My name is Val Croissant and I am so excited to be a part of the Gio’s team. I’m originally from Madison, but have been living in the Dells for the last 8 years, working with Easter Seals Wisconsin Camps, mostly as the Respite Director. I have a master’s degree in Therapeutic Recreation and am a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist. I have been working with people with a wide variety of special needs for 11 years and am very excited to bring my experience to Gio’s Garden. I have been here 2 weeks now and there is a lot going on. Overwhelming at times, but all of the members of the Gio’s Garden family has been absolutely wonderful. It has been a great pleasure working with everyone.

As I said there is a lot of things happening here. First we do have an application up under the “Work with the Kids” tab for staff and volunteers that want to help provide direct care to the kids. We will be opening our doors June 1st and will need to find some people that would like to help us out. We are hiring 3 part time (10 hours/week) staff to get us going. So if you know of anyone that would be interested, please send them our way.

We are currently working on the application for families and their children to receive respite at Gio’s Garden. The application and all needed forms will be online May 1st. After a family fills out their paperwork, they will be meeting with me and we will start scheduling people for the month of June.

The house is wonderful and really starting to come together. We had a beautiful mural painted in the main room by Suzanne. It adds so much color and gives the house a bit more character. We have received a large number of donations, thank you to everyone that has dropped something off. We are still looking for a few more things, feel free to check out our wish list to help. We also have some big events coming up over the next couple of months, including an open house on June 3rd that will be open to the community. Stay tuned for more information.

Again, I am very excited to be here and look forward to meeting more people from the community as we continue to move forward. I will keep you updated to all of the changes here and can’t wait to meet all of our friends at the open house!

Val

It was a difficult process to get here for the applicants. We received more than 20 resumes and brought in 6 very qualified people for the first interview. We did this a little bit differently than a normal interview process. Because we are hiring someone who will basically become an extended “family member”, we wanted to meet all the applicants at once and determine from there the final two for a second interview. We held a “roundtable” at Gio’s Garden in early March and discussed our dream with all of them. It was certainly a different way to interview as all board members and all applicants sat around the Gio’s Garden main room and just “talked”.

After that initial interview, we brought in two more finalists for a regular round of interviews…although, getting interviewed by 6 people in two different shifts must have been hard.

Now, we move forward with opening our doors and get Val moving! There’s a lot to do before we open…and that will include hiring another person, our Respite Care Coordinator. Be on the lookout for that job announcement! For now, please leave a “hello” here for Val or on our Facebook page! Soon, she’ll be blogging here!

Don’t forget, April 14th, the Run, Walk and Roll for CP. Mark your calendars for this years’ Rock for Respite June 8th and the 3rd Annual Gio’s Garden Classic on July 19th! Click all those links for more information or to sign up for events!

The first will be on April 14th – it is a Walk/Run that starts and ends at Edgewood College. A student there is planning the entire event and is getting help from Occupational Therapy students at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mark your calendars and watch for updates here, on Facebook, Twitter and via our email blasts – you can sign up by clicking this link!

The biggest fundraiser of the year is our 3rd Annual Rock for Respite! It will again take place at The Brink in downtown Madison and will feature Kings of Radio, Piano Fondue as well as a silent auction, food and drink and other surprises. Make sure to block off June 8th for this years’ Rock for Respite! Tickets are $40 per person. If you would like to sponsor or see all the sponsorship opportunities for this event or donate auction items, please contact Charlotte at charlotte@giosgarden.org.

If you’re a golfer…or even if you aren’t, the 3rd Annual Gio’s Garden Classic is a great time. As you can see from the pictures on our “About Us” page, everyone has fun! This year, it will again be at The Oaks in Cottage Grove and will take place July 19th. We are planning a few surprises for the course and, new this year…celebrity golfers! You can pay to golf all 18 with some big names from around the Dane County area. More on that to come! Foursomes are $500 or $125 per player. Hole sponsorships are $250. If you would like to hear about other sponsorship opportunities for this event or donate to the silent auction, please contact me at ron@giosgarden.org.

Thanks for all the support!

When talking with Beth and Nissa from Affiliated Communications of Wisconsin and Kevin from Integrated Building Systems, I realized I wasn’t thinking like a small business owner…even though I had been telling myself and the rest of the board that we needed to think that way. This charitable dream of ours is great…but you still need to think like a business owner to get stuff done even when we aren’t going to be making a profit.

When they asked about security systems for the entrances, I froze. Security for what? Then I remembered daycare licensing requirements and it dawned on me that I hadn’t budgeted properly for a 24-hour locked front and back door with access needed to be given only to those allowed to enter. Really? We have to lock the doors when caring for kids in the house?

Luckily, they saw the look in my eyes (it may have been a nervous twitch) and quickly started talking about all the options, how they work, how parents could get in and out…etc. Instantly, they were prepared to help us!

It feels good to know we have neighbors that are willing to do what they can for our dream to become a reality in the next few months. I’m glad they didn’t laugh at me. Maybe they did when they got into their cars and drove home.

Wait...the front door needs to be locked at all times?

I also met some more fantastic donors who brought over medical supplies, books, kitchen supplies, dress up clothes for the kids, children’s table and chairs. We can;t thank all of you enough! We will again be at the house Saturday, Feb 4 from Noon to 12! Stop by if you want to donate items from the wish list!

For the 2 hours we were there, we had about 15 people stop by and drop off items from our wish list – crayons, markers, chalk, electronic toys, play-doh, sensory toys, a play kitchen, play tents, books, easels, bulletin boards, office supplies, kitchen supplies, a CD player, a futon, diaper genies, baby swings, high chairs, printers, a dryer…tons of stuff we can check off the list!

We are so blessed with generous neighbors – including two Middleton firefighters who stopped by to drop off items and welcome us to the neighborhood – it’s nice to be right behind the fire house and next door to EMS!

Benicio thought it was Christmas all over again with all the toys…he was not pleased when we wouldn’t open any of the toys for him to play with. We are thinking of doing this again every few weeks as we get the house ready…so be on the look-out for our impromptu “Open Houses” if you happen to have some of the items on our list!

Since we announced Tuesday and revamped the website, we have heard from many of you wanting to donate items in our Wish List, volunteer when we open and offer moral support. Thank you for that!

I wanted to remind many of you that while this is the biggest hurdle we had to jump over, we have quite a few more left…two of the most important need to be done quickly.

1) Hire a Respite Center Director

2) Get our state licensing in order.

Once these two are done, we will be looking for another worker, a Respite Care Coordinator who will not only care of children, but plan activities, therapies etc. When parents drop their children off at Gio’s Garden, they won’t just be placed in front of a TV to watch DVD’s. Our plan is to offer specialized care and activities to stimulate our little guests and make sure they are having a great time while mom and dad get some time to themselves. Will there be movie time occasionally? Of course. But TV’s won’t be on the entire time kids are at the house!

Here are some more pictures of the inside of Gio’s Garden. Also, we will be at the home Saturday Jan. 28th from Noon to 2PM. If you’d like to donate items from the Wish List, please let me know at ron@giosgarden.org or wendy@giosgarden.org.

Thank you all for your outpouring of support in the past two days and before that, nearly two years!

And here we are, January 2012 with the exciting news that we have been keeping under wraps for 2 months: WE HAVE FOUND A HOME FOR GIO’S GARDEN AND WILL OPEN IN A FEW MONTHS!

It only took 22 months. We had numerous fundraisers, thousands of dollars donated, sleepless nights worrying if this was ever going to happen, arguments about how to do things, board members leaving, new board members joining, etc. But, through it all, our supporters came through and we reached our fundraising goal at the end of 2011.

$250,000. All of it from donations and from a special angel donor in the area who wants to see Charlotte’s original dream come true: a safe environment where special needs children can spend some time with each other while their parents get a much needed break for just a few hours to recharge their batteries.

Gio’s Garden will be located at 2028 Parmenter in Middleton.It’s a cute yellow house right next door to the EMS station, behind the fire department and across the street from St. Bernard’s Catholic Church!

Gio's Garden in Middleton

This blog will be updated frequently with plenty of stuff about the house, getting our license, hiring our director and Respite Care Coordinator and opening our doors. Check back frequently, subscribe to our blog, LIKE us on Facebook and find us on Twitter and Google+. We are all over and are ready to start helping special needs families!

Thank you to all our supporters…our friends!