Who are we without community? This month you’ll see Give an Hour focus on community. Uvalde. LGBTQ+. Real Girls Feel. Providers. Military and Veterans. Ambassadors. Finding your people or “tribe” can be one of the best things you do for your personal mental health and well-being. They lift you up when you need it and share the hard truths with you, also (because sometimes we need that too). Thank you for being our people!
Give an Hour Provider Establishes Free Mental Health Clinic for Uvalde Residents in Wake of Mass Shooting at Robb Elementary School
Bob Stead, MS, LPC, Give an Hour provider and ambassador, knew he wanted to help the Uvalde, Texas community by offering free mental health care services in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24.
While the town’s resources are stretched to its limits assisting victims and their families, as well as loved ones of those who were lost, Bob knew the rest of the town would be suffering their own losses and 
grieving. Thus, the free mental health clinic came to fruition with the generosity of dozens of licensed providers from around the country who are donating their time in-person and virtually to help the people of Uvalde.
The clinic is in its second week and our two greatest needs right now are mental health care providers and donations. Mental health care providers are in short supply nationwide, so providers who are willing to give of their time would be a great benefit. Equally as important are donations to ensure other tools and resources can meet the current demands at any given moment.
For more information on the clinic, please visit our blog.
PROGRAM UPDATES
Pictured from left to right: Suzanne Clifford, Kim Winkel, LCSW (school social worker) and Sarah Hague.
Real Girls Feel Makes Lasting Impact
As the Real Girls Feel program comes to a close in Indianapolis, Give an Hour staffers, Suzanne Clifford and Sarah Hague, celebrate the lasting impact made on young girls.
Sarah believes consistency and showing up are key to the program’s success. “We’re there. We show up when we say we will and we care,” she said. “We are consistent and we show the girls love.”
Suzanne and Sarah depended on the many school social workers involved to keep the program going during the height of the pandemic when schools were completely virtual. They were instrumental in the program’s overall success. This program is a great example of how partnerships happen between schools and nonprofit organizations.
Funded by Drug-Free Marion County and the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana, Real Girls Feel was established to teach the Five Signs of Emotional Suffering, create Healthy Habits of emotional well-being and educate about the 10 risks of marijuana use in youth. Real Girls Feel participants were in grades four through six and the program took place once a week in two schools in Indianapolis Public Schools. One school is predominantly African American students and the other school has a mostly Hispanic population.
Give an Hour Presents at Army Reserve Town Hall
In case you missed it … Give an Hour’s Brittany Chatman, program manager for Military and Veteran Programs, presented at the U.S. Army Reserve Family Readiness Programs Town Hall on June 9. The town hall focused on the behavioral health and well-being of soldiers and their families. Learn about challenges they face and resources available to them.
Join the Veteran Rally Point
Save the date! June 29, 12 p.m. ET, for the Veteran Rally Point—a brief, online seminar sharing how to use VA Office of Connected Care programs. Click here to RSVP.
PROVIDER NEWS
Did you know …
Give an Hour providers respond to a survey every quarter to report the hours they spend caring for our clients. For the last quarter (January to March 2022), our network of providers donated 3,560 hours of individual counseling.
If you’re keeping track, that brings out total to 373,069 hours since we began in 2005.
FIND THE ONE CHALLENGE
Did You Find Your ONE?
Thank you to everyone who joined us in May’s Find the ONE Challenge! We hope you came away with a few nuggets to help you live a stronger life – both emotionally and physically.
We raised nearly $3,000 through this fundraiser! Stay tuned to find out who the sweepstakes winner is …
PRESS RELEASE
Free Mental Health Clinic Opens for Uvalde Community
Licensed Clinical Providers Donate Services to Help Town Heal
IN THE NEWS
- MySanAntonio.com: Free mental health clinic to provide services in Uvalde. Here’s how you can help.
- Tuesday’s Children: Give an Hour Signs on to STOP
- KSAT: Free mental health clinic for Uvalde community following mass shooting at Robb Elementary
- KHOU: Free mental health clinic opens in Uvalde for residents following deadly school shooting
IN OTHER NEWS …
Change Can Be a Good Thing
Many of us support organizations who are good corporate citizens, who treat their employees well or whose mission we admire. As Give an Hour focuses its efforts on creating strong and healthy people and communities, we thought you also might like to know how we’re making positive strides within the organization and our own work culture.
As you may recall, Dr. Trina Clayeux, joined Give an Hour as our CEO one year ago and we can attribute much of this change to her leadership. Happy employees are more productive and more invested in their work so we thought we’d share a few changes we’ve implemented over the past year:
- Employee benefits:
- increased PTO and floating holidays
- retirement plan
- paid family leave
- Administrative functions:
- centralized HR system
- new teams
- new programs
- more interaction with Give an Hour board of directors
Our board, along with the CEO and chief operating officer, have been working hard these last few months on a three-year strategic plan and we can’t wait to share it with you in the near future!
New Ambassador: Eric Christiansen
Although his name is a familiar one, Eric Christiansen recently joined Give an Hour’s esteemed group of ambassadors. Eric is an acclaimed documentarian, whose latest film, unMASKing HOPE, reveals the hope that lies behind the mask of tragedy as he follows a group of trauma survivors (including Molly Maurer, a Route 91 survivor and program coordinator for Give an Hour) and shares their stories. He focuses his work on socially responsible filmmaking and considers himself to be a “messenger of hope.” Stay tuned to learn more about Eric in an upcoming blog post.
New Employee Spotlight
Give an Hour would like to take a moment to introduce Jessica Webb who recently joined our organization. She is a program coordinator for our Overdose Prevention program and is based in California. If you’d like to learn more, please visit our staff page.
As our fiscal year comes to a close, we are reminded of the work we still need to do to address gaps in mental health care services. We are focused and more determined than ever to make an impact with our work – whether it be one-on-one counseling, educational tools and resources or personalized training for specific needs. Please know that we are committed to changing the face of mental health in the U.S. and we depend on you to help us do just that.
