South Bay Pioneers Tom Clavell

Thomas Clavell, Director

South Bay Pioneers

 ABOUT: 

Tom Clavell is the Director at South Bay Pioneers and has been employed  with the organization since 2006 and has been associated with the organization since 1999.

Tom is a Chula Vista resident and is active in the community.  A founding member of the Chula Vista Charitable Foundation, Tom also served on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for several years.

The South Bay Pioneer’s, a social model recovery home, is dedicated to providing a safe, structured residential environment in which all residents are afforded the opportunity to effect positive change in their life and learn how to live life on life’s terms as sober, responsible citizens. Residents may reside at the Facility for up to two years building a solid foundation in recovery and the ability to mainstream into a normalized lifestyle. The “program” format for men is a two stage process where the men reside in the main residence (community living) for up to a year and progress to the individual accommodations (apartments) that are part of our facility for another year. Women participating in our program are offered the opportunity to utilize the apartments as a sober living environment upon completion of their participation in long term (six months or more) programs at other facilities. We continually provide space for 24 men in our main residence, 11 men and 7 women reside in the apartments. We are at 100 percent occupancy approximately 95 percent of the year. Although our primary focus is recovery we also offer other social services such  as assisting with employment opportunities, attending to medical and dental needs, financial education/credit repair, ongoing education and GED assistance, and legal concerns just to name a few. We are willing to share our experience not only with our residents but with the sober community at large. 

 The facility is unique to the City of Chula Vista and to the County of San Diego in many respects. One being that the Pioneers not only allow our residents to be employed we actually require it, though employment is not required to be accepted to our program.  In addition, while there is a nominal fee for our service, residents are not required to have any money to be accepted to our program and are afforded ample opportunity to procure employment and pay their  fees gradually until they are in a financial position to do otherwise. We estimate that ninety percent of our population enters our program in this situation. Also, we are not funded by the State or Federal Government. We are a true grass roots organization. Though we are not affiliated in any way with the organization of Alcoholics Anonymous, we are guided by the fundamentals and principles of the twelve step program and serve the “members” of AA in addition to the men and women in our program. There 17 AA meetings per week at our facility attended by hundreds of members of the sober community or persons seeking sobriety, on an weekly basis.