William "Ollie" Ligon, with Fulton County CASA, won an overflowing tote bag of school supplies, toys and clothing & hygiene necessities from Harland Clarke. The company's Decatur office held a United Way kick-off luncheon on September 11th and CASA was invited to exhibit as one of the nonprofit organizations that benefits from United Way funding. Each nonprofit organization in attendance received gifts. Ollie Ligon won the gifts for Fulton County CASA from a raffle drawing among the five Metro Atlanta CASA Collaborative programs. 

The law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, with offices in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, New York, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., began working with CASA in fall 2007 to help promote CASA and encourage its employees to get involved in child advocacy work in the community.

Sutherland’s Atlanta office has four CASA volunteers, Lovette Bennett, Rachel Dottin, Glenda Pearson and Robin Potter, and its Washington, D.C., office has two CASA volunteers, Susan Grymes Lafferty and Elaine Mitchell. According to Sara Pheasant, Community Relations Coordinator, Glenda Pearson approached the editor of the firm’s pro bono newsletter, Sutherland Serves, about spotlighting child advocacy and the CASA organization in an upcoming issue. “Glenda’s involvement and excitement about CASA was contagious and our newsletter editor and committee were thrilled to highlight this wonderful organization,” comments Sara Pheasant. As a result, the Fall 2007 issue of Sutherland Serves included several articles about child advocacy, including articles from both Lovette and Glenda regarding their CASA experiences as well an article by Judge Peggy Walker from Douglasville, Georgia, entitled “Court Appointed Special Advocates: The Juvenile Judge’s Perspective.” The newsletter gave a call to action for the firm’s employees to get involved with child advocacy by volunteering in their communities. The newsletter was distributed in each of Sutherland’s offices informing more than 1,000 employees about CASA.

As a result of the newsletter, the firm’s Atlanta employees were very interested in learning more about CASA and how they could get involved. In March, a CASA informational lunchtime session was held at the law firm and conducted by representatives from the Metro Atlanta CASA Collaborative – the CASA programs in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties, along with Georgia CASA – with  Glenda and Lovette presenting as well. More than 30 employees were in attendance and five people decided immediately to attend an upcoming Metro CASA volunteer training and several more people were referred to a surrounding Atlanta area CASA program for volunteer training. "Volunteering with CASA is important to our employees. They want to donate their time to those in need. Volunteering provides them more opportunities to work together and get to know one another. By giving back to our community, the Sutherland community grows stronger," says Sara Pheasant. 

In July, each of the firm’s offices held a Jeans Day to benefit CASA. Employees who donated $5 could wear jeans to work on a designated Friday and those participating were given a CASA sticker to wear, further increasing CASA awareness within the firm. All proceeds from Jeans Day, which raised more than $4,800 firm-wide, went to benefit the local CASA programs of each of the firm’s offices, with the money raised in the Atlanta office going to several CASA programs around the Atlanta area. 

Adds Sara Pheasant: “Public service has always played a significant role at Sutherland and we are thrilled to support CASA and our employees in any way possible. Whether it is educating our employees about public service opportunities, raising money for the causes they support, holding training sessions at our offices or giving them time off to volunteer, we hope to encourage the continuation of the public service tradition valued by our firm.”

Partnering with Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan has been a great way to help increase the awareness of CASA in the community, particularly among corporate employees. Specifically, the partnership with the Atlanta firm is a prime example of one way the Metro Atlanta CASA Collaborative has implemented a tactic in helping to achieve its mission – to develop and share resources in order to strengthen each program’s effectiveness and to increase the number of CASA volunteers in metro Atlanta advocating for abused and neglected children. The Collaborative strives to provide the highest quality of advocacy to children in metro Atlanta through cooperation, joint training and the development and implementation of new recruitment ideas. The Collaborative will continue to develop its partnership with Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, as well as other similar corporations, as it works to ultimately provide a CASA volunteer for the more than 6,000 children in foster care in the metro Atlanta area. CASA programs across the country are encouraged to seek ways to partner with corporations in their communities to further the awareness of CASA and recruit more CASA volunteers.