Community Outreach
LEAD is dedicated to serving the community. We do this by holding outreach events that bring awareness to certain topics while connecting community members to local services. LEAD created the Alliance for Mental Wellness as a means to collaborate on outreach events with other community organizations.
2017-2019
Longest Night Vigil
On the longest night of the year, community members gather at City Hall to remember those that have perished while homeless during the previous year. LEAD has organized this event in Santa Maria over the past several years. Along with a moment of silence, speakers from the community that has experienced homelessness or work with the homeless share a few words about the impact of homelessness in our community. Each year there has also been a donation drive and a small resource fair.
2019
Alliance for Mental Wellness Suicide Prevention Forum
This inaugural forum featured personal stories, a short training, and a one-of-a-kind resource fair that provided essential tools and connections to great services in the area. Our speakers included Jordan Burnham, of the Minding Your Mind Foundation; Amy Waddle, of Dancing with ED; Ileara Brown, SLO Hotline Manager; and Jennifer McMurrain, of The LEAD Project.
Jordan Burnham, of Minding Your Mind Foundation, is a nationally recognized mental health advocate that travels the country and shares the incredible story of his strength and recovery as a survivor of a suicide attempt.
2020
From Burnout to Resilience: Thriving in a Digital World
In the midst of a chaotic world, keynote speaker Hamza Khan delivered a talk about how to identify burnout and six strategies to reconnect with our core values to avoid burning out. He emphasized creating healthy, compassionate boundaries with ourselves, others, and the technology that we now use daily. Our opening speaker Amy Kathleen Lee shared coping tools to help us cultivate wellness and self-care practices.
Hamza Khan is a multi-award winning marketer, best-selling author, and global keynote speaker whose TEDx talk “Stop Managing, Start Leading” has been viewed over a million times. He is a top-ranked university educator, serial entrepreneur, and respected thought leader whose insights has been featured by notable media outlets such as VICE, Business Insider, and The Globe and Mail.