Thank you NAMI Santa Cruz County

Thank you NAMI Board & Membership

From: Bonnie Schell
To: Desiree Douville
Subject: Back to School
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 00:00:26 -0700

To the NAMI membership and Board:

I deeply appreciate your organization's offer to contribute $500 toward thebooks or supplies students need to take classes at Cabrillo. MHCAN will keep the money in a savings account and write checks to Cabrillo College Bookstore for students if that seems appropriate. I talked to College Connection today to find out the exact situation with books. Students on SSI all qualify for a BOGG grant which pays their registration and class fees, but pays nothing for books. Some clients are getting limited money from flex funds through their coordinator. Community Connections has a small fund from proceeds of the Human Race and can offer vouchers for $25 to their clients. People who are signed up with the Dept. of Rehabilitation can get all their books paid for--eventually. BUT (this is exciting!) 67 mental health clients who are not in the Rehab program have signed up for fall quarter.

At the end of September MHCAN will report back to you on how many students we helped, with how much money each, and what the students were majoring in. We are planning on the book subsidies being $50 to $75 each.

I cannot thank you enough. Going back to school makes a consumer feel part of the real world, makes them exercise their mind, organize themselves and their work, be punctual, put up with all kinds of behaviors from classmates and ignore it to concentrate on their own problems, handle the stress of writing papers and taking tests. Consumers who successfully finish their classes actually walk and talk differently. I don't think you could make any better long-term investment in people's lives and stability.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Schell

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