Year End Appeal Insert 2009
- 1. HISTORY In 1969, Sidney Shankman, M.D. founded Second Genesis, one of the largest nonprofit providers of therapeutic community services to combat addiction in the mid-Atlantic region. The therapeutic community model provides a safe environment for individuals to confront their problematic thinking patterns and behaviors. This effective approach affords clients the opportunity to absorb standards for healthy living as they are firmly and lovingly held accountable for their conduct and choices. Today, Second Genesis serves approximately 1200 clients a year at its one outpatient and five residential treatment centers in Maryland and Washington, DC. A second chance at life has been given to over 30,000 men and women, including pregnant women, women with their children, clients with co-occurring disorders, and teenagers with their families. The mission of Second Genesis is to empower individuals and families with the tools to break the cycle of addiction. If it wasnt for the women and childrens program at Second Genesis, I wouldnt have gone in to treatment. SERVICES FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN Since 1994, Second Genesiss Women and Childrens program , Mellwood House, located in the country in Upper Marlboro, Maryland has been a home to thousands of women and their children. At this 68 acre estate, families are being restored and are just beginning to function as a healthy unit for the very first time. In fact, Mellwood is one of the few programs in the greater Washington area that permits women to bring their children to live with them while receiving treatment. While living at Mellwood, women and their children receive family services aimed at strengthening the family unit. Family services include: an umbrella of comprehensive treatment initiatives that focus on addiction education and recovery, improving familial bonds, improving parenting skills, working through grief, and healing from trauma. As part of the family program, young children participate in enrichment activities while the older children, up to age 11, attend the Elementary and Middle Schools. The goals of the program are to: provide quality, inpatient rehabilitative services to women and children; help women to balance helping themselves and raising their children; and give mothers the chance to have their children develop physically, emotionally, and academically, so that their kids can just be kids.
- 2. Its a miracle factory over there. They believed in me. Yvonne Walker is shown here speaking to the women at the recent Mellwood graduation in September 2009. With nine years of sobriety, she is grateful for the program at Second Genesis. Having a safe place to go with her child and having the chance to change made all the difference for her. Yvonne arrived at Mellwood with her two year old son in 2000. Leaving an abusive relationship, she came to Second Genesis from Reality House with a commitment to quitting her crack cocaine and alcohol addiction. She is now: employed full-time by the Department of Rehabilitative Services; closing on her very first home; and beginning a Bachelors degree in Workplace Communication at the University of Maryland, paid for by her employer. Happily, Yvonne reports that her son, who came with her to Mellwood, is now an honor roll student in the 6th grade. 8611 Second Avenue * Silver Spring, MD 20910-3372 * www.secondgenesis.org