Dear Volunteers,
I hope every one of you are healthy, and dealing with this challenging time of so much isolation! I have heard so many stories about the creative ways that you have continued to check on your kids, advocate for their needs, and make sure they are safe. The longer this goes on, the more challenging it will be - for everyone. But for our kids, it's such a critical time. So many kids rely on the schools, and their "break" from school suddenly doubled. And this creates more stress for families, as they deal with challenges of child care, potential job loss, and the stress of illness in their extended families. THANK YOU - for being incredible advocates. You are amazing.
As you know, we have been working hard to make sure we are here to support you during this "safe at home" time. The CASA board first authorized 80 hours of Emergency Relief Pay, to make sure that all of our staff was taken care of, while the federal government worked to create solutions. Currently, about half of the CASA staff is on
temporary furlough, and the rest of us are working remotely (though for some of us, that still means going in to the office) with most on half time hours. Our goal is to do all of the essential tasks to support you in your advocacy, and to keep CASA moving forward in the strongest position possible. We look forward to having all of the staff back soon, but our highest priority is the safety and health of our staff and volunteers, so our offices have strict limitations on the number of people who can be there at any time.
This challenge has also given us opportunity. We are using this time to analyze the way we have done things in the past, and learn what changes we might make to improve our services to you in the future. Of course, we have limitations on what we can do right now. Due to the guidelines of the stay home order, we had to stop a volunteer class that was halfway to completion. But - we can't stop recruiting and training volunteers - too many children are in need! We are now looking at alternative methods of training, and we will have exciting news soon about the implementation of
CASA University - an online training platform that offers some really exciting advantages for our volunteers and our recruiting efforts!
We have had to cancel your monthly volunteer in-service training meetings. You'll find options to continue learning and growing in advocacy with many virtual training options in this newsletter. We are planning to offer some "virtual training" options, using Zoom, and we will have information on that soon. We think that this might be something we will continue, because not everyone can make it to the lunch or after work meetings, and we think it could be a fun way to engage and offer more volunteers to hear from some of our great speakers.
We had to postpone our major spring fundraiser, the CASA Ducky Derby. This is a big financial hit to our CASA program. We are working at finding ways to supplement funding for CASA, all while realizing that we will likely also have to move our fall fundraiser. This presents definite challenges, but I assure you we are working diligently to adjust, and we will continue to be here for you, and for the many kids who need us. And - there is the highest number of children on our wait-list that we have seen in many years. 142 kids are waiting. We have a lot of work to do!
And finally, we cancelled all ideas for lunches/dinners for volunteer appreciation week. But that does not mean we don't appreciate you EVERY SINGLE DAY! Having the opportunity to thank you all for your selfless service is something we look forward to every year. Luckily, we had done the survey that I reported to you on in February's newsletter, and we learned a lot from you! We know that there is not one way that all of you like to be "appreciated" and we hope that our actions every day tell you how valued you are to us. You are the best volunteers anywhere!
Yours in Advocacy,
