Athens-Oconee CASA, or Court Appointed Special Advocate is holding two volunteer orientation meetings Tuesday.
Volunteers are trained locally to advocate for children in our area. Susie Weller is executive director with Children First.
The informational meetings are for those who may be interested in helping, but no commitment is required to attend.
“This is the beginning stages for someone who’s interested in learning about being a CASA, it’s just informational” according to Weller. “We aren’t signing you on the dotted line, you don’t have to commit to training. We just want you to come and learn what we’ve got going on.”
Weller says volunteers with the organization have made a tremendous impact in the lives of local children is foster care.
“Our initiative Home in 5, where we work with all the counties in Region 5, so it’s about a 12-county area to try to bring our foster children home.
When we first started this initiative a few years ago, the majority of our children were way out of county.”
She says the hard work among the agencies and organizations involved has led to significant benefits for local children in the foster care system.
“We have made huge strides in this collaborative effort to bring our children home. So now the majority of our children from Clarke County are in the surrounding counties around Clarke County.
There’s only a handful that are in Columbus; there’s only a handful that are down in Augusta.”
The informational meetings are for those who may be interested in helping, but no commitment is required to attend.
Volunteers will learn about a variety of topics, including the juvenile court, DFCS as well as the needs of children in foster care.
