Helping individuals with developmental disabilities live to their fullest potential is RISE Life Services’ raison d’être.
Established in 1980 as ADD (Aid to the Developmentally Disabled) by family members seeking a better living environment for their loved ones, RISE Life Services of Riverhead now offers a variety of residential and supported living environments and day programs for people with intellectual disabilities and mental illness.
RISE Life Services currently operates 11 Individualized Residential Alternative Program residences serving people 21 and over who are diagnosed with developmental disabilities as well as five Intermediate Care Facilities on the East End of Long Island for men and women over 21 diagnosed with an intellectual disability and potentially comorbid diagnosis. The organization also offers mental health services for adults, adolescents and children.
Rebranded in 2018 as RISE Life services to reflect the expanding scope of services, the organization today serves about 300 residents and 500 individuals overall through an array of programs and services around Long Island.
Day program without walls
Eight years ago, when Charles Evdos took over as executive director of ADD, the agency had not gotten any cost of living increase for a decade and their rate base had not been adjusted for nearly as long.
“When I took over, we were strictly residential. And if we did not diversify our business, we would have closed,” Evdos says.
Evdos oversaw the diversification of the organization, establishing its Day Program Without Walls (PWW), and opened its first PWW program five years ago.
A collaboration with “The Spirit of Huntington,” the second PWW program is located in a 24,000-square-foot building in Huntington, owned by RISE IN SPIRIT.
“The beauty of the building is it’s a cultural center,” Evdos says. “It features art, music, dance, a jobs program, adult program, out-patient clinic, and food pantry — and it’s all under one roof and nobody has anything like it. The program is probably one of the best models in New York State now and it’s grown over the last couple of years that we now have 6 programs like that.”
In recent years, New York has moved into a self-direction model: Where children or adults with developmental disabilities stay at home, notes Evdos. This typically resulted in individuals sitting around watching TV all day, experiencing a poor quality of life.
“What we do with our program is we get them out and they get to choose,” Evdos says. “Just like you and I get up in the morning, we decide what we are having for breakfast; what we are going to do today. They get to decide the same thing.”
RISE Life Services provides transportation to their PWW centers in Brookhaven, Patchogue, Mattituck and Huntington, where they provide life skills, music, art, cooking, movement, and working with clay to foster independence, academics, hands-on training and recreation, for about 500 people a week, from RISE’s residential homes and individuals served through 30 other agencies, including FREE, AHRC, IGHL, and United Cerebral Palsy Association.
The demand for PWW is very great, especially since all of the adult programs had closed during the pandemic.
“We came on first and people saw that the quality of our program was unbelievable. And now we have a waiting list that’s a mile long,” says Evdos, adding that they hope to open a seventh center in June.
In addition to programs at the 6 centers, individuals get to choose from off-campus activities, such as baseball games and other outings.
Some of the autistic clients who are incredibly artistic have had their artwork exhibited at the Agora Art Studio in Manhattan, the Nassau Museum of Art, and in galleries in Southampton, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Serving communities in need
In 2022, RISE Life Services opened up RISE Above Suicide, a suicide prevention program aimed at vulnerable at-risk youth and young adults.
“There was something like over 2,000 suicides in 2022,” Evdos says. “And we were the only agency on Long Island that got this grant for a suicide prevention program.”
As three food pantries closed on the East End over the past three years, the demand for RISE’s food pantry has gone up more than 300%.
Working with Island Harvest, Long Island Cares, Shoprite, and local farmers, RISE Life Services also utilizes its own greenhouse where they grow produce to feed more than 500 people each week, notes Evdos.
“We’re in the process of getting a refrigerated food truck where we can deliver the food to areas that need it, especially to the elderly,” Evdos says.
To date, they’re halfway toward their goal of securing $88,000 for the food truck.
“Once we get that $88,000, we’re going to buy that truck and expand our services even further,” Evdos says.
Most people mistakenly think of Southampton as an exclusively wealthy enclave.
“They have the biggest need of people who are going hungry,” Evdos says.
With food costs rising, families are really struggling now.
“We’re trying our best to help them as much as we can,” Evdos says. “If anybody can help us with a donation to the food truck, that’s going to enable us to feed probably another 100 families a week.”
As a nonprofit organization, RISE is always strapped for funding. In fact, Evdos says, the agency lost $1 million last year through its intensive care facilities. Fundraising, he says, helps make up the difference.
“We do five-to-seven fundraisers each year,” Evdos says. “We do grants. We’re trying to build up our endowment.”
For RISE’s executive director, the work is personal: Evdos had a niece with cerebral palsy who was wheelchair bound and couldn’t communicate.
“She comes in Thanksgiving and she rolls up to the table,” Evdos recalls. “She hits a button and says, ‘‘I love you everybody. Happy Thanksgiving.’’ It was the first words we heard out of her mouth. I started crying hysterically and I said, ‘‘This is what God wants me to do.’’
And after eight years in leadership at RISE, Evdos is truly dedicated to the people he serves who are more like family than clients to him.
“If our agency doesn’t provide the service, who’s going to do it?” he says.
To learn more about RISE Life Services, go to RISElifeservices.org. To donate, click on the green DONATE tab at the top right or scroll through the GIVING link.
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