It is with great pleasure that I invite you to Strength In Our Voices’ Second Annual Summer of Strength Benefit for Change!
This year, our event will take place on Saturday May 6, 2017 at the Rosewood Hotel rooftop in Georgetown, D.C. Your generous support enabled our organization to achieve our goals during our inaugural event and we would love to have your continued support this May. A limited number of early bird tickets are being offered to you as a thank you for your continued support.
Last May, SiOV hosted our First Annual Summer of Strength Benefit where over 120 members of the community came out to increase awareness about mental health. Together, we raised over $16,000 that funded an evidence-based suicide prevention program, called Sources of Strength, at McLean High School in Fairfax County, VA. This past October, McLean launched their Sources of Strength program and the impact has been nothing less than inspiring. Watch this video to see more!
Now let’s keep the success rolling
This year, we are fundraising to accomplish these goals:
Sources of Strength at McLean High School has been a huge success. We would like to continue to support McLean in their efforts to further enrich the adoption and impact of Sources of Strength into their community, financially and developmentally.
Due to this success, we would like to bring Sources of Strength to Longfellow Middle School, which feeds into McLean High School. We want to further integrate Sources of Strength into the community and truly entrench the program.
Finally, we have become such believers in the effectiveness of Sources of Strength that we are planning to fund a SiOV Director to become a certified Sources of Strength regional director. Not only will this enable SiOV to bring prevention programs to multiple schools at a fraction of the cost, but it will also free up SiOV funds to expand our reach into additional forms of programming in the future.
This effort is important
When I started SiOV, my vision for this organization was an ambition one: eliminate the stigma around mental health. And after this first year of hearing students talk eloquently about how mental health affects them, I know that achieving this goal is attainable. But there’s still so much left we can do. Through my outreach across the region, I’ve heard from several community leaders about the need for support and programs that address suicide prevention. In 2014, the Center for Disease Control, conducted an investigation of the behaviors and risk factors associated with suicides among youths enrolled in Fairfax County Public Schools. They found that there were increasing trends in fatal and non-fatal suicidal behaviors among students ages 10-19 from 2009-2013. Since this report, FCPS and other school districts have made it a priority to combat this rising epidemic and we are happy to partner with them in this endeavor.
Follow this link to purchase a ticket to our flagship fundraiser: https://siovsummerofstrength.eventbrite.com
We understand if you can’t make it and here’s a link to our donation page because without you we wouldn’t be where we are today and with your donation we can go even further. Checks can be written to “Strength In Our Voices” and mailed to the address below.
Thank you for your support and do not hesitate to reach out with questions or comments!
Sincerely,
—
Bobby Donohoe
President & Founder
STRENGTH IN OUR VOICES
1535 T Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
202.304.2246
bdonohoe@strengthinourvoices.org
strengthinourvoices.org
facebook.com/strengthinourvoices
Strength In Our Voices is a registered non-profit 501(c)(3) in the District of Columbia