Rebuilding Together Henry County moves into new home

The saying that “good things come to those who wait,” does hold true for the Rebuilding Together Henry County organization. After three years of planning and fundraising, RTHC staff volunteers moved into their new home, a newly-constructed building in Atkinson.

Sarah Snyder, executive director of RTHC, is at home in her new office in the building, located at the corner of Church St. and U.S. Route 6….”The Atkinson site was chosen for the location of the new building for its location in the Geneseo School District and its proximity to the rest of Henry County.

“We raised approximately $500,000 in cash and in-kind donations in just under a year,” Snyder said. “We are grateful that our fundraising ended just as Covid -19 shut down our community. It took a bit longer to build due to supply shortages and personnel shortages, but the new facility is currently up and running.”

The new facility replaces six to seven other locations where RTHC has had office, storage, and workshop areas, some donated space and some rental space, Snyder said.

“Imagine running a business out of six different locations,” she said. “That’s what Rebuilding Together has been doing for many years. In order to serve our growing mission, we needed to be more efficient. This building will allow all of our operations to be in a single location.”

The 6,000 square-foot building includes offices and conference room space, a workshop and a storage room for materials. The shop space in the new building also is used for wheel-chair building and is in use by volunteers.

“The storage space also gives us room for our new program that allows us to loan adaptive medical equipment to people in need,” Snyder said, and added that donations of good condition adaptive medical equipment are currently accepted by RTHC.

Snyder said there is a need for wheelchairs, walkers, canes, shower chairs and tub transfer seats.

For more information about the REUSE Medical Equipment Loan Program, call Snyder at 309-944-6442 or email her at ssnyder@rebuildingtogether-hc.org.

Rebuilding Together Henry County has a long and rich history in the area and Snyder shared some of the statistics, “Beginning in 1994 as a non-profit, at that time called ‘Christmas in April- Geneseo,’ our organization has made home repairs with a market value of over $1.9 million. We have installed over 240 ramps for our Henry County neighbors who have limited ability to access their homes - once again at no charge to the recipients.”

“Our fire home safety program has installed smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers in over 100 homes,” Snyder said. “Now that the new building is complete, we can resume the fire safety program, and grow the new adaptive medical equipment loan program which is currently in the beginning stages of implementation.” For more information about the organization, visit www.rebuildingtogether-hc.org or ssnyder@rebuildingtogether-hc.org.