Steve and NAMI Walks

NAMI Walks is a fun event. It is exciting to be there, and easy to donate some of your own money. The fundraising function is a step up in engagement, much appreciated by the non-profit organization it supports. Copied below is the NAMI Walks fundraising letter Central Middlesex member Steve Hadden is sending this year to friends and family. It offers a warm way to ask for donations while outlining NAMI’s circle of volunteerism and sense of community.

We can’t all be as eloquent as Steve, but perhaps you’ll find some sentiments from his letter that will spark ideas for your personal outreach. In the links below you can join the Central Middlesex Walks team and create your own fundraising page and/or sign up to volunteer to help things runs smoothly at NAMI Walks on the day of the event.

Steve volunteering at NAMI Walks

Dear friends,

One of the many good reasons to support NAMI is how effectively NAMI organizes and sustains its programs. I teach a NAMI course called Family-to-Family (F2F). NAMI calls me a F2F Leader. I’ve taught maybe 150 or 200 “students” since I started about 10 years ago. A few of those students decided they’d like to be F2F Leaders, too. NAMI provides training for them free of charge, and this is how the community of F2F Leaders grows. All of us Leaders are volunteers. NAMI pays the expenses of the training: books, meals, lodging and travel expenses for some. And we volunteers provide the labor.

F2F teaches family members how psychiatric illness happens, options for treatment, helpful ways to deal with difficult situations, and is an opportunity for people with similar struggles to share and support each other. All this is just one example; NAMI has many other programs that operate similarly and serve a wide range of needs.

My wife and I have 3 kids, the oldest with a mental health condition, and a younger daughter and son. Our son, now 41, was about 10 when his oldest sister’s psychiatric distress plunged her and our whole family into intense trauma and instability lasting quite a few years. Recently he took F2F where he lives on the West coast.

Then he decided to become a F2F Leader, too, and help families gain the understanding and balance that have been so helpful for us and thousands of others. So he has now completed the training and will lead his first F2F class (with an experienced co-leader) next fall. Meanwhile, NAMI has trained me — again, at no charge — to become a teacher of F2F Leaders. So I’m now training others to, like our son, do what I’ve been doing to spread understanding, overcome false biases, and support the many families who struggle with mental health conditions.

So you see how this works. The money we donate to NAMI supports the essential resources for a self-sustaining and expanding network of people who care deeply and volunteer to help others. Our society gets a lot of benefit per dollar for this money because NAMI is very effective. Its education, advocacy and support programs are all free to the recipients. Our donations and a lively army of volunteers make it possible.

If you’d like to join that lively army, your local NAMI affiliate will be very glad to hear from you!

Thank you for your support! Donating is easy and secure, just click here and use a credit card.

Sincerely,
Steve Hadden
NAMI Mass F2F Trainer/Leader