As we move into this season of gratitude and celebration, we want to thank YOU. If you are seeing this, you are already a part of our network, and we cannot thank you enough for your advocacy and outreach. Thank you for keeping our staff and those we serve in your thoughts. Thank you for the incredible time and energy spent volunteering, making meals, and personally connecting with our staff and those we serve. Most of all, thank you for your continued partnership and support of our exceptional services. With your help and generosity, we have been able to keep people happy and healthy over the past two years—and what a couple of years it has been!
With concepts like ordinary and mundane seeming like distant memories, it has taken a lot of hard work, determination, and collaboration to keep people safe, as well as keep positivity and hope alive. It hasn’t been easy, but you have helped make it happen.
Your support has enabled Living Well Disability Services to do so many amazing things, during one of the most trying times in our history. Because of YOU we were able to:
• Provide extra staffing, nursing, COVID testing, medical supports, health supplies, and PPE—at a cost well over $1M.
• Help reduce workload for our direct care staff by having volunteers prepare, package, and deliver meals right to our houses.
• Purchase three new accessible homes that will help some our individuals move to even more supportive and nurturing homes.
• Raise the starting salary of our direct care staff to a level that leads our industry.
• Provide continued access to community outings like sports games, visiting friends, theater, and exercise, despite the increasing challenges we face.
With 96% of our funding connected to government sources like Medicare, we rely on donations to help our people THRIVE. Providing exceptional services to people impacted by disabilities is not easy or inexpensive, but is life changing, transformative work—and we need your help.
Please join me making Living Well a significant part of your year-end giving plan. Our gifts, especially this time of year, will make a direct impact on the people we are so honored to serve. It will surely bring JOY to all who benefit from your generosity—like Dan, whose personality is pure sunshine and inspiration is painting and friendship.
Thank you for your support and partnership. You are the reason Living Well is such a great place to live and work.
Best always, Tom Gillespie CEO
PS: On our mailing list? Look for the holiday card being mailed now! And remember to stay up to day by signing up for emails at livingwell.org/newsletter.
PPS: The artwork featured on this post was created by Dan, who recently won our Self-Advocate Dreammaker Award. With Living Well since 2017, Dan lives a full and active life. He is a talented artist who has shown his art in galleries with sales across the county and globe, is a widower who misses his wife daily, and has a penchant for buffalo wings and beer. Donations help Living Well provide care beyond the basics that help keep the people we serve smiling while supported.