Gabrielle Custis
Lebanon Police Volunteers Johnson
The City of Lebanon Oregon functions through volunteer and paid police support. Volunteers gain appropriate training and are a valuable addition to the police department and the Lebanon community. The volunteers are trained to assist various departments and enhance the capacity of state and local law enforcement in providing public police services. The work that they do is priceless, anytime the community is in need, a volunteer is always willing to step forward.
Carl Vandee who has been a volunteer policeman for the past 4 years explains reasons why he serves: “I’m passionate about improving people’s quality of life.”
The volunteer program is aimed at providing a supplementary and complementary rol,e not designed to have the civilians replace professional staff, but. The purpose of having volunteers is to provide the police staff with a trained citizens to assist various departments in providing public police services. Lebanon Police Volunteers have had a significant impact on the community.
Volunteers are provided with a positive experience, with an opportunity to give back and gain from their community; to break down barriers; and to open doors of communication between citizens and the police and gain meaningful experience and knowledge.
Currently the city of Lebanon has 12 civilian police volunteers who do a variety of jobs that save the city a lot of money. Volunteers help with administration in the police department, support the municipal court, enforce disabled parking, and provide general help within the community to serve various requests. In 2011 volunteers logged in over 1700 hours to the community of Lebanon.
Carolyn Cotta
Jessica Brookshire
Tanya Tull ScD
Taryn Davis
Taryn was about to graduate from college in 2007 when her husband/soulmate was killed by a roadside bomb. At the age of 23 she became a military widow. She felt lost and totally alone. In a desperate need to find people in her own shoes, she set out traveling across the country to talk and listen to other women’s similar stories of lost loved ones and how they managed to cope and carry on with their lives.
What started out as a personal journey evolved into a lifelong commitment to help others in her situation through the American Widow Project. At a very young age, she was able to turn her grief into something positive to help others. She became the founder and executive director of the non-profit, the American Widow Project.
The American Widow Project is ” dedicated to the new generation of those who have lost the heroes of yesterday, today and tomorrow, with an emphasis on healing through sharing stories, tears and laughter; military widow to military widow.”
Because of Taryn hundreds if not thousands of young military widows now have a place to turn for emotional support. She established a website for military widows to share stories, ask questions, get help etc…Taryn organizes ‘get aways’ for the widows to try new experiences such as skydiving, to get out there and start enjoying life again.
Barbara Drake
In Salt Lake City seniors and retirees take an active role in shaping the community. Barbara Drake is one of these special citizens who volunteers for the Bridges Tutoring program, serving the educational needs of the community and changing the lives of youth.
As a city, Salt Lake is diverse and growing. Culturally, many of the community families are large, which puts an increased demand on the public school system. That fact, coupled with increasing immigration and shrinking budgets has created a crisis in education need vs. funding over the past two decades.
The Bridges Tutoring Program was begun in 1991 and has become a long standing solution toward this educational problem. The program places seniors and retirees in high-need schools to help high-risk students across five districts bridge the gap between failure and success. Bridges continuously identifies changing need and continues to adapt in order to best serve the community needs.
Barbara Drake has been a committed volunteer tutor at the Bridges program. Currently Barbara serves with 59 other active tutors working one-on-one with students to find and address deficiencies in math and language arts.
On average, Bridge program students make great progress–often by more than a grade level in one year. Overall, they self-report gains in self-esteem and teachers report that their behavioral attitudes change dramatically. Barbara and the other tutors track progress through state testing, self-esteem and behavioral testing modules. It is amazing what a little hard work, hope and personal investment can do for a child headed towards disaster.
The Bridges Tutoring Program is lucky to have such a devoted and caring volunteer like Barbara who works hard to get results. Barbara Drake changes youth lives through dedicated tutoring.
Her nominator says, “When you are changing the lives of children, it is hard to fully express the impact of changes–especially in the long-term. Changing the life of a child is really changing the entire world.”
Ross Ogden
Ross Ogden has redefined the meaning of volunteerism; for he is helping to shape the entire Red Cross for years to come. As a disaster volunteer, he has participated in more than twenty Disaster Services Human Resources assignments. Ross has received both the Clara Barton Award as well as the National Harriman Award for the Northeast Region in 2001. This past year Ross received the most prestigious honor any Red Cross volunteer can receive across the nation, the National Harriman Award. For years, Ross has worked to grow chapter capacity for service delivery, increasing chapter capability for fundraising, building stronger leadership among chapters and worked to improve technology to have chapters run more efficiently. Ross is fully grounded in the fundamental principles of the Red Cross, he speaks from the heart from his personal experiences as a longtime volunteer.
Ross Ogden says, “To serve others is a privilege, and to do it with the Red Cross is to make a difference to people when they need it most.”
At the Greenwich Chapter, Ross began volunteering in the youth department in 1960. Ross has served as a blood volunteer working as the only health history volunteer in the state of CT, as an active DAT member and as a member of the Emergency Blood Coverage team. He has served on the Board of Directors for multiple terms, as Chapter Chairman from 1974-76, as Disaster Services Chairman, as Youth Services Chair from 1979-83 and is currently on the Board of Advisors.
Ross will do whatever it takes to make sure all his local community’s needs are met as best as he can whether that’s calling a local politician, participating in a local volunteer project or inspiring those around us to become more civic minded and active. He is constantly willing to help the chapter in any disaster relief operations and is a wonderful mentor to new volunteers. He is eager to stop what he is doing in his daily life to immediately assist at a community blood drive. Ross is simply inspirational in his presence, his tone and his message.
His nominator says: “I have never in my life met a person more determined, successful and compassionate as a volunteer as is Ross Ogden. Ross possesses characteristics most do not have. He is a true inspiration to volunteers across the country with his remarkable dedicated to the American Red Cross for so many years. After meeting Ross for the first time you can immediately begin to appreciate all these wonderful characteristics which make Ross so special to all that he has touched.”