On Saturday, May 12th, 2007, the PEER Center participated in the nation's largest single-day food drive, the National Association of Letter carrier's Food Drive. We were assigned to work at the Hallandale Beach County Line Annex Post Office. With several volunteers in tow, Stephen Johnston coordinated the work efforts of unloading the Postal Workers' trucks and getting our own truck loaded. Work lasted for several hours, and in total, we collected 6,238 pounds of food! All this food will go towards making food boxes for our members. In Broward County alone, over 275,000 pounds of food were collected!

Here is a shot of the inside of the truck during the loading of the food. Our containers were filled to the brim! The hardest work was seperating the canned goods, dry goods and bottles. Our truck barely held all the donated items!

Plastic bags were mailed to people several days before the event. On the day of pickup, people placed the bags filled with donated food by their mailboxes, and the letter carriers picked them up. Pictured here are some of the containers the postal workers use to collect mail filled with bags of food! In the background is John Herold, our contact at the Post Office. Even though we insisted on doing the work, he was always giving us a hand. John and all his co-woprkers were extremely helpful!

PEER Center volunteers Stephen Johnston and John Bush in the middle of loading the truck. All our volunteers did a wonderful job, and worked hard all day to get the job done. Thanks to everyone!

The last truck! Stephen Johnston closes the door on the last truck of the day! All in all, we collected 6200 pounds of food!

We have finally placed the interviews from WLRN Perspectives, on our website. The show is hosted by Rhonda Victor and originally aired on 15-Mar-2006. We owe a debt of thanks to Mia Laurenzo at WLRN for approving the use of the interviews on our website.

We have the show in its entirety and we have the individual segments available for download. You can download the entire show by clicking here (3.1 MB).

• Kate Hale, President/CEO South Florida Mental Health Association
• Hon. Steven Leifman, Miami-Dade County Judge
• Stuart Podolnick, Chief Administrative Officer, Mental Health Hospital, Jackson Memorial

• Kate Hale, President/CEO South Florida Mental Health Association
• Iggy Joseph, PEER Print, PEER Center, Inc.

ARC Broward Electronics Recycling and PEER Computer Care are now working in an exciting collaboration effort to rebuild computers.

The Peer Center is a non-profit advocacy and support center for mental health consumers providing alternatives to traditional services. The PEER Center is a consumer operated open door agency where members can meet for social activities, support groups and access a computer lab. The computer lab offers access to email, games, basic typing, resume preparation and job seeking capabilities. PEER Computer Care, a sub-company of the PEER Center, specializes in refurbishing computers and then selling those computers to members and the general public.

ARC Broward Electronics Recycling provides to the PEER Center computers that are in need of being rebuilt. Matt Leachman, ARC Broward Electronics Recycling Manager states “ the Electronics Recycling business is growing rapidly!” Matt encourages everyone to take a look at the growth. “We are encouraged with our business, ARC is now rebuilding computers and our partnership with the PEER Center expands our efforts into the community, partnering with another non-profit just makes sense.”

In the very near future computers from the ARC Broward/PEER Center partnership will be listed for sale, posted for staff and the general public to purchase. ARC Broward Electronics Recycling is also encouraged that with the growing business, new avenues for ARC & PEER Center consumers will be available. Plans are underway to step up further consumer labor within this business venture.

Our goal is to continue is to provide viable economical electronics recycling alternatives, diverting harmful electronic waste from entering landfills.