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W e d n e s d ay, J a n u a ry 15, 2025
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Jan Risher LONG STORY SHORT
New year to broaden horizons
PROVIDED PHOTO
Olivia McCoy discusses WeHelp NOLA’s services with a staff member of a restaurant.
EMPLOYEE SERVICE Organization helps restaurant workers access the help they need
BY SERENA PUANG Staff writer
Working in the food industry, Olivia McCoy found that her job exacerbated her mental health struggles. “They’re very high-stress, low-control careers,” she said of the industry. “They’re also extremely physically and emotionally taxing jobs.” To make matters worse, the cost of therapy was prohibitively expensive, especially without access to health benefits. Hospitality industry workers take care of others who are feeling down, meeting new people or celebrating the big milestones of their lives. Everybody’s got to eat, but who takes care of the people who take care of everyone else? In an industry that McCoy said is full of systemic issues including substance abuse, financial insecurity and a lack of health benefits, many of the people around her were also struggling. That’s why she founded WeHelp NOLA in early 2020. It’s a nonprofit that helps restaurant industry workers access therapy. For WeHelp, clinicians work on the low end of a sliding scale which allows McCoy to offer services to restaurants for the cost of approximately $10 per employee. The organization currently has 54 partner restaurants and has provided more than 5,500 therapy sessions, free to restaurant workers. After restaurants sign up and get onboarded, McCoy goes to the restaurant to introduce WeHelp’s services, share her own experiences, and then offer
the entire restaurant staff the opportunity to use the services for free. WeHelp also offers free and discounted wellness classes such as yoga, acupuncture and reiki. Cure Co. which includes Cure, Cane & Table and Vals, signed up for WeHelp during the early pandemic. Alfredo Noguiera, executive chef of Cure Co., said they remind employees every couple of months about the services. As part of WeHelp, every restaurant owner gets a monthly anonymized report about the usage numbers and what kinds of services people are using. Some people use it for just a short time to address something specific. Others use it in a more ongoing way. Noguiera knows the services are easy to use and accessible because he’s used them himself. “These past couple of years have been wildly challenging, and I was experiencing an extremely high amount of stress,” he said. “Even inside of having private health care, which I do through my wife’s company, there are a lot of struggles currently to get help, and (with) WeHelp, it was very seamless and very quick.” Noguiera said he was able to get an appointment within 24 hours, and WeHelp had a strong roster of therapists to choose from. For Mason Hereford, the owner and chef at Turkey and the Wolf and its sister restaurants, the decision to participate in WeHelp is about helping his employees. When Hereford’s restaurant group started with WeHelp in 2020, employees were not eligible for health insurance. They have since added health insurance for his managers, but for hourly workers or people who opt out of insurance due to the cost, WeHelp is a way to access therapy.
PROVIDED PHOTO
Olivia McCoy, founder of WeHelp NOLA, worked in the food industry herself. Now, she works to help others access therapy.
“Participating is the right thing to do,” he said, “We’re not making changes in people’s lives, but we’re offering the opportunity for people to make changes in their own lives and get the help they need.” On the therapist’s side, WeHelp can be a way for younger therapists to gain experience and figure out what kind of populations they’d like to see in their practice. “I haven’t really come across anything quite like it before,” said Jane Troescher, a licensed professional counselor who works with WeHelp. “It’s very much needed, and it’s providing a service to a population that’s pretty neglected otherwise.” For some people, working in the food
ä See HELP, page 2G
For nearly 17 years, my family and I lived in one of the strangest houses around. It had quirks aplenty, but what it had going for it was the bulk of the back wall of the home was glass. The expansive windows looked out over an even more expansive view of a river. In the weeks after we moved to the house in 2005, my husband fell and got a minor fracture on his knee — which led, unbeknown to us, to a giant blood clot that broke away from his leg and ended up stuck saddling his lungs. Once at the hospital, the doctor explained to me that my husband’s prognosis was grim. “I don’t expect him to make it through the night,” the doctor told me in the emergency room on that Sunday night. At the time, our daughters were 8 and 3. My husband made it through the night, but during the next week, each day, one by one, his organs started shutting down. On the Friday of that fateful week, the doctor told me that I should bring our daughters in to see their dad. I understood what that meant. Miraculously, on the next day, my husband started improving. He ended up staying in the hospital for 31 days — and nearly 20 years later, he is still going strong. From where I sit now, I sometimes think about those days in the fall of 2005 when I didn’t know what was going to happen or how my life was going to go. The hospital strictly enforced visiting hours, which meant I spent time each day at our new home. Even back then, I recognized that I had an unexpected peace about things. For one thing, I could genuinely feel the prayers of people who loved us. The other thing that helped me more than made sense was the view our home afforded of the river. Day after day, quietly sitting there and staring at the ever-running water helped settle my mind in ways I can’t explain. The panoramic view never got old. I would sometimes sit there and think, “Why does looking at this feel so good?” A few weeks ago, a friend sent a link to Tim Ferriss’ podcast interview with the English/Irish poet David Whyte. In the interview Whyte talks a lot about horizons and the value of looking at and beyond them, both literally and metaphorically. His erudite words and perspective inspired me to do more research on horizons and why we like looking at them. I mean, we are always looking
ä See RISHER, page 2G
HOW YOU CAN HELP: VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES Louisiana Inspired highlights volunteer opportunities across south Louisiana. If your organization has specific volunteer opportunities, please email us at lainspired @theadvocate.com with details on the volunteer opportunity, organization and the contact/registration information volunteers would need.
Acadiana
Cite des Arts, 109 Vine St., Lafayette, is a grassroots arts incubator and multi-use arts facility that houses two performance spaces, including a professionally equipped, 100-seat theater, a music studio, dance studio, cafe and gallery space. Classes and programming are offered across several different art forms: visual arts, dance, music, theater, film, storytelling and spoken word. For volunteer opportunities, call (337) 291-1122 or visit citedesarts.org.
Baton Rouge
Rescue Alliance, 12484 La. 44, Gonzales, is a nonprofit organization committed to the well-being of animals in Greater Baton Rouge and surrounding areas by providing, facilitating and promoting spay/neuter, adopting or facilitating the adoption of homeless animals, teaching the community responsible companion animal ownership and the humane treatment of animals, and at all times promoting the practice of spay/neuter.With the help of volunteers, Rescue Alliance offers a number of services and programs that strive to promote animal welfare. For more volunteer opportunities, visit animalrecovery.org.
New Orleans
Farming New Orleans, 5648 Hawthorne Place, New Orleans, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the cultivation of gardens, groves and livestock as vehicles for education, building community, feeding the hungry and promoting entrepreneurship in New Orleans. For volunteer opportunities, visit farmingneworleans.org.