A maternity home in progress took a significant step forward this weekend.

Higher Heights Human Services, an organization that offers services to pregnant or parenting teens in Beaufort County, organized a cleanup day Saturday to get its maternity home on Highland Drive in Washington ready for contract work.

The organization leased the maternity home and a neighboring home for office space from the county in early 2014, and has spent the last couple of years building up funds for needed renovations.

The idea behind the maternity home is to give pregnant and parenting teens a stable place to live, as well as increased access to support services and counseling to help them stay in school.

Members of the community and representatives from Civitan on the Pamlico, youth basketball group Team Infinite, Boy Scout Troop 99 and AmeriCorps worked inside and outside from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

“We had a lot of people show up,” said Erin Massie, who led the cleanup and is a Higher Heights board member. “The boys were great. Really, they were kind of finding tasks to do on their own.”

Massie said the crew of volunteers was able to pull up the carpet, clean the floors, bleach and disinfect some areas and tidy up the landscaping.

She said some of the Boy Scouts who are pursuing Eagle Scout rank mentioned coming back to help in the future.

“They’re eager to come back out again,” Massie said.

Mitch St. Clair has also headed up much of the construction work at the home.

The next step for the maternity home is to have inspectors come in to assess how many mothers the building could accommodate after renovations are complete, according to Massie. Then, it will be time to start enlisting the help of local contractors and taking bids.

Massie said she hopes the community will view the cleanup day as a reminder that the maternity home is still in progress and is moving forward.

She said she is also hoping more people will step up to help make the home a reality.

“There’s a long way to go, for sure,” Massie said. “I feel motivated, and I’m hoping that it will motivate others in the community to kind of see what we’re doing.”

“You can definitely see the progress in the cleanup of the house,” she said.