CENTER USES ITS BERRIES TO SELL STORY

Mid-America Teen Challenge near Cape Girardeau plans to use its best-selling strawberries this month to let people know the center's story.

On May 18, the first-ever Mid-America Teen Challenge Strawberry Festival will be held.

"It's kind of a public relations thing," said Office Manager Nadine Fontaine. "We want people to know more about us. Also, it's a way to let people know the strawberries are for sale."

The Saturday event will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the grounds of Teen Challenge's training center. The center, about five miles north of Cape Girardeau on County Road 621, is a non-denominational drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.

The festival will feature guided tours of the center's training facilities and strawberry fields, said Fontaine. Drawings for free quarts of strawberries will be held on the hour.

"Each person who comes out to enjoy the Strawberry Festival will receive a free strawberry short cake," she said.

Refreshments will also be available and barbecue will be on sale. People will be able to eat lunch under a tent pitched near the center's main dormitories and office, said Fontaine.

Mid-America does not charge people to stay at the center. So to make ends meet, Fontaine said, the center depends in part on donations. And the more people know about the center and what it does, she said, the more they may want to support it.

"I think everybody who knows what we do out here thinks it's a good thing, but a lot of people don't know."

Money comes as well from odd-jobs by center residents and the sale of the center's strawberries, which are raised on about five acres. The center also raises smaller amounts of blueberries, red and black raspberries, and blackberries.

Fontaine said a lot of people buy fresh strawberries from Mid-America and that many of the produce markets and area stores get their berries from the center. Already this year, she said, the center has 500 advance strawberry orders.

Center Executive Director Jack Smart said the event, the idea of the center's vocational director and berry sales coordinator, Richard Meyer, would be a very relaxed festival in which people can learn a bit about the facility.

Center officials hope to make the festival a yearly event, Fontaine said.

"We'll do more next year, if it's successful this year," she said. "Maybe get entertainment. This year we don't have any."