CRYP has announced that it will offer a discount on all Family Services annual memberships starting on Tuesday, October 1. The discount will apply to new applications and renewals, and it will be valid until Thursday, October 31.
Normally, an annual membership is priced at $30 per year. During the discount period, a Cheyenne River family can join the Family Services program for $25, and that one-time payment will cover all members of that family for the entire year. Memberships are available to anyone who lives on the 2.8-million-acre Cheyenne River reservation, not just those who live in the city of Eagle Butte.
“We’re eager to see all of our current families renew their memberships, and to see new families sign up for the program, by the end of October for one simple reason,” said April Bachman, CRYP’s finance manager. “Our annual Christmas Toy Drive is coming up, and families who are enrolled in Family Services before November 1 will be able to fill out ‘Dear Santa’ letters for their children and take part in this year’s drive. We want to reach even more children in more reservation communities than we did in 2012.”
While the Christmas Toy Drive is by far the largest distribution handled by the 25-year-old, not-for-profit youth project, it’s not the only one. Family Services also includes annual school supplies, winter clothing and shoe drives, and it supplies much-needed household supplies and baby items on a regular basis.
“We also have a heat-match program to help families heat their homes during our bitter South Dakota winters, and we provide assistance with home improvements,” Bachman said.
Family Services was founded in 2002 to manage CRYP’s influx of in-kind donations throughout the year. Surveys have shown that most member households use Family Services once per quarter, although many members do come in once per month, and most participate in the organized distributions. The Christmas Toy Drive served 1,200 children in 20 reservation communities this past year, and the School Supplies Drive made sure that 530 reservation children were prepared — and excited — for their first day of school.
“We’re now welcoming our second generation of children to CRYP, and we learned long ago that one of the best ways to support them was to help ease the burdens of daily life for their families,” explained Julie Garreau, CRYP’s executive director. “Our reservation comprises two of the nation’s poorest counties, and there’s no question that our children are exposed to adult stresses early on. They have to grow up fast.
“So if we can make things a little easier for the care-givers, we can improve the quality of life for our youth,” she continued. “We can make sure that our kids get to be kids, at least for a little while longer.”
All proceeds from membership fees and fundraisers such as community rummage sales support the Family Services program infrastructure. This includes staff, administrative hardware and donation/inventory management tools.
“We want to make sure that community members understand how their funds are used,” Garreau said. “We started Family Services more than a decade ago because we needed a way to manage the huge amounts of donations that we would receive throughout the year. We also knew we needed to manage those donations in a responsible, transparent manner — and to do that, we need dedicated staff and professional management tools. That’s how we ensure that Family Services will remain a reliable, far-reaching community resource in the years go come.”
To learn more about the Cheyenne River Youth Project and its programs, and for information about making donations and volunteering, call (605) 964-8200 or or visit www.lakotayouth.org. And, to stay up to date on the latest CRYP news and events, follow the youth project on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.