A Night of Light marks SAVE Family Foundation’s inaugural gala, launching a tradition that will spotlight a different one of our five Areas of Focus: mental health, education, rural healthcare access, food security, and housing stability. This year, we are focusing on mental health awareness and access.

Over the past year and a half, our work has centered on mental health access, direct care, specialized offerings, and training the next generation of licensed therapists. Through our partnerships with community organizations and the state, we’ve seen the same gap surface again and again: care gets discontinued, or a client’s needs evolve and require more specialized support, and in that transition, access is lost.

As clinicians, we know how costly that disruption is. For someone already navigating a vulnerable moment, losing care right as it starts to help doesn’t just pause progress; it can undo it, deepening the cycles of hardship we’re working to break. Seeing this gap firsthand, as a family, we decided to take agency the best way we know how: by filling it directly.

Donate a Therapy is our first step. We’re continuing our active therapy work and clinician training, with plans to bring on more partners in mental health access down the line, but we wanted to start here, with one focused program built to create real, measurable impact.

Our goal is to fund 750 therapy sessions, $150,000 in direct care. Each session funded is represented by a lantern, given out to guests throughout the evening as a tangible symbol of the care they’ve made possible. Every VIP ticket includes one lantern to start, with more opportunities to earn lanterns through fundraising and activities throughout the night. At the close of the evening, we’ll do something special with every lantern collected, a celebration of the light we’ve created together, and the reason this is A Night of Light.