TREATMENT PROGRAM EYES CASH CHALLENGE

A group of Cape Girardeau leaders gathered Friday to hear Mid-America Teen Challenge announce a three-year building fund campaign to raise over $500,000 from the area, part of a $3 million statewide goal.

About 25 people representing several area businesses and professions were treated to lunch at Drury Lodge and told that Mid-America Teen Challenge needs their leadership to reach its local goal.

Teen Challenge's local executive director, the Rev. Jack Smart, said the money would be used to improve deteriorated, outdated and overcrowded residential dorms and administrative offices at the 312-acre campus five miles north of Cape Girardeau.

He said one of the dormitories was built 15 years ago with salvaged materials. With the renovation of that dorm, another 11 young men could be housed at the center, Smart said.

Teen Challenge also would like to expand its administrative offices. The program director works out of a trailer, Smart said. And many other staff members work in the entry and hallway of the main building.

"Saying these are pressing needs is an understatement," Smart said.

Other programs need as much as $28,000 a month to house and treat each person trying to overcome addiction to drugs or alcohol. Smart said his organization helps someone for about $712 a month.

Many area people also sing the praises of Teen Challenge, including Harold Kuehle, the county collector and a member of the organization's board of directors.

"They have a total commitment of staff that I have not witnessed anywhere else," he said.

Giving to a campaign that helps people following a national disaster might gain more publicity, Kuehle said, but the men who enter Teen Challenge are "walking disasters" and also need help.

"All we do out there is change lives for men and we need you to do that," he said. "You are the only ones that Teen Challenge can turn to to get this done."

In its 26-year history north of Cape Girardeau, several thousand men have passed through the doors of Mid-America Teen Challenge, leaving drugs and alcohol behind and putting God in their future. The organization, affiliated with the Assembly of God Church, boasts one of the most successful treatment programs in the country.

Jess Hopple, the general campaign chairman, said Teen Challenge is a good organization that doesn't receive taxpayer dollars or money from the United Way. "And we meet the needs of men who have become the slaves of drugs and alcohol," he said.

Although the campaign is a three-year undertaking, Teen Challenge hopes to have commitments and pledges totalling the goal by the end of this year.

The local effort is part of a grand statewide campaign, co-chaired by U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft, to raise funds for the two other centers in Missouri and to create two centers in Southwest Missouri.

Teen Challenge hopes to raise $3 million to expand men's centers in Cape Girardeau and St. Louis and a women's center near Branson. A new training and resource center is planned for Springfield and a Joplin crisis center also is slated to open using funds from the campaign.