Worcester, MA —Sage's Director of Athletics and Head Women's Volleyball Coach, Sandy Augstein-Collins has recently been trained a certified team mental health instructors by L.E.A.D. (Let's Empower Advocate and Do).  Augstein-Collins is one of the newest members to join the cohort of Mental Health Educators for Sports Teams. Through proactive mental health education, L.E.A.D. helps build team resilience, empowers athletes to overcome mental health challenges, strengthens mental health literacy, and promotes proactive mental health education.

Augstein-Collins noted, "I was thrilled to recently be selected and to complete the Team Mental Health Certification." She continued, "Mental Health amongst college student-athletes is a growing crisis and this certification gives me a means to offer training to our teams and our coaches in a cost effective and time efficient manner to continue to address the growing crisis.  Especially, in light of the current COVID-19 crisis, mental health advocacy is critical for our student-athletes.  I look forward to getting back on campus in the fall and utilizing this training for our student-athletes."

L.E.A.D. (Let's Empower, Advocate and Do) was founded in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012. In an effort to understand why such tragedies take place and how society can prevent future tragedies from occurring, a group of Leominster High School sophomores set out to plan the 26 Angels Benefit.  In the past two years, L.E.A.D. has also expanded its programming to serve under-served and high-risk audiences, such as summer camps, sports teams and athletic departments, and even corporations! To subsidize the cost of training for low-income organizations, L.E.A.D. launched its "one for one" model called the Robin Hood Initiative. This allows companies who receive training from L.E.A.D. to sponsor back free training to youth-serving community organizations. L.E.A.D. also launched its train-the-trainer program in 2019, known as the biannual L.E.A.D. Academy, as a way to make certification of large amounts of youth and adults more affordable and accessible to the community.

L.E.A.D. intends to continue scaling nationally to maximize social impact and transform mental health education as we know it. L.E.A.D.'s co-founders also travel the country sharing their story, speaking on social innovation panels, and teaching in private courses and at conferences.

To learn more about the programs, please visit: www.Leadnow.org