Dr. Barbara Herlihy
Summer 2011

It is my privilege to serve as Chair of the American Counseling Association Foundation (ACAF) in 2011-2012. I am tremendously indebted to the most recent Past Chairs – Sam Gladding, Howard Smith, and Courtland Lee – whose leadership has assured that the Foundation can continue to serve its mission of strengthening the counseling profession.

So what does the Foundation do, specifically? Like many of you, I suspect, I was a member of ACA for many years without having more than a vague awareness that the Foundation existed and "did good works" to benefit professional and student members. It was only in 2006, as a post-hurricane-Katrina New Orleanean, that I saw some of those good works "up close and personal." Many of my colleagues wh o were counselors in the Gulf Coast area benefited from the Counselors Care Fund to help them get back on their professional feet during that difficult period. The Foundation has made the Counselors Care Fund an ongoing program that stands ready to respond to traumatic and tragic events that affect counselors and those we serve.

The Foundation sponsors several additional initiatives. Recognizing that our graduate students are our future, a long-standing commitment of the ACAF is to support graduate students in counseling by underwriting scholarships to the annual ACA convention. The Foundation also underwrites the graduate student essay competition that is held annually.

Through the Growing Happy and Confident Kids program, ACAF provides resources to elementary school counselors to work with children to increase their emotional literacy and better equip them to cope with life's challenges such as bullying and cyber-bullying, prejudice, living in unsafe environments, intergenerational trauma, and other ills of our society.

Additionally, the Foundation publishes books and related materials which fill important information gaps in the counseling literature. If you haven't checked out the third edition of Terrorism, Trauma, and Tragedies, edited by Webber and Mascari, Sam Gladding's Becoming a Counselor: The Light, the Bright, and the Serious, Courtland Lee's Counseling for Social Justice or other titles, I encourage you to do so.

Finally, the Foundation encourages excellence in counseling through sponsoring the annual Awards Ceremony at the ACA Convention. During that ceremony, counselors who have excelled in one or more areas of distinction are recognized.

How can you help? Simple! Make a donation on-line now, or whenever the opportunity avails itself. If you are an ACA author, give part of your royalties. I do. Or, when you stop at Starbuck's over the next few months, order a small latte instead of a grande mocha frappucino and a slice of pound cake. Then contribute what you've saved. The American Counseling Association is a nonprofit Foundation organization and in supporting its work you will be strengthening the counseling profession and the American Counseling Association. So be generous and join those who have made and continue to make donations.