New Year is a time for change, especially for Dana Bentley, manager of a local women’s homeless shelter called Leslie’s House. For the past decade, Leslie’s House has offered shelter to homeless women and given them the support that they needed to regain their economic and emotional footing.

Bentley wanted to do something special to improve the residents’ living space. To honor ten years of working to alleviate the struggle of homeless women, Bentley decided to have the building renovated. For this endeavor, she requested the assistance of the High Point University Interior Design Department.

Professor Cathy Hillenbrand-Nowicki accepted Bentley’s request, and reached out to three of her students for help with the project: Lauren Yoder, president of HPU’s Interior Design and Merchandising Club; Emily Kendall, president of the International Interior Design Association HPU Campus Center; and Maureen Coleman, president of the stu- dent chapter of the American Association of Interior Designers.

Each of these young women were selected for the prowess that they had displayed in their independent projects. They have all shown a commitment to the eld of interior design, and plan to pursue it as a career.

The first thing that the group did was request funding from the Carolinas Chapter of the International Interior Design Association, an organization that advocates for the betterment of the Interior Design Industry.

After reviewing the request of Nowicki and her students, the association agreed to lend its nancial support. Upon receiving $400 from the organization, the four designers began reimagining the space of Leslie’s House.

“Our goal for the renovations was to help make Leslie’s House a place that the resi- dents would want to come home to,”Yoder explained.“We picked furnishings that helped to make the space calming and welcoming for the women who call the shelter home.”

Nowicki and her students focused the majority of the attention on two of the building’s most prominent rooms. The kitchen was repainted, and new accessories were brought in to brighten up the space where the women prepared and ate their meals.

The living room was also repainted, and the designers added an area rug that was donated by Christy Bennett of Bennett Carpet Mills. When the designers were nished with the remodeling process, the interior of the building was almost unrecognizable.