• Club Horizon needs $750,000 for land, a building, equipment, and furniture.

• At full operation, Club Horizon expects that 85% of its annual operating budget will be for billable services.

Making it a Reality

• NAMI Wake County received a $10,000 donation honoring Derek Pearson, a young man from Raleigh with schizophrenia.

• A committee of family members and people with mental illnesses from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Wake County Affiliate, initially established Derek's Renaissance House, Inc. (DRH) during the summer of 2002. The name has since been changed to Club Horizon, Inc.

• Committee Members recruited an excellent Board of Directors and Advisory Board committed to making DRH/Chub Horizon a reality.

• Wake County Human Services provided a $90,000 start-up contract using funds provided by the NC Department of Health & Human Services as a result of closure of hospital beds at Dix.

• Eli Lilly and Company provided the first corporate gift in the amount of $10,000.

• Executive Director hired October 2003.

• An initial fund-raising event was launched at Nina's Restaurant on September 28, 2003, sponsored by Nina and Chris Psarros in memory of their son, Daniel F. Boylan, Jr.

• Club Horizon, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

What is a Fountain House Model Clubhouse?

• The clubhouse is an attractive, inviting place to spend the day and a respectable, responsible neighbor in its neighborhood.

• Membership is open to individuals with a serious mental illness who are taking their medications and are not using drugs. Once a member, always a member. This is the right of return.

• Members and a small staff act as colleagues and partners in running the clubhouse: in administration, planning, maintenance, social activities, projects such as food service and a newsletter.

• Membership leads to a work-ordered day. A person contributes to the clubhouse and helps others according to his/her felt abilities at any one time. Each person is needed.

• A Transitional Employment Program trains, places and assists members in holding part-time jobs in the community.

• The clubhouse assists members in taking advantage of educational and vocational training opportunities in the community.

• The clubhouse is committed to securing a range of choices of safe, decent, and affordable housing for all members. Finally, the Fountain House vision is that people with mental illness everywhere achieve their potential and are respected as co-workers, neighbors and friends. We are not alone.  

What Constitutes a Fountain House Model Clubhouse?

• The Fountain House model is a social invention in community rehabilitation of the disabled psychiatric patient. Fountain House itself is an intentional community designed to create a restorative environment within which individuals who have been socially and vocationally disabled by mental illness can be helped to achieve or regain the confidence and skills necessary to lead vocationally productive and socially satisfying lives.

• Fountain House is a club and it belongs to those who participate in it. Participants are called members. All members are made to feel, on a daily basis, that their presence is expected, that someone actually anticipates their coming to the program each morning. All program elements are constructed in such a way as to ensure that each member feels wanted as a contributor to the program. The members, working side by side with staff, share every function of the program; staff never asks members to carry out functions that they do not also perform themselves.

• The conscious design of the program is to make each member feel needed and wanted as a contributor to the program. All clerical functions, all food purchases and food service, all tours, all maintenance, and every other ongoing function of the clubhouse program are carried out jointly by the staff and members working together.  

What are the benefits?

• The messages of being expected, being wanted, and being needed constitute the heart and center of the Fountain House model. Fountain House believes that work, especially the opportunity to aspire to and achieve gainful employment, is a deeply generative and reintegrative force in the life of every human being; that work, therefore, must be a central ingredient of the Fountain House model; that work must underlie, pervade, and inform all of the activities that make up the lifeblood of the clubhouse.

• Fountain House also believes that, besides the importance and opportunity to work, men and women require opportunities to be together socially. The clubhouse provides a place for social interchange, relaxation, and social support on evenings, weekends, and especially holidays, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

• Finally, Fountain House believes that a program is incomplete if it offers a full set of vocational opportunities and a rich offering of social and recreational opportunities and yet neglects the circumstances in which its members live.

• It follows that the Fountain House model includes the development of an apartment program, which ensures that every member can live in adequate housing that is pleasant and affordable and that provides supportive companionship.  

The Need for a Transitional Employment Program (TEP)

• The clubhouse committee visited Threshold in Durham and Club Nova in Carrboro.  The committee was impressed with their respective transitional employment programs. 

• An employment director goes out into the business community and contracts for jobs for the clubhouse members. Members are trained for jobs according to ability and continue to be supported by staff when needed. 

• Members receive wages ranging from minimum wage to above minimum wage according to the jobs they perform.

• A lot of members have moved from transitional employment into full time independent employment. 

• In Durham’s Threshold Clubhouse, Gateway Inc. donated computers to be used for training members.

• A graduate student from Duke University volunteered his time teaching members how to use the computers.  

• As time goes by, the opportunities to think of ways to help members re-enter the job market will become endless.

• Let’s get started on establishing a Wake County clubhouse!  

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