NORWAY – Eighteen years is a long time to be doing the same thing.

Roy Gedat thinks so.

“It’s a good time for me to move on,” said the first executive director for the nonprofit Child Health Center. His departure date is June 1.

Gedat was hired in 1985 to oversee programs and policies of the center. He has watched it evolve from a small preschool and pediatric practice to the much larger multi-service social service agency it is today.

“As one of my board members said, we (the center and Gedat) both grew up together,” he said.

Gedat, of Norway, doesn’t know what he is going to do next. He’d like to stay in the area.

He’s started applying for jobs, but said, “I want to take my time” about it. “I’d like to do something that makes a difference.”

In turn, the board of the Child Health Center began running ads last week to search for his replacement. “Whoever gets this job will be able to do something that they can feel really proud of,” Gedat said.

The Child Health Center employs 50 people who serve more than 2,000 children and families each year in Oxford County and the Lewiston-Auburn area. In the late 1980s, the center secured the rights to develop Big Brothers Big Sisters programs in Oxford, Androscoggin and Franklin counties.

The center has developed the largest site-based mentoring program in the state by calling on high school students to serve as mentors to younger children in the tri-county area and parts of Cumberland County. Preston Jump now serves as the director of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program.

Gedat has been a tireless fund-raiser to keep the center’s programs afloat. The biggest annual fund-raiser, Bowl For Kids Sake, will be held April 3 and 4 this year at the Oxford Hills Bowling Center. Gedat hopes to raise at least $70,000.

Money from fund-raisers, state grants, MaineCare, private charities, the United Way and municipalities supports the center’s $1.5 million annual operating budget.

“We’ve been able to keep things going,” Gedat said.

Aside from Big Brothers Big Sisters, the center provides preschools in urban and rural areas; home-based parenting/family support services; developmental evaluation clinics; adolescent pregnancy and prevention services; children’s mental health services; childhood injury prevention; and other school-based programs.

The center works closely with Community Concepts Inc., in complementing that agencies early childhood intervention programs.

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