Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Counties’ April public breakfast meeting takes place on Thursday, April 13th, 2017 at 9am at the Silver Springs Community Center.
This month’s guest speakers include Nevada 2-1-1 and Big Brothers Big Sisters.
2-1-1 is a special telephone number reserved to provide information and referrals to health, human and social service organizations. 2-1-1 services include places to find emergency food, housing and emergency shelter locations, children’s services, support for seniors older persons and people with disabilities, and mental health and counseling services, among many others.
The mission of Big Brothers Big Sisters is “to provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships that change their lives for the better, forever.” Big Brothers Big Sisters is currently working with the Silver Stage Elementary School and Healthy Communities school-based resource coordinator Patty Sanborn to offer a site-based mentoring program that takes place at school, during lunch. They are seeking mentors to participate in training for this rewarding volunteer program.
Freida Carbery Retires: The Coalition will also pay tribute to retiring Healthy Communities’Volunteer Coordinator, Freida Carbery, who has had an immense impact on the region. Freida has worked tirelessly with the Coalition since 2008 to ensure that people of all abilities and from all walks of life have a central role in making their communities healthier.
For example, in 2011 she received a statewide “Social Justice” award from Community Chest, Inc. for her work in developing Healthy Communities’ Dayton and Silver Stage Food pantries. The award noted her work in developing welcoming spaces for both volunteers and guests, and for creating places where entire communities could take “ownership” of their community food pantries through volunteer work. Today clubs, schools, businesses, churches, and hundreds of volunteers of all ages and abilities, are involved in making the food pantries thrive. The pantries have allowed people to access much-needed food , of course, but they’ve also allowed people to gain new job skills and to find important social connections to others. Today the Dayton and Silver Stage Pantries are managed by Alie Trier and Kathy McIntosh, who have the same welcoming vision of inclusion and kindness.
Freida was also key in motivating Coalition group members to work together to bring the international group Remote Area Medical (RAM) to Nevada to offer temporary pop-up clinics with free dental, vision and medical services for all ages. In 2016, she received a statewide Nevada Human Services Network award for her work in recruiting and organizing thousands of volunteers for Remote Area Medical clinics that brought over $600,000 in dental, medical and vision services at no cost to thousands of patients across rural and urban Nevada since 2014.
