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Date: 1/24/2022
LUDLOW – Through events and other fundraising efforts, the Ludlow CARES Coalition helps connect people to resources including help with addiction by working directly with the community.
Ben Bovée, Ludlow CARES vice president, said one of the organization’s goals is to connect people to the support services they need.
“Ludlow CARES is a community-based organization, we are 100 percent volunteer, and we really just try and find ways of filling in the blanks in the services provided by the town of Ludlow to the community. We have a great education system and a great town but there is always a need for a little more support especially with the youth in Ludlow,” he said.
One of the focuses of the organization is to help educate the youth in town about drugs and alcohol.
“It is no secret the opioid epidemic is really coming to a head right now, especially during the pandemic. It has always been there and there have been a number of campaigns from DARE back in the 80s up until now and that is something CARES tries to do too, to help our younger citizens make informed decisions about what they are going to do,” Bovée said.
Along with prevention, Bovée said one of the goals of the organization is to help people that might be dealing with addiction to find the resources they need.
“It is not only ‘say no to drugs’ but also, we all make mistakes and things happen, what do you do if you start down that path and you want to make changes, what are the resources you have, who can you talk to and who can help you out,” he said.
Bovée said Ludlow CARES works directly with the schools to listen to feedback and point people in the right direction.
“We are not mental health care professionals; we just always point folks in the right direction. We have close contact with one of the lead social workers from the school system as well as teachers, principals and the superintendent. That is how we get the feedback of what the blanks are that we need to fill,” he said.
Bovée said the organization includes parents, students, business owners, school staff, physicians, religious organizations and a selectman.
Prior to COVID-19, Bovée said the committee hosted in-person events.
“Before the pandemic we used to try to do as many in person events as we could for instance, there is a group called the Improbable Players who are group of recovering addicts and alcoholics who put on theater shows to try and show the pitfalls of making some poor decisions about drugs and alcohol but also about recovery and hope as well,” he said.
Bovée added the student members of Ludlow CARES were more receptive to the Improbable Players than just watching an educational video.
Ludlow CARES’ upcoming campaign, Share the CARE, is all about trying to get people to be kind to others in response to some negativity in town, especially during COVID-19.
“One of the things we noticed was just negativity permeating the town. If you are on any of the Facebook forums it was just people fighting, and we wanted to brighten everybody’s day a little bit given that we could not do in person gatherings, so we came up with Share the CARE. The idea behind it is to do random acts of care,” he said.
By doing these random acts of kindness, Bovée said the goal is to benefit three different people.
“Number one you are helping somebody else out so they will benefit. Number two, probably the most important thing is you benefit, you get outside yourself and just get to feel a little better about the situation. By making it Share the CARE, where we ask people to share it on social media, that adds in the third step when you share it, it helps somebody else to share it too,” he said.
Along with promoting the acts of kindness, Bovée said sharing enough acts could help support the class of 2022.
“We also realized high school students were losing a lot of things you would normally expect from your senior year of high school between prom, hanging out with friends, sporting events, even senior skip day. We thought it would be great to donate some money to the senior high school class to jump on the bandwagon so we said if we can get 2,022 acts of care, we will donate $2,022 to the senior class,” he said.
Starting with the first week in February through May, people will be able to share their acts of kindness on any social media platform using #SharetheCARE.
Anyone interested in volunteering with Ludlow CARES can reach out via email to ludlowcares@gmail.com.