Serendipity Maintaining Mental Health Support During COVID.

WHILE THE PANDEMIC HAS CHANGED OUR WORLD DRAMATICALLY…

Serendipity’s commitment to providing special education together with emotional and behavioral growth remains unchanged. Our teachers and mental health clinicians work diligently each day to continue to deliver our unique model of special education, weaving mental health treatment into each student’s day.

As you can imagine, delivering mental health treatment from a distance has created new challenges for all of us. Working together, our students and case managers have demonstrated flexibility and resilience in their efforts to receive and provide mental health counseling remotely.

Our incredible team of mental health specialists is led by our Treatment Director, Jackie Trussell, who has a personal message to share with you in the video below.

Giving Thanks Tuesday

 YES, TODAY IS #GivingTUESDAYNow…
BUT WE ARE RENAMING IT #GivingTHANKSTuesday

I wanted to reach out to all of our staff, supporters and donors with my deepest appreciation for your incredible support of Serendipity at this time. We have all come together as one community to support special education and mental health treatment at a time when our students and their families face more challenges than ever before.

To our Serendipity staff, an enormous thank you for demonstrating incredible resilience and the ability to adapt and master new methods of delivering special education and mental health treatment. Through your dedication, Serendipity has continued to deliver our Four Pillar Model without interruption during this unprecedented school closure.

To all of our friends, supporters and donors, an enormous thank you for supporting our urgent COVID-19 Fund to provide food for our students and technology for our teachers. We truly could not have done it without you.

I acknowledge each and every one of you with pride and awe. I’d like to express my gratitude with a short video.

Belinda Marier,
Executive Director

We’ve raised $10,000 in COVID Fund Donations!

THANKS TO EVERYONE (INCLUDING THIS PAST WEEK’S DONORS SHOWN ABOVE) WHO DONATED TO MEET OUR URGENT TECHNOLOGY AND FOOD ASSISTANCE NEEDS! WE ARE SO APPRECIATIVE OF YOUR SUPPORT!

Our Teachers and Staff continue to work hard to Serve Serendipity Students


Whether it’s teachers putting together lesson packets or case managers checking in on families, Serendipity is doing our utmost to meet the needs of our students. Today we want to highlight what the staff has been doing to deliver Family Food Shares to our students and their families during this difficult economic time. This includes:

-Combined donations from Pacific Foods, Bob’s Red Mill & Dave’s Killer Bread, along with garden produce & items from the kitchen to make a share of complete meals including recipes.
-Collaboration between garden staff, food service, case managers & interventionists to identify families, harvest, clean, pack & deliver shares.
-Delivery every other Friday, with two deliveries so far (4/10 & 4/24). The first share was delivered to 14 families, and the second to 23 famlies.

Above is a video that Nicolas, our Growing Minds Garden Manager and Taylor, his assistant, put together with the help of Brian, our head chef (and pinch-hit videographer) to update the kids on what has been happening in the garden while the school has been closed. The garden is an essential part of our students’ lives when they are on campus and it is important for them to witness the growing and changing that is occurring even though they can’t physically be there.

We are so appreciative of all our staff and teachers and their adaptability and continued pursuit of excellence during these past few months of closures!

Thank You for Your Continued Generous Support!

YOUR INCREDIBLE GENEROSITY HAS HELPED US COVER THE COSTS OF DELIVERING DISTANCE LEARNING AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES VIRTUALLY TO OUR STUDENTS!

For the last few weeks, we have reached out to you with the urgent needs we have encountered with the onset of COVID-19 and what Serendipity is doing to serve our students as we navigate this unprecedented school closure. Thank you to everyone displayed in the image below who responded so generously last week!

  • This is how we are using your donations:
    To ensure that our students and families don’t go hungry we have spent $1,550 on grocery store gift cards which have been delivered along with vegetables grown on our farm by staff to our students’ homes. Our students love to be able to see their teachers from their windows.
  • We have spent $2,600 on software licenses for Educational and Assessment platforms to continue to deliver Education and Mental Health services to our students as we transitioned to distance learning.
  • We have spent $2,000 in art supplies and mailing packets to ensure that our students can continue to participate in both projects and Art Therapy at home. We continue to mail curriculum packets home to students who struggle to learn digitally.

Your continued generosity will help us to provide for our students as we navigate distance learning!

Please donate here to the COVID-19 Fund!

Thank you to our Supporters!

A HUGE THANK YOU to Serendipity Friends, Supporters & Donors!

Last week we reached out to you with an update on the new reality we are facing with COVID-19 and what Serendipity is doing to serve our students during this unprecedented school closure. We asked you to consider donating to help us meet two urgent needs – food and technology – and we are so grateful to everyone listed below who responded so generously!

WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP TO MEET OUR MOST URGENT NEEDS!

TECHNOLOGY NEEDS:
Purchasing additional laptops and Cloud accessibility for our teachers and clinical staff to be able to provide online education, and mental health support for our students. Please help us to continue to provide special education and mental health support to our students with a donation to our COVID-19 Fund.

FOOD ASSISTANCE NEEDS:
Serendipity provides breakfast and lunch daily for every student and without these two meals many of our students will go hungry. Please help to feed our students with a donation to our COVID-19 Fund. Serendipity will purchase and distribute grocery store gift cards directly to our families.

PLEASE DONATE NOW by clicking here and choosing COVID-19 Fund in the drop-down menu

We are all in this together! With your help Serendipity will not only survive this crisis but come out of it stronger and more resilient!

Serendipity needs your Support in the midst of COVID-19

As you know, COVID-19 has altered the world around us, and we are facing a new reality. Unfortunately, school closures leave many of our students —who are working so hard to overcome trauma and other major challenges in their lives—with many needs. WE URGENTLY NEED YOUR HELP WITH THE FOLLOWING-

TECHNOLOGY NEEDS:
Purchasing additional laptops and Cloud accessibility for our teachers and clinical staff to be able to provide online education, and mental health support for our students. Please help us to continue to provide special education and mental health support to our students with a donation to our COVID-19 Fund.

FOOD ASSISTANCE NEEDS:
Serendipity provides breakfast and lunch daily for every student and without these two meals many of our students will go hungry. Please help to feed our students with a donation to our COVID-19 Fund. Serendipity will purchase and distribute grocery store gift cards directly to our families.

PLEASE DONATE NOW  and choose COVID-19 Fund in the drop-down menu. We are so very appreciative of your immediate support in these unprecedented circumstances and of your continued support and actions to care for our students and our mission!

Carla C. Piluso, State Representative visits Serendipity

On the last tour before school closures, we were delighted to host Carla C. Piluso​, State Representative District 50 and Emily Pfeiffer, Staffer to State Representative at our school. Carla is the State Representative for our district and is in her third term on the Gresham-Barlow School Board. It was wonderful to be able to share the incredible work that happens each day here at Serendipity with our State Representative. We look forward to continuing to engage with State Representative Carla C. Piluso in the future.

Many thanks to Carla and Emily for visiting our school!

Photo L to R:
Belinda Marier, Executive Director
Emily Pfeiffer, Staffer to State Representative
Carla C. Piluso, State Representative District 50

CareOregon visits Serendipity

We were delighted to share our school with Shawn DeCarlo, CareOregon​ Grant Program Manager. CareOregon is a non-profit providing health plan services to meet the health care needs of low-income Oregonians, including about one-quarter of Oregon Health Plan members. Their mission is building individual well-being and community health through partnerships, shared learning, and innovation.

We provided an overview of Serendipity’s Four Pillar Model and discussed new funding opportunities with Shawn. Paul Fields, Vice-Chair Serendipity Board of Directors joined the tour.

Many thanks to Shawn and Paul for their time and passion in support of Serendipity.

Photo L to R:
Belinda Marier, Executive Director Serendipity
Shawn DeCarlo, CareOregon Grant Program Manager
Paul Fields, Vice-Chair Serendipity Board of Directors #careoregon

Durham & Bates hosts Serendipity Lunch and Learn

Durham & Bates Insurance Company held an employee Lunch and Learn organized by Mike Smith. Employees learned more about our school from Belinda Marier and our Growing Minds Garden Program Supervisor Nicolas Townsend over a delicious lunch. A big thanks to Mike Smith and the employees of Durham & Bates for their long- time support of Serendipity!

Durham & Bates is an Insurance Company with offices in Portland and Vancouver specializing in Marine Insurance, Commercial and Personal Risk and Employee Benefits. Durham & Bates provides employee benefits to Serendipity.