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Discover CityViewNC.com's fresh updated look! | 27 G I V I N G Blogger Adrian Wood will speak at a February 6 fundraiser for Friendship House at Cape Fear Regional Theatre. Fans of a certain Educated Debutante will be in abundance at a February 6 fundraiser at the Cape Fear Regional eatre. So will fans of Friendship House. And most attendees will likely love both Adrian Wood, who authors the hilarious, touching, very-real blog called Tales of an Educated Debutante, and Fayetteville's Friendship House, which plans to provide safe, shared low-cost housing for healthcare students and people with intellectual or developmental delays who are transitioning to more independent lives. ere's plenty of overlap between Wood and Friendship House. Wood, a North Carolina native who lives in Edenton, focuses her writing on family life, with special emphasis on the joys, struggles, worries and delights associated with the youngest of her four children, the increasingly famous Amos, who has been diagnosed with autism and a rare genetic disorder. As is well-known to her 34,000-plus followers, Amos is a 4-year-old towhead with an impish smile, round glasses and his own set of important accomplishments, like recently climbing all five porch steps at their house without reaching down for a hand check. "Before him," Wood wrote that day, "I didn't know a handful of steps could make my heart skip a beat." She included a picture of Amos beaming atop the porch. Wood said she didn't know about the Friendship House concept before she was contacted last year by some of the people involved with the Fayetteville project. But she immediately loved the idea and offered to help however she could. at's how the February event got scheduled. "I just think it's such a great program," she said. "And it's a real need. Obviously, there's a high chance that Amos will need something like that." Fayetteville's Friendship House, expected to open this summer, will actually include three separate houses on the same property on Arsenal Avenue between Highland and Broadfoot avenues. Each 2-story house will have eight residents – six students and two "friends" with disabilities. Everyone will have their own room while dining and gathering areas will be communal. "At its core," according to Friendship House literature, "this faith-based community is rooted in table fellowship expressed through a daily rhythm of eating, praying and celebrating together." Friendship House aims to give its delayed residents a chance to improve their independent and interdependent living skills. It aims to provide the students – drawn from local university and college healthcare programs – with experiences that help them become more compassionate in their dealings with patients, other people and themselves. Scott Cameron, a local neonatal physician and minister, has said he was deeply affected by living in a Friendship House in Durham, when he was at Duke University. Cameron and his wife, Avery, will live on the Friendship House campus as resident directors. A Friendship House fundraiser makes its debut BY CATHERINE PRITCHARD

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