Here’s more wonderful news from our friends at must! charities (A local charity based out of Templeton, CA. and focused on the North County of San Luis Obispo). You can read the full press release that they provided us with below but long story short, they announced their new, four year collaboration $262,551 investment with C.A.S.A. (Court Appointed Special Advocates).
Our community is fortunate to have must! charities and all the people that keep it going.
Northern SLO County needs to be met in a four-year collaboration between must! charities and CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates of SLO County)
Templeton, Calif. (November 19, 2015) – must! charities announced this week its new, four-year collaboration and $262,551 investment with CASA – Court Appointed Special Advocates. Must! charities will come along side CASA with financial & business expertise that will allow them to have a greater impact in the region where it is needed most. The goal is to address the current needs of the North County through a four-year recruitment and training plan.
Currently there are 460 youth in the jurisdiction of the court countywide and 180 of those are from the northern region of SLO County. At this point, CASA has the capacity to serve 60 of these children, with 120 remaining on the waitlist.
CASA has identified the need to focus volunteer recruitment efforts and assignment of volunteers to children in the North County. Not only are a significant number of children from the North County under the court’s jurisdiction, but a large number of the county’s foster placement sites are also in the North County.
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with CASA to address the needs of the children in the North County.” shared Becky Gray, executive director of must! charities. “The work that CASA does is amazing, and we feel every foster child deserves the right to be served by this incredible organization.”
Must! charities is committed to invest in funding based on the needs identified by CASA. The funding will cover additional advocate supervisors, AmeriCorps workers, CASA Trainers, Volunteer Recruitment Coordinators, Increased number of training classes available to North County Volunteers, as well as an investment in marketing CASA in the north county. All of this funding is part of the overall 4-year strategic plan to diminish the waitlist of the 120 children in the North County so that every child who needs to be served will have the ability to be served.
“We are both excited and grateful to collaborate with must! charities. This is the most far reaching and substantial grant in the history of our program and provides an unprecedented opportunity to serve so many more children in need. We know children benefit from a relationship with a CASA who is from their own community, someone who is more likely to understand their family culture and background, and to be around when most needed. Assignment to children in their own community also makes the best use of the volunteer’s time since it means less time spent traveling. We have long been aware of the need in the north county. The collaboration provides us with the means to move forward with our goal of providing a CASA volunteer for every foster child so much more quickly than we have ever dreamed.“ Teresa Tardiff, Executive Director
CASA SLO has selected Melanie Barket as supervisor for the must! charities collaboration–North County Expansion of the Court Appointed Special Advocates program. Melanie is a Cal Poly graduate with a degree in Psychology and Human Development with an emphasis in Family Studies. She has lived in San Luis Obispo County since 1969 and in the North County for the last 8 years. Her background includes 4 years with Community Action Partnership SLO as a health educator and 4 years at the SLO County Health Department in their HIV/AIDS Program. She spent many years all across the county providing health education to local youth in a variety of venues. For the past 2 years Melanie developed and implemented the CASA Mentor Program which provides CASA advocacy for transitional aged youth in extended foster care.
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About must! Charities
must! charities, located in Templeton, CA is driven by a collaboration of friends and business owners dedicated to improving quality of life in San Luis Obispo’s North County by working alongside existing organizations to make a greater, more focused impact through collaboration. must! charities fosters relationships through a blend of expertise, research, and other resources, to empower existing non-profits to make strategic, sustainable change throughout the region. must! charities conducts a different approach to philanthropy than the norm and is a combination of a new strategic model of giving, combining both venture philanthropy and social entrepreneur ideas to bring about social change while producing measurable impact.
Contact must! charities to learn more:
Website: www.mustcharities.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mustcharities
Twitter: @mustcharities
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