Fort Valley Kiwanis Club welcomes speaker for Methodist Home for Children and Youth

FORT VALLEY, Ga. – On Thursday, April 6, the Fort Valley Kiwanis Club gathered for their bi-weekly meeting. Kiwanis member Jimmy Jones presented guest speaker Allison Evans, President and CEO of the Methodist Home for Children and Youth in Macon, Georgia. Evans gave a brief introduction before detailing the history, resources, achievements and goals of the program.

The Methodist Home has been standing for over 150 years, having been founded in 1872. The program’s goal is to provide aid to the children in the communities across Georgia – the Methodist Home offers aid to children from all counties in Georgia. The Methodist Home provides every new child in the program with a handmade quilt.

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The primary service that the Methodist Home provides is residential care. The main two locations of the program are in Macon and Valdosta, Georgia. The Macon campus currently has about 50 children on campus. There is also a cottage on the Macon campus that is exclusively for teenage mothers and their children. On the Columbus campus, there are two cottages for boys. There is also a boys’ home in St. Marys, Georgia. The Americus and Valdosta campuses each have a cottage for girls.

Evans explained that the program typically deals with children who were either not getting the proper care or were abused and neglected. In 2022, the Methodist Home raised 266 children, state-wide.

The Macon and Columbus campuses also have a program called Hope Foster Care. The program recruits couples from the local community who will take care of children in their own homes. In 2022, the  Hope Foster Care program served 55 children.

Evans detailed the story of one family that touched her heart. The family took on a sibling group of three and after some time learned that there were four other children – either half-siblings or full siblings – of the three children. So, the family later took in all seven children and later formally adopted them.

For roughly the past 15 years, the Methodist Home has been doing community-based counseling services, primarily in the Macon or Columbus area. The counseling is provided by licensed clinical therapists that not only help children in the residential care program but also focus on a visitation program.

The visitation program provides supervised visitation between a guardian and children in the cases of the guardian being unable or unfit to take care of the children. The goal of the program is either reunification or termination of parental rights. The visitation program served 111 families last year.

Evans ended her speech with time allocated for answering questions from the Kiwanis members. She followed it with a thank you to the Kiwanis Club for having her come and speak for the Methodist Home and asking the Kiwanis members to consider donating to help change a child’s life for the better.

For more information about the Methodist Home for Children and Youth, they can be found at https://www.themethodisthome.org.