Posted by: Luis Valdivias on: 04.30.2020
My last day at El Centro is May 1 (May Day, how appropriate) and Mr. Jeff Essex has been selected by the Board of Directors as Executive Director.
I have been involved with El Centro since around 2005 or so, and assumed the top leadership role in 2015. I leave a 2020 El Centro a somewhat different place than when I found it, but yet we have stayed true to George Borg’s vision: abstinence-based individual and group counseling services are still the core foundation of the agency, we still use the Steps as tools towards recovery, and we still make sure nobody is refused services because of inability to pay.
Supporting county and agency partners and still providing services during any emergency is part of the job, but it becomes (and will continue to be) a bit tricky during a pandemic; however, even now, new opportunities are emerging and relationships are being forged.
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Posted by: Luis Valdivias on: 09.07.2018
I read somewhere that The old order changeth yielding place to the new….
Nothing remains constant, no matter how grand it has been. But a new world always rises again and is always as captivating as the old world. I would say the same has always been true about El Centro de Libertad.
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Posted by: Luis Valdivias on: 09.07.2018
People Are Dying:
Trust for America's Health and Well Being tells us:
- “The number of deaths from suicide and alcohol and drug-induced fatalities in the United States reached a record 141,963 — or one every four minutes — in 2016”
- “Rates of drug deaths also increased significantly among those between the ages of 15 and 34 ( up 29 percent)”
Mother Jones Magazine reported:
- In 2016 that “Each year, more than 40,000 Americans die from drug overdoses. That's on par with the annual death toll from HIV/AIDS at the peak of the US epidemic, in the late '80s and early '90s, and far more than are killed each year from car accidents or gun violence..”
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