Message from the Executive Director (October 2024)
Change is necessary and change can be a good thing.
While we identify and validate how the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult and destructive, one of the positive outcomes we can point to is our community’s ability to adapt and respond to so much uncertainty and need. Agencies, governmental bodies and entire sectors of the nonprofit world stepped up and adapted to the growing demands created for our most vulnerable citizens. While we haven’t figured it all out and there are still significant needs that are unmet, we now know that rapid change is possible and that it can be a good thing.
One of the important changes we’ve undergone at CASA in response to these issues is to seek out resources and funds that are provided directly for our kids’ concrete needs. While we’ve provided backpacks and back-to-school supplies to our current and former CASA families for the last 13 years, we had to acknowledge and adapt to year-round issues that were only exacerbated by the pandemic.
Through generous partners like The Nina Baldwin Fisher Foundation, The Snee-Reinhardt Foundation, Hanel Corporation, an anonymous donor, and others, we have met the urgent daily needs of our kids. Whether it was providing an A/C single room window unit during the hottest months of June for a child who is medically fragile, or sending a custom stroller to a relative caring for baby triplets, or purchasing new underwear for a child who had outgrown their clothes rapidly due to a medication change, or shipping diapers and formula to a family who just couldn’t make ends meet, this new reality has dictated that we as an agency adapt and be responsive to the whole child that we serve, not just the parts that are talked about in the courtroom.
Recently, an attorney from a local agency reached out to me asking for ideas about resources to secure a suit for homecoming for a child living in foster care. This child is not served by CASA, but we helped problem solve and identify options so that the other professionals could seek out resources to help this young person obtain clothes for the dance and have a “normal” childhood experience.
In the importance of the decisions made in the courthouse, the conference room or the counseling session, it is critical that we don’t forget the other needs that kids have – the need to have routine childhood experiences, to just be a kid.
Your support of our mission and our work has enabled us to be adaptable and responsive. Thank you for helping us provide this important extension to our work for children.
In gratitude,
Melissa Protzek, Esq.
Executive Director