Following up from all the great donations received at this year’s DeMolay Extravaganza, Livingston County Chapter presented LaCasa with all the personal care items that were received at the Extravaganza, and from their own efforts on May 13th and June 3rd at the Fowlerville Walmart.
All total, when they made their delivery on June 18th, they turned over 1/4-ton of personal care products, and another $600 in donations!
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157630313177220″]Some background on LaCasa
Our mission: We support and advocate for survivors of child abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault. We provide prevention, education and awareness to strengthen families and make our community safer.
General Information: For more than 30 years, LACASA has been helping vulnerable children and adults as they heal from difficult emotional wounds caused by neglect, abuse and violence. LACASA assists hundreds of survivors and their families each year as they learn to cope with – and overcome – trauma and heartache. We have been entrusted by the community to serve, to protect, to educate and to advocate. It is a privilege and an honor to help survivors create new lives and build new futures.
A bit of history: In the late 1970s, a group of citizens realized there was nowhere for victims of domestic violence to turn for help. Several of these folks opened their personal homes to these women and their children for temporary shelter from their abusers. They passed a hat, literally, and collected $40, which enabled them to purchase a phone line. The line was installed in a vacant office here in the county, staffed by volunteers and our first crisis line was born. We were incorporated in 1981 as the Livingston Area Council Against Spouse Abuse, and became known by the acronym, LACASA. Over the years, more programs were added (child abuse and sexual assault services, pet shelter for residents, CARE (Child Abuse Response Effort), SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner), On-Call, Community Education, CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) based on community need. We were no longer just working with survivors of spouse abuse, but people knew us as “LACASA” even though that was simply an acronym for our legal name. With the added services and staff, we outgrew several locations. In 2001, a very successful capital campaign (over $2 million!) allowed us to purchase the property and existing house where we now are. The house was renovated and included in the plans for our comprehensive services center, where our 21-bed shelter, counseling programs and administrative staff are now together all in one place!
Latest news: We acquired Livingston County’s Family Resource Center in December of 2011, which was a perfect fit, and added a comprehensive series of classes and programs to increase community awareness, enhance parenting skills and further our goal of preventing child abuse and family violence. The merger/acquisition was only one of several changes – we legally changed our name to simply LACASA, and introduced a new logo and brand identity.
If you’d like to know more about LaCasa, then check out this video: