Hey everybody,
After we left SCHAS, our last stop was with Jim Chatham and the folks at Douglas Cooperative. They work with the mentally challenged in Blount County to give them a productive place in our community through different work programs and classes.
What a good way to end the day. Walking through their building, I thought, ‘Now if this service was not here, what would these folks be doing every day?’ Obviously, they wouldn’t be having the productive days that they are having. And I’ll tell you, the smiles on those people’s faces are something else.
It amazes me what all Jim’s got goin’ on over there. I mean they’ve even got a whole furniture stripping and refinishing business – I had no idea. And Jim said as far as financially the furniture business part is not a huge impact on their program. But to those mentally challenged folks working there, it makes all the difference in the world. They need a productive, paycheck-earning place in Blount County, and it’s just tremendous that Douglas Cooperative can offer them that. I had no idea that the services being provided to our mentally challenged folks were of that magnitude.
And Jim said they have over 100 people on a waiting list to join the program. But you know it didn’t surprise me. It’s sad in any of our agencies that we have a waiting list, but it comes down to finances and the amount of money we got and the resources we got to handle those folks. Again, my wish would be that we could raise enough money that we didn’t have a waiting list in any of our partner agencies. But that’s probably just a pipe dream.
I just I wish all 115,000 of our citizens here in Blount County could go visit every United Way partner agency. The need wouldn’t be nearly as much because the outpouring of resources to fill those needs would just be tremendous. Now I’m guilty, too, of not visiting several of these agencies in the past, but it changes your perspective on what they do and how they do it when you see what they’re doing with the limited resources they have.
Now if the staff at United Way could just figure out a way to get all 115,000 people in Blount County in to see every agency!
Thanks for reading, and in the next blog you’ll read about my visit to Safe Haven.
Blog You Soon,
Dave Bennett
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This is United Way Campaign Chair Dave Bennett, and welcome to my blog. When the folks at United Way and the communications committee asked me to do this blog, I said sure, but I had one question - What’s a blog? Sounds to me like I needed to say, “Bless you!” I’m not too up on this computer stuff, but they told me what it was and here I am. So I’m gonna’ blog you my thoughts as we visit each community partner. Doesn’t sound legal, but Sandra promised it was okay. So here goes.
