It’s that time of year……temperature is two degrees outside, bright sun bouncing off snow and ice, pale blue sky wherever you look and almost no one is walking outside. Well, it is that time of year if you’re in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which I am. But by the time you read this, spring will be less than three weeks away.
The coming of Spring brings images of budding flowers, tiny suggestions of leaves that will flourish on trees, and a certain something in the air that invites us to forget the raw edge of winter. Spring is growth and renewal and a promise of great things to come.
Springtime at COPE is a also a time of growth, and hope and a promise of great things to come. This is the time of year where our board, staff, and volunteers work hard to offer events and activities that will help sustain COPE and the families who need us.
You are probably all receiving lots of emails from us inviting you to participate in these programs. We count on your participation and contributions to sustain COPE. You, our families, supporters and donors, enable COPE to offer our 13 parent and sibling support groups reaching over 100 families; our weekend summer bereavement program, COPE’s Camp Erin NYC, for children, 6 through 17, who have lost a loved one; our meditation and stress reduction workshops, as well as other healing programs; our crisis services available to you from our Clinical Director; training, consultation and bereavement services for educational and community organizations.
COPE comes back, year after year, because not only do we help you, but you help us.
Here are some of the ways you can bring a great springtime to COPE:
- Come to The Cabaret, please! The Argyle Theater, a newly renovated theater in Babylon, not only provides top notch theater productions, they work closely with community groups to support non-profit services. You get out to see a show and NOT sit in traffic, and we get a boost for COPE. The show is Sunday March 22, 2020 at 2:00 PM and ticket prices are $80.00 for Orchestra seats with a significant portion donated to COPE. Click here for more information.
- Our second COPE Brunch, held in the beautiful meeting room at Cedarmere, is going to be held on March 8th. Our last meeting, in a packed room, was filled with kindness and connection…and bagels and cream cheese! Click here for more information.
- Come bowl for COPE, on March 24th at Bowlmor Lanes in Melville, for our 2020 Bowling event. Lots of food, lots of fun, and some serious competition. Click here for more information.
- Come and spend a great day at the beautiful Glen Head Country Club. Bring as many people as you can to our annual COPE Golf Event, held this year on May 18, 2020. Our major fundraiser, and fun-raiser, this golf event is a great opportunity for you and your family, friends, colleagues, business associates, stores that you shop at, to support COPE. Registration opens soon.
I know my job as board president is to help raise money, but I also know that a core value of our organization is that the next level of healing is helping. I have seen you all help each other at COPE all the time: bearing witness to grief in our groups, hugs and shared tears at our Annual Walk, quiet moments at our Labyrinth, tender conversations at our Brunch, and shared laughs whenever we can.
But we also need your financial support to help COPE continue as an organization. We are a bare bones group: no fancy furniture, moved to Cedarmere in Roslyn because the rent was about half of what we were paying in Eisenhower Park, cut back on our paper mailings to reduce our printing and mailing costs, no fancy lunches, and yet, when I looked at our basic costs to run COPE, they are significant. We work diligently to sustain COPE, but we can’t do it without your support. If you can donate to COPE, that would great, but if you can donate AND come join us at an event, that would be wonderful.
I would also like to take a minute to thank Michelle Graff, LCSW, our Director of Clinical Services for the last two years. Michelle has been a joy to work with. She is generous and fearless and has been dedicated to helping our families. Michelle, a working mother with two school age children, is moving on and taking new steps in her career as well as tailoring her work to meet her kids’ crazy schedules. I will miss her enormously and wish her well in her next steps. Michelle will be around during this transition and will help in our job search for a new staff person. We all wish her good luck and continued success in her career.