GIVING BACK {charity spotlight}
The Casa Center Brings Social-Emotional Learning to the Classroom Lynette Carrington | Contributing Writer
THE STORY When Casa was founded in 1973 by social work majors at ASU, it was known as the Center Against Sexual Assault. It reflected the women’s movement at the time and proved to be a much-needed support service for victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse. Support included a sophisticated crisis hotline and victim service in Valley emergency rooms. A few years later, the organization began offering abuse victim counseling and then sexual abuse prevention programs aimed at educating children. It also added dating violence prevention education for teens in 1985. In 1988, current CEO and president Stephanie Orr joined Casa as its director and much has changed since her arrival. “I came naively because I wanted to be the director of a licensed mental health
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center as I had my master’s in counseling,” Orr said. Thinking she was going to be working with women, she discovered that Casa was primarily assisting children. “I made it my goal that we were going to become the largest provider of prevention education in the country,” she said. In the mid-1990s, Casa added an anti-bullying program. Shortly after, it rolled out classes teaching social and emotional learning (SEL). The SEL programs have now become the cornerstone of a series of educational endeavors that have proven successful at local schools. Teaching effective methods of emotional and social competencies became Casa’s focus and in 2012, the nonprofit made a pivot with a name change that more accurately reflected its mission — Casa Center for Positive Social Change.
