After just a year and a half in Brewton, New Beginnings Ministries — a faith-based addiction treatment center — is expanding to include a women’s facility.

The women’s recovery program will be housed in a separate building, which can accommodate 12 women, Director Bo Bell said.

“When I came to Brewton, I had a vision for a men’s facility and a women’s facility,” he said. “There has been a need for it.”

Participants at the Women of Hope center will have group therapy and other programs to help “break the chains of addiction,” Bell said. The facility will be self-sufficient, with its own house director and administrator.

New Beginnings has already built a men’s dorm that houses 22 people at its main location, and Bell said the facility stays full.

While Bell has always had a vision for what he hoped to accomplish in Brewton, “I didn’t think it would grow so quickly,” he said.

Bell himself is a recovering addict and knows the difficult road that participants in the program take.

“From being an ex-addict, I can tell you that I did not wake up one morning and say, ‘I want to be a drug addict for the rest of my life,’” he said. “I did not plan to lose my job, my home and my family. The problem is, I did not plan not to.”

Graduates of the New Beginnings program enter the second phase of recovery, working in the community and continuing to get support from the ministry.

Among the jobs that graduates have taken part in recently include working at the Brewton Public Library’s community house and working at a new ministry on Douglas Avenue, The Chapel.

Anyone interested in services from New Beginnings can call Bell at 251-623-1030 or secretary Samantha Barfield at 251-238-7999.