Changing the Story
“At any given moment, you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.”
- Christine Mason Miller
Today’s Blog Post is going to take a different twist. Tomorrow is launching our Capital Campaign…. A CASA for Every Kid. We have a goal to raise $10,190 for our program by December 1st. This will help us recruit, train and support 10 new volunteers for our program. The campaign officially launches tomorrow, and there will be Facebook Live Concerts on Fridays at 7pm, and a lot a fun activities throughout the next 7 weeks.
Below is a copy of my directors report from our current newsletter that will be coming out soon…. To learn more about Southeast Nebraska CASA, please click here. To learn about the campaign, please click here.
Welcome to the homestretch of 2020! What a year this has been… We had a lot of great things planned for 2020 at Southeast Nebraska CASA, but once COVID hit in March, a lot of our plans quickly changed. Our training for new and existing volunteers is now online. Our volunteers are working very hard to stay in contact with the children they serve, but those visits look different now. Most of our volunteers continue to meet with their CASA children remotely, but some have started visiting the children in person again. But even these in person visits look very different. With masks, and hand sanitizer and a pre-health questionnaire… We are so grateful for our wonderful volunteers who have not only been extremely flexible, but have gone above and beyond this year to be the voice for the children.
We have a lot of exciting things happening at Southeast Nebraska CASA! We received two Community Cares Grants for COVID Relief which have allowed us to hire two temporary employees. Hope Dunbar is our temporary Marketing and Recruitment Specialist and Sonia Almodovar is our temporary Administrative Assistant. They will be with us until December 30, 2020 (unless I can find another grant and keep them!) They both fit right into our team, and have helped us build momentum in the office and out in the community.
Since Hope and Sonia joined our team in August, we have launched a podcast, CASA Talk on October 1st and we will launch a capital campaign A CASA for Every Kid on October 16th. (We will talk more about these throughout this newsletter).
In September, I celebrated four years with Southeast Nebraska CASA. These four years have not been easy. Administratively, we had a lot to clean up when I started in 2016. You all walked through my cancer fight in 2018, and now we are learning how to work through a pandemic in 2020. Since I became Executive Director in 2016, I have learned that some days are hard, but when I see what the kids we serve have to go through… my hard days seem pretty easy in comparison. I am so thankful for our wonderful volunteers and staff who help make Southeast Nebraska CASA the amazing program it is. I feel very blessed to work for this amazing organization, and I know whatever happens, we can get through it….together.