Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota Counties, 3100 Fruitville Rd, Sarasota. 941-366-7940.https://bgcsdc.org/

In the July/August 2022 edition of SRQ Magazine, we interviewed Bill Sadlo, President/CEO, Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota and DeSoto Counties as part of our In Conversation feature about nonprofit leaders. Below is an excerpt published in the magazine in which Sadlo shares his insights with SRQ readers on community growth and changes.

How have you been dealing with the rise in mental health issues that have come out of the pandemic?

That's an interesting question because right before the pandemic, we really saw the need for mental health support. That was one of the things that our program was missing. Of course, we could refer our youth to a local agency that dealt with mental health or had mental health professionals on their team. And we knew that we needed to have that embedded in our clubs. So we started with the school social workers working with our youth. The pandemic just exacerbated that need, for our kids. So now we are doing another program where we have a mental health professional embedded at our club in Newtown. And we will continue to grow that program because the needs of the youth are different than they were two years ago. Our youth were hit very hard by this pandemic and the isolation, the stress of the online school, their parents not doing well during this time...It was just a tough, tough time for our kids.

Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota Counties, 3100 Fruitville Rd, Sarasota. 941-366-7940.https://bgcsdc.org/

To read the full article, click here.