated nonprofit,” Peach said. “We are our own entity, our own organization.”
The organization consolidated its local operations into its current 33,000-square-foot facility on East Byers Avenue shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Peach said renovations and construction projects have been nearly constant as the Opportunity Center continues adapting to the needs of clients and staff.
“We have almost constantly, in the last four years, had some sort of construction or renovation going on here,” Peach said. “We are constantly adapting to the needs of our staff and for our clients that we support, to be able to give them the best environment possible.”
The organization’s leadership describes the organization’s modern era as a “legacy in motion,” highlighting expanded partnerships, growing services, and increased community visibility while continuing to keep individuals with disabilities at the center of every decision.
Peach said the upcoming event will also highlight the Opportunity Center’s Legacy Fund, which supports long-term sustainability, future programming, facility improvements, and expanded opportunities for the individuals the organization serves.
As the Opportunity Center marks its 70th anniversary, Peach said the organization’s core mission remains rooted in the same values that inspired local families nearly seven decades ago.
