FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER HIRES DIRECTOR

The Cape Girardeau Area Family Resource Center has hired an executive director to help develop services for people living in southeast Cape Girardeau.

After an extensive search, the board selected Sharland Reed of Washington, D.C., for the position. She is to begin her duties next month.

The center will serve those residents who live south of William Street and east of West End Boulevard. Services at the center could include an after-school latch-key program, GED classes, family counseling, health care and a myriad of others.

"She will be putting together all of our ideas," explained Edythe Davis, vice president of the Family Resource Center board of directors.

"One of her real strengths is that she has done this, all of this, in another community."

Reed helped plan and start a senior citizens program with goals similar to the Family Resource Center, Davis said.

"It was virtually the same kind of program," said Davis.

Family Resource Centers have been developed throughout the country to combine social, educational and recreational services in one place to make access easier for lower-income residents.

The idea for a local center grew out of the Community Caring Council, a group founded 10 years ago by state Rep. Mary Kasten, R-Cape Girardeau.

The center's board received a $90,000 grant from the Missouri Department of Social Services to start turning years of planning into reality. The grant will go to hire an executive director, rent office space and launch initial services.

Reed will be moving to Cape Girardeau from Washington. Her husband, John Reed, is director of the Bootheel Initiative at Southeast Missouri State University. Sharland Reed has also been a professor at Howard University.

"She is a dynamite lady," Davis said.