Re:Purpose Savannah - Help Save History

Tax deductible
Help keep history from the landfill
Re:Purpose Savannah needs your help. Our old pickup truck and trailer—critical to our operations­­—have been damaged and destroyed respectively. Without a fully functional truck and trailer, we can’t continue to save irreplaceable historic building materials headed for the landfill.




The accident
Alone on a routine delivery, our executive director, Mae, was cut off by a car on I-95. With a trailer full of lumber, Mae avoided the car but spun out of control. Our beloved pickup Trudy slammed into the guardrail, ricocheted across two lanes of traffic, smashed into the opposite guardrail and finally came to a stop facing oncoming traffic in the fast lane. Miraculously, no other cars were involved, and Mae wasn’t injured.

After a $700 tow, a mechanic declared our trailer damaged beyond repair. Our truck’s front end suspension and steering were destroyed, and the tail gate is too damaged drop.  

Mae still made the delivery by the way. She rented a U-haul and got the lumber—also miraculously undamaged—to the grateful client only one day behind schedule.




Who we are
Re:Purpose Savannah is a woman-led and operated 501(c)(3) non-profit, community-based organization. Our mission is threefold—to reduce environmental and public health hazards, to preserve the inherent value in historic structures, and to elevate women in the field of deconstruction/construction.

We deconstruct historic houses at the end of their lifecycle and reclaim the materials for reuse. Deconstruction, or the careful systematic disassembly of a structure, is an environmentally responsible alternative to demolition. We divert valuable lumber and architectural elements from the landfill. The old-growth, heritage lumber we save is 10 times more carbon dense and rot-resistant than new growth lumber. Additionally, many species of timber in historic homes are endangered or extinct. Since 2018, we have kept over 160 tons of these irreplaceable materials out of landfills. To learn more, please visit us at  repurposesavannah.org.




What we need
A new trailer is our main goal. For $5,000 we could buy a trailer with enough capacity to be able to haul the large loads we remove from job sites.

Our secondary goal is a new (to us) diesel truck with a 7.3 liter engine. While we did make the necessary repairs to make Trudy functional, she’s an old girl, and needs to retire to a life at our lumber yard. We estimate that we could buy a used truck in the range of $8,000 - $15,000.

THANK YOU FOR HELPING!
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    Co-organizers (3)

    Tia Ross
    Organizer
    Savannah, GA
    Emergent Structures Inc.
    Beneficiary
    Mae Bowley
    Co-organizer
    Kathleen Fitzhugh
    Co-organizer

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