Suicide prevention agency to host fundraiser
When someone calls the suicide hotline at 800-784-2433, there is someone else there to answer.
Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, Suicide Prevention Services, Inc., in Batavia, is open for business, taking calls borne of a desperation and depression so deep that life itself is threatened. The local agency takes all calls that originate in the area codes of 630, 847, 773, 312 and 708, said Stephanie Weber, the organization's executive director.
But now, economic walls are closing in: As of July 1, Suicide Prevention Services will cut 20 percent of its $300,000 budget. Though the hotline will be answered, its offices will close one or two days a week.
"I sat and cried with them," Weber said of the day this week when she told her staff the sad news. "I have a young person making $25,000 with a new mortgage and an old broad like me who should be looking at Social Security -- I'm taking the same cut they are, 20 percent."
The agency's annual Yellow Ribbon Walk is scheduled Saturday, Sept. 12, at Potawatomie Park in St. Charles. Registration is at 8 a.m.; the eight-mile walk begins at 9 a.m.
The walk raises awareness of suicide and prevention, as well as a fundraiser with a request that each walker raise a minimum of $100.
Weber has cast a worried eye at another suicide organization's big fundraiser, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's Out of the Darkness Overnight in Chicago on June 27-28.
Walkers are required to raise $1,000 in donations. Walkers cover 18 miles overnight, symbolically taking a journey out of darkness - conquering suicide and depression, raising awareness - and raising millions for suicide research.
Weber said some volunteers have mistakenly believed that Suicide Prevention Services gets a portion of the money raised for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention -- which it does not.
"AFSP is a national organization that raises money for research - they do not do direct service," Weber said. "Even many of our own volunteers were misled by the radio ads and they thought that some of the money stayed within our own community."
In fact, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's Web site, both the national and the Chicago sites, refer people to Suicide Prevention Services for direct support.
Both organizations have goals worthy of support. The community needs both. If you support Out of the Darkness with its cathartic all night walk, do not forget the agency that answers the phone at 3 a.m.
Here's where you can look: www.afsp.org and www.spsfv.org.
Executive Director Robert Gebbia and Weber agreed both services are necessary. But Gebbia did not necessarily agree that its agency's ads were misleading.
"We don't feel we are in competition," Gebbia said of the overnight walk. "This is not an annual event. It's national and we move around the country. People coming to this walk are from all over the country. Not all the money is coming from the Chicago area."
As a national charity, his agency is small, with a budget of about $7 million and $2 million of that into research grants.
"We do not provide direct service. We do education, awareness and lots of trainings," Gebbia said. "We just produced a new film for health classes in high school on adolescent depression. Believe me, I commend those working in direct service. We don't want people calling us when they are in crisis."
Gebbia said part of his agency's aim is to create a political momentum similar to one that raised awareness of breast cancer.
"It's the fourth leading cause of death among those aged 18 to 65. It's third among young adults and adolescents," Gebbia said. "We are trying to build a base of advocates who can start to make a change in that regard."
• Write to Brenda Schory at bschory@kcchronicle.com.
