The Turning Point Healing Retreat Center, in Meherrin, is in its infancy stages.

According to Joanne Stugart, the organization — which provides educational opportunities that foster personal growth, health and healing — is looking to build a center in the spring, and has applied for status as a 501c3 organization in June.

“My husband and I are donating land, six acres of land, and we will eventually be raising, through grants and donations, funds to place a building on that property,” Joanne said.

The facility will be located on Double Bridges Road in Lunenburg. She said the organization was formed last November.

“All of that is in the process of working; we have done a lot of stuff already to get the property prepared for building and getting all the percolation (testing) done and the roadwork engineered and stuff of that manner,” Joanne said. “That’s all in the infancy stage right now.”

She said people could come to the center for retreats or weekends but wouldn’t be able to stay on site.

“We want to use the community as much as we can to provide housing and even any food catering that we will have up there,” Joanne said. “We don’t want to do that on site, we want to provide the community with some economic development this way. It’s a beautiful place, (and) we don’t want to change it.”

She said while the facility is in its infancy stages, they held workshops and classes in July as fundraisers at the Kenbridge Town Community Center.

“We rented a room and we had some oil painting classes, some acrylic classes, my husband and I did self-defense classes,” Joanne said. “We had some yoga classes there and some medication classes and using the community to start what we wanted to do at our center. All these classes the vendors donated part of their fees to our center.”

She said the organization’s board includes five members, the president being Ruth Brown who is a Air Force veteran. It also includes Dr. Theresa Moore, Debbie Vigneri, Joanne and her husband, John Stugart.

The organization looks to serve veterans, those in recovery from various addictions, women, the community and everyone who needs help in general

Those interested in more information can visit turningpointhealing.org.