Arbour Counseling Services hosted its inaugural community backpack drive in Fall River, Massachusetts, on August 7, 2024. The event aimed to provide backpacks and school supplies to students across Fall River's public, charter, and private schools, acknowledging the difficulties parents face due to the global pandemic, mental health crisis, and rising cost of living. The initial distribution included 300 backpacks, with plans for similar drives across Arbour's eight sites. The event featured remarks from an Arbour Counseling Services representative, who highlighted the organization's central mission in community mental health and its commitment to supporting the community. Partnerships with School on Wheels of Massachusetts, represented by Barbara Fox, and United Neighbors of Fall River, represented by Wendy Garlip, were crucial in organizing the drive. Special thanks were extended to Denise Hogan, Christine Sylvia, and Tatiana Reese for their outreach and leadership. Arbour also expressed intentions to collaborate with the opioid task force and other community events. Mayor Paul Coogan attended the event, expressing his gratitude for the invitation and commending Arbour Counseling Services for their significant efforts. He emphasized the importance of community support for children, especially in light of the lasting impact of recent challenges, and praised Arbour for their on-the-ground work in helping students succeed.
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um so uh thank you all for coming today um one of the things is Shaka here our community service director when we um she's coming in okay she oh in a supervision all right uh so when I was thinking about what remarks to make for today you know she said well maybe you can tell a story about um the first backpack that you have uh and then I started to think I couldn't really
0:24remember it but what I did remember was um I have three kids and I do very vividly remember their first backpacks as well as the looks on their face when they were going off and the apprehension and the fear and the excitement that they had um and it made me think of you know the challenges that parents are facing right now you know we had the means to give them backpacks it's you
0:48know for us a lot of us it's a you know a simple thing uh but the challenges that are going on right now you have you know the global pandemic and on top of that was um you know the Mental Health crisis that we all experienced here you know quite you know right after that and then you have the rising you know cost of you know living that people are suffering so um you know our Counseling
1:08Service our Central mission is Community Mental Health and and the the needs of our community is what really affects them so and we see that play in inside the uh the office when we're doing our therapy or um our inhome therapy or partial Hospital program stuff you know so any effort that we can do with your office May Coogan um to really kind of help out you know please let us know too
1:32so um so for course I'd like to welcome the whole Fall River team uh this is our inaugural event uh at Arbor counseling services for the community backpack Drive uh to mention also that there not just the backpacks but the stuff inside the backpacks uh we're going to be doing this type of drive all throughout Arbor uh we have eight separate sites that we're going to be doing this at uh so
1:52anybody interested in making any Don donations please drop off uh backpass school supplies at any of the eight Arbor sites um I'd also like to uh thank uh Barbara Fox at school on Wheels of Massachusetts as well as United neighbors of Fall River it's um Wendy gar lip uh for their partnership and pulling this stuff together uh this is the first 300 but they're probably going to be some other things throughout the
2:19year as well as we have a number of other events that are planned with them too um as I had mentioned earlier we're really trying to plug into the community so we're going to be doing some work with the opid task force as well as any other events that are going on um in the community um heartfelt thanks to Mayor Paul Coogan uh for your you know dedication to the Youth of our you know
2:40community and supporting these types of events as well um like I said anytime you need a partner or anything please let us know uh we'll be here a very special thanks to the entire Arbor counseling uh service team here at Fall River there's a lot of people in the audience here but there's other people that are not represented a special thanks to uh Denise Hogan uh thank you very much yep thank you for um you know
3:05your efforts for outreach not just here but it's going to be all throughout Arbor and then Christine Sylvia our administrative uh director as well as Tatiana ree as well for putting together this as well as your leadership uh throughout Arbor so um if um anybody has donations please drop them off at any of the arbor counseling sites and or mayor C oh yeah I just want to say it's
3:30it's great to be invited to come down to aror counseling for your backpack giveaway I mean you have a ton of them here already and if you're going to get more that's all the better for the fora public school students our charter school students or our private school students I know you're not going to you're going to worry about getting them into kids hands which is what we all should focus on making sure it covers
3:49all of our schools um I think it's uh it's a great effort that we need to do more of as a community to make sure we're taking care of the kids people have to understand what these kids went through a few years back um I think the ramifications are still being felt across the community and places like ARA counseling that are on the ground uh trying to coach these people up and help
4:12them to get what they need to be successful in school transitioning into life is so important and I'm uh I'm just flattered you thought enough to invite me down and I really appreciate your efforts down here so thank you thank you appreciate it thank you thanks everybody