The 6th Annual Gándara Youth Exhibit, ArtSong, hosted a gallery reception and silent auction on December 12 at Venture Valley Mentors in downtown Springfield. Artists in Gándara Center’s youth residential programs created 54 pieces as part of their art therapy for the event, which also included music performances.

Attendees were able to bid on all artwork on display. Event proceeds from the auction and t-shirts designed by one of the artists directly support young artists by providing supplies to help sustain Gándara’s art therapy program.

ArtSong is a fine arts specialty program that uses art instruction and innovative concepts to empower disadvantaged youth through creativity and inspires original artistic works and personal development. One of the artists, 13-year-old Alicia, liked the program, had high praise for the program. “It was great because it helped me express my feelings,” she said.

Hal, 22, submitted a painting and performed several songs. He said he has created art as long as he can remember. “Creativity has always been in my hands,” he explained. “I just love doing art.”

Amy Porchelli, founder/director said she enjoyed seeing the process of making art boost the youths’ confidence. “One of my favorite aspects of this year’s show was that the youth contributed what inspires them personally, whether their paintings were abstract or representative,” she said.

Gándara Center’s December Newsletter is now online. You can read about our Plymouth Recovery Center moving to a larger, more centrally located site thanks to a state grant; our recruitment efforts in Puerto Rico; our Community Care Package Drive; and our Continuum staff getting ready for its annual Thanksgiving Day deliveries to some of its more needy families.

You can also read about our Intensive Care Coordination and In Home Therapy services. View video of Robert Jencks, a case manager with the Gándara Center-Plymouth County MISSION Re-entry Program, which provides services for incarcerated men at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility.

In addition, view TV segments featuring Sara Moriarty, director of Gándara Center’s Hampden County Tobacco Free Community Partnership; and our director of marketing and development, Jade Rivera-McFarlin, on Better Community on Western Mass News discussing our agency’s Community Care Package Drive and our #GivingTuesday fundraising efforts.

Our newsletter can be found online here.

¿Conoce a algún joven o niño con problemas emocionales graves que necesite servicios de coordinación de cuidados intensivos o que podrían beneficiarse de la terapia en el hogar? La ayuda está al alcance de la mano. Gándara Center specializes in providing a variety of bilingual, bicultural services to youth with SED and their families using a wraparound approach.

In this season of giving, what better way to spread holiday cheer than by donating essential items to those who are less fortunate? Gándara Center, which has championed the underserved since 1977, has organized a Community Care Package Drive to help people who need basic necessities, such as personal toiletries/hygiene products and small winter clothing items.

The beneficiaries of donor generosity will be homeless youth, those in recovery, and struggling families. Even the smallest act of kindness can make a lasting impact! The wish list items are:

• shampoo and conditioner
• toothpaste and toothbrushes
• dental floss
• deodorant
• brushes and combs
• lotion
• socks
• winter hats
• mittens
• scarves
• baby wipes
• hand sanitizer
• hand soap
• body wash

The drop-off locations are Gándara Center offices at:

• 85 St. George Road, Springfield
• 2155 Main Street, Springfield
• 147 Norman Street, West Springfield
• 80 Commercial Street, Holyoke

Only new items are requested, please. The donations will be collected until January 2 and they will be packaged and delivered to those in desperate need. Gándara Center appreciates your kindness and generosity.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Substance Abuse Services recently awarded Gándara Center a Substance Addiction Peer Recovery Support Center grant for greater Plymouth. For the past two years, Gándara Center has been partnering with the Plymouth Recovery Center, Inc. on Obery Street with the goal of securing state funds to provide a stable funding base for the Center.

The program will move to a centrally located, larger downtown Main Street location—one that that includes parking—in early 2020. Gándara staff will continue to provide outreach support to the Obery Street site, which will remain open at reduced hours. Many of the current Plymouth Recovery Center groups will move to the new site. Gándara Center staff may also provide outreach supports to other sites in Plymouth County.

Gándara Center’s Recovery Support Center in Plymouth is among eight new recovery support centers funded within communities with high overdose rates.

The Plymouth Recovery Support Center’s mission is based on creating a culture of recovery and welcomes all individuals contemplating or engaged in recovery from substance use and those affected by substance use. All paths to recovery will be respected. All of the Center’s services are free. Participants may also be referred to Recovery Coaching, whereby trained peers help participants identify barriers and supports they need to maintain recovery.

The Center’s goal is to provide a safe, respectful and welcoming environment to people in recovery and their family members. It uses a participant driven, peer-to-peer model in which staff with lived experience support and train volunteer/members who help to initiate, design, implement and evaluate Center activities. Participants and members will expand its daily calendar of structured activities that include education, skills development, and peer supports designed to help prevent and promote sustained recovery from substances. Participants will receive emotional and informational supports—including concrete assistance to find jobs, childcare, employment, housing, connections within the community, relapse prevention and tobacco cessation support groups, social events, access to computers for job readiness/job search activities, and advocacy.

The Center creates a place to make sober social connections and develop a sense of belonging through recreational, health, wellness and service activities, and participation in health fairs, community events, and celebrations/holidays.

The 6th Annual Gándara Youth Art Exhibit, ArtSong, will host a gallery reception and auction on Thursday, December 12, from 5:00 p. m. to 7:00 p. m., at a NEW LOCATION: Valley Venture Mentors, 276 Bridge Street, Springfield. You don’t want to miss this incredible art show from the youth in our residential DCF programs, who have been spending months working on their pieces as part of their art therapy. They have been exploring, learning, collaborating, and making great art!

ArtSong is a fine arts specialty program that uses art instruction and innovative concepts to empower disadvantaged youth through creativity and inspires original artistic works and personal development.

The ArtSong program gives the youth a place to say how they feel and what they believe, according to Amy Porchelli, founder/director of ArtSong. “Most therapy is focused on the individual, but this program is a peer environment, which allows them to have fun, build their confidence, and creates a lot of dialogue. It’s a very therapeutic experience,” she said.

Proceeds from this free event will help sustain our art therapy program.

The following are examples of ArtSong works from past exhibits:

Gándara Center’s Stop Access Springfield Coalition is hosting a Town Hall event: Empower the Next Generation, on viernes, diciembre 11, from 6:00 p. m. to 8:00 p. m. at Roca Springfield, 29 School Street. Members of the community are encouraged attend and help their children understand the hidden dangers of substance use.

Featured activities will Narcan training (a drug that reverses opioid overdoses), a prescription drug dropbox, and a demonstration of impairment goggles, which allow participants to “experience” the altered vision that substance use causes.

This free event includes dinner.

Stop Access Springfield trabaja para reducir el consumo de sustancias en las comunidades de South End, Maple High/Six Corners y Forest Park. The coalition works to create positive vital communities and implement citywide strategies that highlight substance use prevention and move it to a priority status in Springfield. The coalition focuses on collection of underage drinking and other data, community capacity building, public health planning to reduce and prevent substance use, and implementation of these strategies.

The coalition is coordinated by Gándara Center and funded by a grant from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The Stop Access Coalition invites all interested residents and organizations of the city of Springfield to participate in its group.

After you’ve shopped ’til you drop during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, kick off the official “Giving Season” and join us on December 3 for #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving to nonprofits. It’s a great day to make a gift to Gándara Center.

DOUBLE YOUR GIFT: on #GivingTuesday, Facebook will match up to $7 million in donations made on Facebook to U.S. nonprofits starting at 8:00 a. m. Visit our Facebook Page on December 3 and make a gift—the earlier the better! Last year we raised $940 ($355 on Facebook) on #Giving Tuesday. Let’s break the thousand mark this year!

Not on Facebook? No problem. Make your gift online right here.

You can designate your gift to any one of our programs and services, including:

Aventura! Summer Camp Scholarship: Summer camp is not only fun for kids—it also helps build their self-confidence as they try new activities and make new friends. But not every child in Springfield has the chance to go to camp because of its cost. That’s where this scholarship comes in. Last year’s #GivingTuesday enabled 45 children and teens to attend summer camp for two weeks!

Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Services: Our Outpatient Clinics in Springfield and Brockton offer a broad array of bilingual and bicultural services for adults, families, children, and adolescents, including group psychotherapy, diagnostic assessments, and treatment. We also offer residential treatment for men and women that focuses on trauma informed care, individualized treatment, case management, recovery-based supports, and family engagement.

Peer Recovery Support Centers: Our peer-governed centers in Brockton, Holyoke, Hyannis, Plymouth, and Springfield are places where support groups and social activities bring together a community of people to celebrate recovery. Peer-based recovery is a relatively new and exciting frontier in substance use disorder services and has proven to be an effective tool in helping people continue their recovery process.

Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative: Gándara is the only specialized Hispanic Community Service Agency (CSA) in the state. The CSA provides flexible, family-driven, wraparound intensive care coordination for children and teens experiencing serious emotional disturbances.
A qualified bilingual care planning team works with the family unit, in the home, to to provide support while helping the meet their vision and goals.

Youth/Young Adult Residential Homes: Gándara’s Adolescent and Family Services Division operates the Western Mass Region’s largest system of Stabilization and Rapid Re-entry Residences and Group Homes for at-risk families with youth ages birth to 20. We also run an Alternative Detention Center and Residential Treatment Program for teenage males in the juvenile justice system, as well as the region’s first LGBTQ-centered residential home.

Foster Care: Gándara Center provides intensive case management and recreational opportunities for youth and 24-hour on-call support for families. Our foster parents give our communities’ most vulnerable children a chance to prosper emotionally, mentally, and physically. Foster parents receive a daily tax-free stipend per child to help provide basic food and shelter needs, supervision, support, and safety. At Gándara, we believe there are no unwanted children, just unfound families.

Your dollars can make a difference in a myriad of other programs as well. Gándara Center also has community education, prevention, and health services. Our Impact Center in Springfield offers services for youth with mental health and/or substance use concerns in a friendly, relaxed space. Our Youth Development Center in Holyoke offers at-risk youth a place where they can access Gándara’s educational support and after-school programs. Our Springfield Family Resource Center provides help for families navigating through housing, education, courts, and legal systems, as well as health insurance, EBT, and behavioral health services—and a food pantry open to the community. We also offer Servicios conductuales en el hogar and Terapia en el hogar for youth with serious emotional or behavioral health needs, and our art therapy program for youth in our residential homes culminates in an annual art exhibit and auction. In addition, we provide Developmental Disability Residential Services.

Simply put, we make a difference—and so do you, with your generosity.

Visit our Facebook Page on December 3 and make a gift! Or, if you’d prefer, donate here.

Thank you!

Gándara Center’s November Newsletter is now online. You can read about Brighter Futures, our new overnight alternative housing program in Springfield for transitional young adults (18-24) who are experiencing—or at risk of—homelessness; see our new, improved Gándara Company Store (with many new items), and read about a $125,000 federal grant to our Stop Access Springfield Coalition.

You can also learn how to become a sponsor in our Aventura! Summer Camp Program; view interviews with our employees to see what sets our agency apart from the rest; and read about Aundra Gillyourd works with the Gándara Center-Plymouth County MISSION Re-entry Program, which provides coordinated and integrated services for incarcerated men at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility who are assessed with Substance Use Disorder, co-occurring other mental health issues, and are at high risk to reoffend.

Our agency was featured in the media a lot in October: view coverage of our Latinx AIDS/HIV Awareness Vigil at Springfield City Hall, as well as Hampden County Tobacco Free Partnership Director Sara Moriarty on Western Mass News voicing our agency’s support for two anti-vaping bills that are now in the Massachusetts House and Senate’s Ways and Means Committee. Our director of marketing and development, Jade Rivera-McFarlin, was on WWLP’s Mass Appeal on October 22 to discuss our Narcan trainings.

Read the AARP article on the Gomez family, including Gándara Center Behavior Therapist Eva Gomez, who served six years in the Army Reserve.

Our newsletter can be found online here.

U.S Congressman Richard E. Neal (D-Springfield), in collaboration with the White House Office National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), recently announced a $125,000 grant to Gándara Center’s Stop Access Springfield Coalition. The award was one of 150 nationwide grants for ONDCP’s Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program.

Pictured above at Congressman Neal’s Springfield office after a November 5 meeting about the grant are (L-R) Anthony Jennings, an outreach specialist for the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office and Chair of the Stop Access Springfield Coalition; Sharon Hall-Smith, director of prevention and community services at Gándara Center; Congressman Neal; Stop Access Springfield Coalition Coordinator Malikah Jeffries; and Gándara Center Marketing and Development Director Jade Rivera-McFarlin.

Stop Access Springfield works to reduce youth substance use by creating positive vital communities and implementing citywide strategies that highlight substance use prevention and move it to a priority status in Springfield. The coalition focuses on collection data around youth risk and protective factors including youth alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco use; community capacity building; public health planning to use environmental policy changes to reduce and prevent youth substance use; and implementation of these strategies. The coalition’s Youth Advisory Board is actively involved in providing direction to the coalition.

The coalition is coordinated by Gándara Center and funded by a grant from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The federal DFC Program provides grants to community coalitions to strengthen the infrastructure among local partners to create and sustain a reduction in local youth substance use. Recognizing that local problems need local solutions, DFC-funded coalitions engage multiple sectors of the community and employ a variety of environmental strategies to address local substance use problems.

The grant is one of five totaling $625,000 to five organizations in western Massachusetts  Also receiving awards in the First Congressional District of Massachusetts are Easthampton Healthy Youth Coalition, Hampden-Wilbraham Partners for Youth, West Springfield CARE Coalition, and Longmeadow Public Schools.

“Our goal is to make every community a safe and drug-free place for our youth,” said Congressman Neal. “Prevention is a powerful tool to counteract drug use in our community, and these coalitions will use this funding to help youth in West Springfield, Longmeadow, Springfield, Hampden, Wilbraham, and Easthampton make healthy choices about substance use.”

DFC-Funded coalitions are composed of community leaders, parents, youth, teachers, religious and fraternal organizations, healthcare and business professionals, law enforcement, and media. By involving the community in a solution-oriented approach, DFC also helps those youth at risk for substance use recognize that the majority of our Nation’s youth choose not to use drugs. The coalitions continue to make progress toward achieving the goal of preventing and reducing youth substance use. In June, ONDCP released the 2018 Executive Summary and End-of-Year Report for its DFC grant recipients, which continue to yield consistently reduced youth substances use rates.

ONDCP Director Jim Carroll said that in order to create safe and healthy places, “we must break through to our children now and educate them about the dangers of substance use. The Drug-Free Communities, administered by our office across the United States, are proven prevention programs tailored to do just that by meeting the local prevention needs in each community. The Trump Administration will continue expanding the number of community-based coalitions dedicated to the critical mission of stopping substance use among our youth before it starts.”

Pictured below are Congressman Neal and Stop Access Springfield Coalition Coordinator Malikah Jeffries.