The July 7th meeting marked the beginning of the new fiscal year and President Ben Brewer's first official meeting as President. Before the speaker, Warren Sparrow, began his presentation, Ben promoted Laura Lane McKinnon from Red Badge to Blue Badge - congrats Laura Lane! The club then heard from Warren Sparrow who is the Executive Director of Reed House.
Reed House is a non profit organization serving the mentally ill population in and around Savannah. Many mentally ill individuals are told they do not have a future and to focus on staying healthy and safe. Reed House believes that everyone has the potential to make a contribution to their community and society and therefore, their main focus is rehabilitation. They work with the mentally ill to help them achieve this goal by giving them little jobs around the house (sweep, answer phones, placing orders, etc) to helping them find employment in the community (part time job at Humane Society). According to the CDC, 6% of the population will suffer from a serious mental illness and of those 6%, 90% of them are unemployed. Estimates suggest that there are 12,000 citizens in the greater Chatham county area that have a serious mental illness. Reed House's primary source of funding is Georgia medicaid along with donations. They have just launched a capital campaign to raise funds for a new building on Bee Road that would increase their capacity to serve from 30 to 100 people a day.