Starting this weekend, a new center will provide Prospect-Lefferts Gardens with its first community wellness space, the Patch reports.
ARA Emotional Wellness and Mental Hygiene, Founder Nicholson Sony Pierre said, will offer free and low-cost services including therapy groups focused on parenting and gang interventions, traditional one-on-one counseling and space for Alcoholics Anonymous and other support groups.
Local therapists will also operate out of the space, Pierre said.
"Our main goal is to have a space where people can go and not feel ashamed of some of the issues that they're dealing with," Pierre said.
"This space is more than what I would call a counseling space. It's kind of like the WeWork of therapy."
Pierre has over 20 years of working with mental hygiene as a pastor and counselor and received an NYPD Community Leadership Award in 2016. He also runs two other ARA wellness spaces across the city.
Pierre said he opened the new wellness center because many of the spaces that used to offer AA meetings and support groups are less common now.
"We wanted to kind of re-create those spaces," he said.
On Saturday, Oct. 8, ARA is celebrating its opening at BKLYN Commons — where the center is located — with a ribbon cutting at 4:45pm, where the public is invited to celebrate with drinks and treats.
