Gardening at Breakthru House

Wow! What a garden!!! 

Breakthru House utilizes a garden for our client for both therapeutic reasons as well as to save money on nutritious foods!

We'd like to extend a HUGE thank you to everyone who helped us with our garden:

Shanna Wood - for working weekly with the clients to research, plan, and prepare the garden plots - THANK YOU!!!

To our nurse volunteer, JoAnn Akers and The Pilot Club, along with Bob and Martha Forrest - for donating garden supplies - THANK YOU!!

To Kim Little, St. James UMC, and their FABULOUS volunteers for teaching us about composting and organic gardening, donating supplies, full-size plants and tools, and for a lot of hard work - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

The garden is an exciting, therapeutic, and tangibly useful project for our clients! Check out this zucchini - the clients were amazed!!

The clients are reporting some squirrel issues - they are eating our tomatoes!!! Anyone have great organic remedies for keeping squirrels and other critters away?? Leave us a comment!!

by Melanie Storrusten, LCSW, Clinical Coordinator

Volunteer Spotlight - Supper Club!

by Melanie Storrusten, LCSW, Clinical Coordinator

Supper Club is an opportunity for a group of individuals to bring dinner and fellowship to the clients of Breakthru House. Once a month, the ladies are excited to open their home to Sunday School classes, companies and organizations, or other volunteer groups. Tours are provided, a meal is shared, and the clients and volunteers have a chance to get to know one another. Supper Club is an excellent one-time (or ongoing!) volunteer opportunity that can serve as an "introduction" to Breakthru, to learn more about our program, and to see on a more personal level how we are impacting the lives of women struggling with addiction. We love Supper Club because we get to see lightbulbs going off for our clients that, "Hey, people I don't even know care about me!" For many of our clients who come from backgrounds of trauma, abuse, and neglect, this is a shocking and life-changing realization. We would love for you to come be a part of it! For more information on participating in Supper Club or other volunteer opportunities at Breakthru House, please feel free to contact Kate Boyer.

The Crosstalk Sunday School Class from Roswell United Methodist Church have been committed Supper Club volunteers! You can visit them on the web at: http://www.rumc.com.

Judy from Crosstalk Sunday School class of Roswell United Methodist Church is enjoying Supper Club!

Volunteers Helen and Marcia enjoying fellowship at Supper Club.

We are so thankful for our volunteers, like Carol!

Hi, volunteer, Pam! Which is the best part of Supper Club? The fellowship or dessert? It's a toss-up! Yumm!

 Thank you, ladies!!!

Blog Launch Party!!

by Melanie Storrusten, LCSW, Clinical Coordinator

Here at Breakthru House, we are pretty excited about our blog! To celebrate, we threw a drop-in blog launch party Tuesday night. There were refreshments, campus tours, and of course, our blog unveiling! If you missed it, you missed a great time! Enjoy the pictures!

Our post-card advertisement - Designed by Melanie Storrusten, our Clinical Coordinator, and Bryan Bradley, a local web designer

On to the party!!!

Long-time friend of Breakthru, Zoe Hicks, and new friend of Breakthru, Betsy Edwards

Breakthru House's Resident Manager, Gail Whitton, Executive Director, Kate Boyer, and Administrative Coordinator, Kaysha Corniffe

Our Clinical Coordinator, Melanie Storrusten, and Counselor, Jessica Jenkins

 Others in attendance included church liasons and volunteers, neighborhood residents, and supportive family and friends! If you missed out, don't worry! You can always find out more information and get connected with Breakthru House by subscribing to our blog, visiting our website, or checking out our Action Ministries facebook page!

Welcome to Behind the Walls at Breakthru House

by Melanie Storrusten, LCSW, Clinical Coordinator

Welcome to Breakthru House!

We are excited to establish a bigger presence on the world wide web! We want our blog to be a way for potential clients, alumni, family members, volunteers, donors, board members, church liaisons and other friends of Breakthru to keep up with what is going on here. We are a small family of staff, and rely so heavily on all the awesome people who freely give of their time and talents and care about our clients! We know that our volunteers, donors, and supporters give because they truly care about these ladies and about the ways in which their lives are changing through the hard work they are doing at Breakthru House. We are also a very unique place, because unlike other organizations, many times friends of Breakthru can't see the full picture due to the confidentiality requirements of the therapeutic work that is happening behind our walls. So, our hope is to utilize this blog to give you a peek into what daily life at Breakthru entails, and to share as much of the miracles that happen here as we can, without breaking anyone's confidentiality or anonymity.

Our clients are also excited about our new online venture, and they may volunteer from time to time to provide content for our blog. This will always be done with their very specific written consent as to what will be published, and how they will be identified.

Please let us know what you would like to see on our blog! You can comment here, subscribe to us, add us on facebook, visit our website, etc. We hope that the internet will prove to be a valuable tool in connecting all of our available resources to our clients' needs and then back again, bringing us full circle. We could not accomplish our mission without all of you!

Thank you, and welcome!