The Chamber Ambassadors attended a wonderful Ribbon Cutting with Dental Health Arlington!
This will be a celebration of the community coming together to help Dental Health Arlington make it to our 30-year Anniversary! We had to move 5 years ago in a very short amount of time and get a capital campaign together. We had many partners like the United Way, the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation, Andy & Dr. Amy Schoening to help with the seed money. We utilized our previous donated dental equipment to save money; however, we fell short on the capital campaign and went into debt.
Then COVID hit and we thought we may have to permanently close. Not only did we remain open, but we have also thrived! We are so proud of being one of the ONLY community clinics that treated over 150 emergency dental patients so we could keep them out of the local hospitals during the initial COVID shut down. Our School Sealant program, SMILES, had to shut down completely, so we pooled our resources and had the students come to us on Fridays when the dental clinic was closed. As a result of this and the community’s ongoing support, we bounced back stronger than ever, we are no longer in debt and thanks to funding from the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation, we have managed to remodel the entire clinic with all new chairs and equipment!
In addition to that funding, we have also recently learned that Women Inspiring Philanthropy (WIP) will be funding our expansion of our SMILES Sealant program from 1st- 3rd graders to include 4th graders! All of this, wrapped up with our 30 years in business and a new name for our “Schoening” Dental Clinic makes for a great ribbon cutting celebration! We could not have done all that we do without the help from the Greater Arlington Chamber of Commerce to keep providing free and low-cost dental services to our neighbors in need!