Airport Marina Counseling Service's (AMCS) 17th annual "Spring into Well-Being” Celebration will be held on Thursday, May 6, 2021, at 5 p.m. at the H Hotel Los Angeles and livestreaming via Zoom. The event will celebrate the success of our 2021 Champion of Mental Health Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital. Cedars-Sinai has been instrumental in helping AMCS become an indispensable part of the county’s mental health care safety net.

“The hospital helped AMCS with grants to create a three-year strategic plan and funded a partnership with Mar Vista and Open Paths Family Counseling called the ‘Building Healthy Families Program,’" said AMCS CEO Eden Garcia-Balis. “They have also given us a grant for an electronic health records system, which will be huge for us as we work to digitize our records and make them more user-friendly. We are excited to honor Cedars for their incredible contributions to the clinic.”

The live event will be limited to 100 key local community and business leaders in a socially distanced and COVID-safe environment, while hundreds more watch via Zoom. The goal, Garcia-Balis said, is more than $300,000 to help continue providing much-needed affordable, community-based mental health services and to support the training of the clinic’s more than 60 mental health therapists each year.

NBC4 Weathercaster Fritz Coleman will serve as the emcee, and the event will include a variety of auction items and a celebration of AMCS’s success in providing critically needed mental health services even in the midst of a pandemic.