Venue 4/24

Centra Health is a regional nonprofit health care system providing comprehensive medical care to people in Central Virginia. It has more than 3,000 health care professionals on staff serving a wide variety of medical specialties. Lynchburg General Hospital is the area's regional center for emergency medicine, as well as cardiac and orthopedic services, intensive care and rehabilitation. Lynchburg General is also an outpatient surgery center. Virginia Baptist Hospital specializes in cancer services, women's and children's care, mental health services and outpatient surgery. Centra Health operates physicians' offices in Brookneal, Big Island, Gretna and Lynchburg. Other members of the Centra Health family include: Fairmont Crossing, Guggenheimer, Summit Health & Rehabilitation Center, The Summit, Mammography Center and Centra Lab. The Centra Health Foundation is a charitable organization that accepts grant proposals and funds a variety of community health programs through education and underwriting patient care.

World Help is a nondenominational Christian organization chartered by the state of Virginia. Founded in 1991, the organization operates humanitarian aid, child sponsorship, Bible distribution and church planting programs. It provides food, shelter, blankets, water and other household products to the victims of wars, famines and natural disasters. The organization s child sponsorship program offers clothing, medical care services and educational opportunities for children in need. The organization also provides Bibles, testaments and other pieces of Christian literature to public schools, churches, hospitals and orphanages in countries, such as Iraq, North Korea, Russia, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Rwanda, Haiti, the Philippines and Cuba. Located in Forest, Va., World Help also operates an online store that offers books, apparel and music CDs.

The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts opened in 1971 and operated for five years in the Charlottesville area, first at Wavertree Farm and then at the Prospect Hill estate. Begun by writers Elizabeth Coles Langhorne and Nancy Hale, it counted among its original board members the novelist Peter Taylor and the former director of the MacDowell Colony, George Kendall. In the summers of 1976 and 1977, the VCCA held limited sessions on the campus of Sweet Briar College, a vibrant liberal arts women's college founded in 1901. In the fall of 1977, Sweet Briar agreed to lease the buildings and the adjacent grounds of Mt. San Angelo to the VCCA. The original 25-year lease has now been extended to an automatically renewing 15-year lease. As the only artist community in the nation directly associated with an institution of higher learning, the VCCA benefits tremendously from this unique relationship. The College generously allows Fellows to use many of its facilities and services, including the libraries, computer labs, pool, exercise rooms and walking trails. Fellows may also attend campus events such as lectures, plays and concerts. In return, VCCA Fellows periodically visit with students on campus, giving lectures or informal talks, and faculty members bring students to Mt. San Angelo for studio tours. The two institutions also formally collaborate on several mutually beneficial programs that bring writers, visual artists and composers to the VCCA and Sweet Briar and also offer opportunities to faculty and students. Virginia Center for the Creative Arts 154 San Angelo Drive, VA 24521 Amherst P. 434-946-7236 vcca@vcca.com