Opinion: Live Violence Free welcomes ED, moving forward

To the community,

Live Violence Free would like to formally welcome our Executive Director Frank Blakeney to our team and to this community. On Sept. 20, we offered an open house and meet-and-greet to the community so everyone would have the chance to come and personally welcome Frank to town. We had a great showing of South Lake Tahoe Community members who came to chat with Frank and staff about our continued mission for a violence free community.

Frank comes to Live Violence Free from Anchorage, bringing with him 10 years of experience in nonprofits. In his previous position, Frank served as state Director of Program Services for the Alaska Chapter of the March of Dimes. Frank lived in Alaska for 12 years where he also taught and earned his masters’ of education in Guidance and Counseling. He moved to Alaska after his marriage to an “Alaska” girl, and there he and his wife Vickie welcomed four children.

Frank is excited to be in his new position with the challenges and opportunities it affords him. Frank stated, “My challenge is to make a very good agency even better.”

With Frank officially welcomed, Live Violence Free is looking ahead to October, as it is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. To start off the awareness month, we are having a Candlelight Vigil in honor of the victims in our community who have lost their lives to domestic violence. We invite the community to come walk with us from our office at 2941 Lake Tahoe Blvd. up the highway to the Lakeview Commons beach area in observance of DVAM. We will be meeting at Live Violence Free at 7pm Oct. 1 to assemble and light our candles.

For more information on the Candlelight Vigil and the other DVAM activities we have coming up, contact me at scaldwell@liveviolencefree.org.

Scarlet Caldwell, Live Violence Free