Friends,
A week from today marks two significant events for The Ben Lucas Foundation: 5 years ago, Ben lost his battle with addiction, and 1 year ago, we started this organization to honor his memory. While we mourn one anniversary, we also celebrate the other and feel truly blessed for the outpouring of support that has made the first year of our organization such a great success. We are both excited and humbled to share that we raised $25.6k dollars and have dispersed $20k of that total. We reached our 3 year goal in less than 12 months! It is certainly a feat we could not have accomplished without your partnership, and we are so grateful for your friendship and provision over the past year.
For this year’s fundraising drive, we are partnering with a new organization, Life of Purpose (“LOP”). Through a personal connection, we recently learned about its unique model, which focuses on the treatment of young adults whose education has been disrupted by substance misuse. LOP provides intensive outpatient treatment, academically focused aftercare, and recovery housing on university campuses. They typically work with 17 – 29 year olds, who are pursuing a high school diploma or obtaining a college degree.
Ben was a George Mason Honors College student and aspiring doctor. Despite his love for learning, his substance misuse sidelined him from academics. For this reason, the foundation would like to pledge to raise funds for LOP’s program, which costs $20k to fund a student for a school year.
Our goal this December is to begin raising funds to sponsor half of a scholarship ($10k) in 2017, along with continuing to support our partner organizations mentioned below. Additionally, we are setting our long term sights higher, with a target of $50k in 3 years.
Thank you so much for your contributions, prayers, and continued support. We are encouraged to pursue increasingly greater goals as we strive to meet our mission of celebrating Ben’s legacy and continue his fight against opiate addiction.
Please continue to keep The Ben Lucas Foundation in your thoughts and more importantly continue to pray for those struggling with addiction as well as their family members that fight with them.
Major Accomplishments of Organizations We Supported in 2016
ARCHWAY (http://thearchwayinstitute.org/)
- Gave $45,000 in Grants as Scholarships in 2016.
- Helped 90 individuals get into a treatment center who had been turned away due to financial barriers.
FAVOR (http://favorgreenville.org/)
- 2,514 new individuals served.
- Expanded services to teens. Adding new group and assertive outreach programs. 93 teens served.
- Facilitated 48 social/adventure based activities (zip line, hiking, paint ball, etc….).
The Family Effect (http://www.familyeffect.org/)
- The Family Effect supports 1,100 families and 2,000 children annually in evidence-based treatment programs.
- Supported their $1,900,000 campaign to build a child treatment center that triples their capacity to help young children living with addicted parents.
What does the future hold for the BLF?
- Funding Scholarship for Life of Purpose as mentioned above.
- A website refresh with more content (such as educational pieces / paid for and designed by the board).
- Potential fundraising event in 2017 (golf tournament is a leading candidate).