Hi everyone! I just wanted to quickly introduce myself as the new Director and fill you in on all of the things that are in the works. Lots of exciting things are happening at Gio’s Garden.
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
