Grant Funding = More Help and Hope for Our Community

We are pleased to announce that Voice and Vision received grant funding from two organizations in June.  What’s exciting is that we can provide additional help and, in turn, instill hope for additional members of our community.  The grants provide funding for our College Plus program and the soon-to-be-published Help and Hope Guide on substance use.

College Plus Program

College Plus received a grant from the Joseph Jocelino Gaskill Education Fund through The Philadelphia Foundation in the amount of $3,556.69. The fund was established in 2010 by Joseph and Almerinda Gaskill in honor of their late son Joseph. Each year this fund helps Voice and Vision’s College Plus Initiative to fund and support people who have mental illness and/or co-occurring disorders go to college and live out their college/career dreams.

We appreciate the ongoing, generous donation from Mr. and Mrs. Gaskill. 

If you want to learn more about the impact of College Plus, check out Emily’s Story and Francesco, Lisa, and Marian’s stories from our 10-year anniversary event. 

Help and Hope Guide

The second grant we received is from Foundations Community Partnership in the amount of $5,000, for the second Guide in our series:  Help and Hope: Substance Use – the Growing Need to Know.  The guide is focused on substance use and addiction and written by families who have ‘walked the walked.’

Our Consumer/Family Satisfaction Team interviewed youth and families regarding their experience with addictions and the treatment they received. The data showed families need information: where to go for treatment and support, where to connect with others who experienced what they are experiencing, and how to support family members who are battling this crippling family disease. Families need to know there is hope from others who have experienced the same despair.

Our goal was to write an easily understood guide for families with children 10-30 years old and for people who support families. The guide will cover changes to the brain; available treatments and how to pay for them; supports needed to assure recovery post-treatment; the impact of addiction in the home, on children, and on grandparents left to raise their grandchildren; and national, state and county resources. Also, like the first Guide, families and youth share their stories of hope and resiliency during their most difficult times. 

We want to distribute the guide to families, support groups, schools, pediatricians, and organizations that need this resource; such as drug & alcohol providers, community agencies/non-profits and support/prevention organizations especially those working with schools.

To give perspective of how much these guides are needed, here is a testimonial on the first Help and Hope guide we published in 2016:

“I wanted to let you know that the books we purchased are really helping our staff in connecting families to needed services as well as helping families.”

Want to help and give hope?

You can by submitting a donation online.  Every little bit helps!