Happy New Year to all! With this new year comes new hope, energy, focus, and drive to make the Sahara Club a living, breathing realiity.
With that said, it's hard for us to understand that everyone is not as excited about the prospect of opening a new clubhouse as this committee is. The last clubhouse, The 12 and 12, was a great meeting and social gathering point for recovering people for years during the mid 80’s thru the mid 90’s. The clubhouse did a lot of good for a lot of people for a decade or more. But when the excitement and enthusiasm of both members and founders began to wane, the dynamic of the clubhouse changed and it was eventually shut down. Losing focus of the primary purpose of the clubhouse resulted in its undoing. It left a bad taste in the mouth of the original founders as well as the Williamsport community as a whole.
When approached with this new project, the original 12 and 12 founders and others involved in the early years gave us a wide range of responses; some didn’t want any part of a another clubhouse at all while others freely shared their experiences so that we might learn. We are expecting similar and varied responses from the community as well. Some may say, “Not in my neighborhood,” while others may offer encouragement and help as they see how the Sahara Club and its members can actually contribute to the richness of this area. We just believe that if we build it, they will come… not only in the physical sense, but with supportive and positive attitudes as well.
This committee wants desperately to see this project succeed. We are being thorough from the very start in our attempts to do this thing “right.” We don’t want to operate in the shadows. While we don't want to break the anonymity of individual fellowship members, we do want to be a vibrant part of the community. In order to do that, we have to let people know our vision, from the very beginning.
