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Gardens of Hope RCO Director Craig George spoke to the Council about the organization and its intentions for the vehicle. “I just want to thank you guys for your continued support of our organization. We’ve had the success that we have had because of the impact of this community,” he explained. “We provide peer support services and have a walk-in facility downtown – there’s no guessing what we do. It says “addiction recovery support center” on the side of it. Any individual from our community can walk in there on Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., and they’re met by people with lived experience. We help individuals every week in this community — one of the greatest areas of impact that we’ve had is transportation.”
George said that the organization currently helps to transport people to long-term care and detox facilities when needed, but hopes to be able to provide more transportation help in the future. “Our next big thing is finding a way to be able to transport individuals. We have managed to partner with different organizations along the way, as well as using smaller grants and gifts, to help us with some transportation needs,” he continued. “We just had success with Memorial Health Meadows Hospital. There is some funding there that allows us to pick individuals up from the hospital that once they’re discharged, and help them get into treatment centers and different crisis centers in the area. So, it would just be really helpful to have a vehicle that is named to our organization where we could actually do it the right way.”
He informed the Council that the RCO had been announced as a grant recipient for an unknown amount of funding, and that this funding will help in the purchase of a van for the organization. This van will run a daily route throughout the Toombs County community to help individuals get to recovery meetings, mental health appointments, and other locations that make it hard to sustain their recovery without transportation.
“We do have future plans for that, but this car will allow us to do some of those other things as far as short runs and other transports,” George emphasized, sharing his gratitude for the vehicle.
Following this discussion, the vehicle was officially authorized to be given to the organization by the Council, who thanked George for his work within the community.
