Halfway around the world at a beautiful newly constructed orphanage in India called Sunil’s Home, 58 children now are sleeping in a safe and loving environment thanks, in part, to Matthew Meehan.
Meehan, along with Rod Hildebrandt and Lynn Bauer, not only have raised and personally donated funds for this orphanage but they also have made numerous trips to oversee the children’s health and welfare while also assessing future needs. As a member of the Sunil Home Foundation, Meehan takes on the coordination and vision for the annual fundraiser set for Mar. 26.
Meehan devotes 25 hours or more a week just on Sunil’s Home working pro bono for children he and his friends have come to call family. While Meehan also serves on the boards of the New World School of the Arts Foundation, Early Development of Global Education, Coral Gables Community Foundation and the Miami-Dade Library Foundation, his first love is Sunil’s Home.
Born in Atlanta, GA, Meehan shined from an early age as an Eagle Scout, a multi-talented musician who was drum major for a 400-piece marching band in high school, and a pianist. In fact, the piano, one of many instruments he knows how to play, afforded him his first job, that of playing for his church and becoming a music minister.
An industrious youth, as a high school student he walked into a medical clinic being built looking for a job, met a doctor (from India) and took on a part time job evaluating medical software programs. Before long, he helped set up all the programs at the clinic and, at that young age, became office manager for the clinic.
He went on to graduate from Valdosta State majoring in business, but that high school job opened doors as he was hired to oversee a chain of plastic surgery centers before managing a di vision of a mortgage company that brought him to South Florida. He later began his own medical consulting business.
After a move to Coral Gables from Fort Lauderdale seven years ago, he began a business for which he has a real passion, the restoration of historic homes. With Meehan’s love of history in a city that truly treasures its past, the incorporation of Meehan Estates was a natural. Meehan Estates buys and restores foreclosed old historic homes not so much for the money as for the satisfaction and joy it brings as he breathes new life into a distressed piece of history.
For now, Matthew is focused on “A Night in Bollywood” for Sunil’s Home. For this musician, visionary and philanthropist, when it comes to planning an event there are few better. Previous annual parties have drawn as many as 1,600 guests and this year’s promises the same.
Meehan understands the critical need to take in more children at Sunil’s Home and is driven to make the fundraiser the most successful one ever. When you hear Matthew Meehan speak about the children that benefit from this affair, you not only will open your wallet, but you will fall in love with the home and with Meehan. He is one in a million.
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