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As of
May, 2009, Kroger-Ohio ended its great Gift Card Rewards
program, through which it tracked participants' spending and gave NAMI five percent of the total. The participants to whom we
distributed cards were causing Kroger to send over $13,000 annually
to NAMI Ohio - of which NAMI Athens received half.
To replace the Gift Card program, Kroger has initiated a much
simpler one which tracks spending through the customer's Plus Card -
the card the customer scans to get discounts. Like the Gift Card
Program, the Rewards Program costs the user nothing but, unlike the
old program, the customer registers once and that's it for the next
year. No loading. Nothing to do until we all are asked to
re-register the following May.
Register NOW 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 of late 2009, the Kroger Rewards Program had
proven far more lucrative than the Kroger Gift Card Program.
Since NAMI Ohio does not run this program, participating affiliates
get 100 percent of the rewards. As of the first quarter 2009, NAMI
Athens was earning about $100 per registered card or $16,000 in
total on an annualized basis. This has allowed us not only to
survive the economic crisis but even to prosper.
Registered participants
help support many worthwhile efforts, including:
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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 police officer to
recognize "offenders" in mental health crises and take them for
help rather than to jail. In the last several years, over 125
officers have earned their CIT pins. However, with cutbacks in
funds coming from NAMI Ohio, the 317 Board, etc., we might not
even have been able to run CIT in 2009 had it not been for the
Kroger money. With that money, however, NAMI Athens not only
took up the slack but actually expanded what we normally do -
for instance, bringing in an additional great outside speaker.
In 2009, twenty five officers were awarded their CIT pins -
bringing the total number of police equipped to help the
mentally ill in our region to one hundred fifty.
-
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. We can now offer child care and a light supper to the
parents of troubled children on the nights they take our Hand to
Hand course. Without these, many could not attend. We can do the
same for the H2H support group which has spun off from that
course. In addition, we can afford more needed advertising for
our Peer to Peer course for persons in recovery. And, though
fiscal problems have caused NAMI Ohio no longer to train P2P
mentors, we were able to send one person to a NAMI-Virginia
mentor-training center in Richmond.
-
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 were able
in 2009 to do even more - thanks to the Kroger money - than
would otherwise have been possible.
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The NAMI Recovery Conferences: Every
other year, NAMI runs a day long conference on "Recovery and
Hope: Consumer and Family Perspectives on Mental Illness." Each
conference costs over $7,000 to run - most of which came in the
past from local university/college and mental health
co-sponsors. Now attracting around 170 attendees including many
nurses and other professionals in training, they are 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, will easily allow us to
continue holding these great educational events.
Want to
help?
REGISTER
NOW!
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