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If you shop at Kroger and have not yet registered
for the Community Rewards program please consider doing so for NAMI Athens. Kroger
donates money to your favorite non-profit organization through this
program.
At absolutely no extra
cost to the shopper, Kroger will donate a percentage of your
spend to NAMI Athens (learn more
here). NAMI Athens receives between $80 and $100 per year per registered
card. So far, we have received totals between $8,000 and $13,000 per
year from the Community Rewards program.
Our super webmaster Mary Patacca has made a set of NAMI
Athens-user-friendly instructions on how to register (or re-register
every April). You can access them by clicking on the Kroger
logo below. We’d surely appreciate it if you would take a
minute or so to simply print the instructions and follow them as you
proceed through the registration process. If you do register or
re-register, let NAMI Kroger honcho Tom Walker (walker@ohio.edu)
know so he can put your name on a list of people to remind in April
2011 when it comes time to renew.
Register NOW (or renew an existing registration) by clicking on the
logo below, and following the instructions.
The instructions provide
direction for negotiating the registration process at
www.krogercommunityrewards.com. Note that our organization
name is NAMI Athens, and our Non-Profit Organization (NPO) number is
81774.
Your
participation is important.
As noted above, this program brings NAMI large infusions of money
which have allowed us not only to survive in hard times but even to
prosper.
Registered participants
help support many worthwhile efforts, including:
-
Training Police:
Each year,
our local CIT Committee, of which NAMI is a part, runs a
five-day Crisis Intervention Training program to teach SE Ohio
law enforcement officer to recognize "offenders" in mental
health crises and take them for help rather than to jail. As of
2010, 190 officers had earned their CIT pins. However, with
cutbacks in funding from NAMI Ohio, the 317 Board, etc., we
might not have been able to run CIT in 2009 and 2010 had it not
been for the Kroger money. With that money, NAMI Athens not only
took up the slack but actually expanded the program -
for instance, bringing in great additional outside speakers.
-
NAMI Courses:
Unlike
most NAMI affiliates, we now can afford to offer all three of
the great multi-week NAMI courses for family members and persons
in recovery. It takes several thousand dollars annually to
advertise for all three courses twice a year. The Kroger money
helps a lot.
-
The Ridges Cemeteries Project:
Though we
get good support from the ODMH for our stigma-busting project to
renovate the old Mental Hospital Cemeteries on the Ridges and to
improve the Nature Walk between them, we’ve been able to do even
more - thanks to the Kroger money - than would otherwise have
been possible.
-
The NAMI Recovery Conferences
and Speakers Series:
Until 2009, every other year, NAMI ran day long conferences on
"Recovery and Hope: Consumer and Family Perspectives on Mental
Illness." Each conference cost over $7,000 to run - most of
which came from local university/college and mental health
co-sponsors. Attracting up to 170 attendees including many
nurses and other professionals in training, they were well worth
the money. Following the last one, however, we were told by many
of the co-sponsors that, because of fiscal problems, such
funding would not likely be forthcoming in the foreseeable
future. The Kroger money, however, is now allowing us to sponsor
a less expensive NAMI Speakers Series. Taking place in the
Athens Public Library, on certain last Thursdays, the series
features major speakers – usually consumers – from outside the
region and thus achieves some of the purpose of the
conferences.
Want to
help?
REGISTER
NOW!
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