New Partners; New Fall Programs

We’ve started an exciting new partnership with Volunteers of America, an organization that takes on the most difficult tasks to help people gain self-reliance, dignity and hope. VOA offers more than 60 services in Minnesota and Wisconsin to help vulnerable children, adolescents, families, older adults, students, persons with disabilities and special needs, and ex-offenders. The two VOA services we are partnering with are the Avanti Center for Girls in Blaine, MN and the Children’s Residential Treatment Center (CRTC) in South Minneapolis. At these two sites we have fall Visual Art Exploration Programs for teens 13-18 who are creating holiday cards with Artist Mentors Emma Mollendor (Avanti) and Katie French Perez (CRTC). Students will choose their favorite designs and we will print set of those cards for the students, their families and friends. We can’t share their names and stories, or show you their pictures because their privacy needs to be protected. But we can tell you our hope; and that is that these students not only discover and develop their God-given creative talents in visual art, but that these sessions can be a place where students find healing, hope and beauty in their lives.

Avanti Center for Girls offers a continuum of shelter, evaluation and residential treatment services. Avanti uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to treat adolescent girls, ages 13-18, experiencing mental health crisis. Diagnoses include depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and emerging personality disorders which often present as self-injurious behavior and frequent hospitalizations for suicidal ideation and attempts. Family involvement is incorporated into all stages of treatment.

Children’s Residential Treatment Center (CRTC) provides intensive residential treatment, in a secure setting, for severely emotionally disturbed children and adolescents who suffer primary psychiatric challenges such as mood and anxiety disorders, personality disorders, self-destructive behaviors, eating disorders, thought/dissociative disorders, and history of trauma. Average length of stay is typically between 6 and 12 months.