COMMUNITY JUVENILE ARBITRATION VOLUNTEER ARBITRATORS

The Community Juvenile Arbitration Program is a community-based diversion program for first time juvenile offenders charged with committing a non-violent crime. Youth are diverted from the juvenile justice system to an arbitration hearing conducted in or near the juvenile’s community. Trained volunteer arbitrators conduct hearings that include the juvenile, his/her parents, the crime victim and the police officer and monitor the juvenile’s progress throughout the program.

During the past year, the Ninth Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office Community Juvenile Arbitration Program volunteer arbitrators have truly impacted the Charleston community. These 44 volunteers have held more than 830 hearing and recouped $9,000 in restitution for victims of crimes. They have ordered in excess of $5,000 in charitable donations and ordered 9,700 hours of community service for local nonprofit organizations. In addition, they help keep the recidivism rate of these juveniles to less than nine percent.

The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice estimated that it costs $200 to prosecute each child through the Family Courts and an additional $180 for follow up probation costs. Using these estimates, volunteer arbitrators have potentially saved the community of Charleston more than $310,000. The impact on the community from the work that these volunteers have accomplished will be felt for years to come.

There were many challenges during the past year of the program. One challenge was to be able to give every juvenile that was eligible for arbitration the opportunity to go through the program. The volunteers stepped up to that challenge, and the number of hearings for the past year represents a 300% increase over the last year. Each juvenile that was eligible for the program was able to become a part of that.

Another challenge was to find community service sites for all of the juveniles to perform their service. To fulfill this need, partnerships were made with churches, nonprofit organizations and government agencies. Volunteers were also challenged to think of creative sanctions for the juveniles. Tours of jails, courts and trauma centers were organized. Programs that gave incarcerated juveniles and victims of crimes a chance to speak with these first time offenders were scheduled and partnerships were also made with the two major malls in Charleston County to provide rooms for these programs. Juveniles were sanctioned to take CPR classes, child care classes, write essays on ways that teens can help on the war on terrorism, give supplies to the homeless shelter, help with community concerts and clean roadways.

Volunteers with this program have given hundreds of hours of their time. In addition to conducting hearing, they attended 21-hour training classes and complete nine hours of yearly follow up training. They are motivated by the desire to help increase the competency and learning of juvenile offenders so they can become productive citizens, restoring the community’s role in ensuring public safety and the victim’s faith in the Juvenile Justice System.

LUCILLE GILMORE

Lucille Gilmore is a Senior Companion in the National Senior Service Corps. During her 11 years of service, she has shored up the faltering independence and dignity of more than a dozen frail elders. Her persistent visits and helpfulness makes it possible for these individuals to remain living in their own homes. What this means to the psychological and physical well being of even one person is immeasurable. However, what this means in terms of savings to the individual and community can be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars when estimating assisted living care at $30,000 per year and long term care at $120,000 per year.

Over the years Lucille has touched many lives, but special mention must be made of two who counted on Lucille for assistance and companionship for the past 10 and 11 years, respectively. With Lucille’s help, both women lived in their own homes until their deaths in December.

In a letter written last August, one woman describes what Lucille has meant to her. She writes, “I find my Senior Companion very, very important to me. I live in my own home and if it wasn’t for Lucille, I couldn’t remain here. My health is not good. I am on oxygen 24 hours a day. I could not go to my doctor appointments nor do my grocery shopping if I didn’t have help. Lucille makes my doctor appointments. She prepares my portable oxygen tank and helps me to her car. She goes with me into the doctor’s office and listens to his instructions. If I forgot some of them, she remembers. I am diabetic and have glaucoma. It is difficult for me to see to read or write. Lucille keeps an account of my monthly bills and writes the checks so they are never delinquent. We have become great friends through the years and have shared many of our life experiences. It is comforting to have someone come to visit me on a consistent basis.”

Lucille has set aside her own illness to be available to others. She is dedicated and compassionate, hopeful and energetic. She says that it is those she serves that make her life richer, stronger, and happier. One by one, Lucille reaches out to frail elders in compassion and companionship and care.

RACHEL SHIELDS

Rachel Shields, a rising high school senior, has been serving children at Emerald Youth Foundation since May 2000. She began by coming each day and allowing children to read to her during the Emerald Youth Foundation’s summer program. During the school year, she continued to come on Monday night and help children with their homework and problem subjects. Rachel’s quiet demeanor allows children to feel comfortable with her. She will allow them to read for long periods of time. While this helps the children increase their reading skills, it also enables them to have someone to talk to.

Rachel wants to support the children in whatever they are doing. Even though she does not belong to the little urban Emerald Avenue Youth Ministry church, she participates in their Vacation Bible School and attends the Children’s Choir concerts. They know that Rachel is one of their biggest fans.

In September 2001, her commitment was so strong, she was selected to be the student advisor to the Children’s Leadership team at the Emerald Avenue ministry location. While working with this team a project was developed, called Graffiti Busters that has been very effective in the community. Rachel and this team have planned and carried two Graffiti Busters days in which 130 volunteers served, four businesses and two residential garages were painted. This past spring the project was expanded to include Graffiti Busters Club to allow children in the elementary school to participate in reporting graffiti. The six children on the team that she advised were honored this spring with the Dillard News Sentinel Student Citizen Award for their creation and participating in this project. Emerald Youth Foundation has recently received the NIKE, INC. and Youth Service America Youth Action Award for the Graffiti Busters National Youth Service Day project. The $500 will be used to continue this project with the leadership team that Rachel advises expanding its impact on the community to include research into the areas most likely to be vandalized, penalties for vandalism, and what needs to be done to eliminate graffiti in the neighborhood

Rachel was awarded the Youth of Excellence Award by the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority in the Community Service category. She was also selected as the overall winner in the High School Division, which included Academics, Community Service and Extracurricular Activities.

Since she began serving the children of Emerald Youth Ministries, she has completed nearly 300 hours of service and has received the President’s Student Service Gold Award in 2000 and 2001. Rachel continues to serve the community by coming two days each week to let the children read to her and will continue her advisory role to the Children’s Leadership team in the fall. Her unselfish commitment to urban children is genuine and unsolicitous. She seeks no award or recognition for her volunteer work.

VOLUNTEERS AT THE PASADENA SENIOR CENTER

The Pasadena Senior Center has more than 125 volunteers who served 24,000+ hours in 2001. They are averaging in excess of 2000 hours monthly for 2002. The Pasadena Senior Center is open 365 days a year to assist seniors in computer and fitness training, pro bono professional legal and tax advice, podiatry, and health screenings. The Center also has birthday parties and special events, classes and grocery shopping for and delivery to the homebound and disabled.

Many of the senior volunteers are mature. Most of them are in their nineties, but they are still dedicated to coming to the Center to help less fortunate seniors who are isolated. Service is a way of life for them, not just something to do. They desire to make a difference for other seniors, and they are the reason the facility is able to be open seven days a week.

The volunteers at the Center feel useful, needed and appreciated. They, in turn, make the members at the center feel comfortable, cared for and no longer alone. One young lady staffs the front desk at the center two days a week, arriving before 8:00 a.m. Another gentleman makes telephone reassurance calls to homebound seniors one day a week. Though his eyes are failing him, and his wife has to dial the phone for him; this volunteer still serves. His wife also comes in one other day each week to take grocery orders for those who are not able to shop for themselves.

Other examples of volunteer service at the center are seniors teaching seniors computer technology twice a week, English as a Second Language once a week and helping staff with computer technology updates. One volunteer is only able to come to the Center via the Dial-A-Ride senior service program, but he comes each month to register low-income seniors at the Center for food distribution. A volunteer that is a nurse oversees the fitness room and performs blood pressure screenings once a month.

The Center also has a library service that is run by seniors and has helped over 3,000 members. In addition, the “Tap Chicks,” who are women over 50, train in the fine art of tap dancing to perform as entertainment at the Center.

NORMAN NEMROW

After a successful business career in Southern California, Norm Nemrow decided to “retire” to a career as a volunteer teacher at Brigham Young University (BYU). Since 1992, Norm has been energizing thousands of introductory accounting students in the university’s School of Accountancy and Information Systems. His volunteer service allows the salary allocated to his position at BYU to be reinvested into the school’s endowment fund and a variety of curriculum development projects.

Across the BYU campus, Nemrow has become the ambassador for accounting. For years he has taught the large class sections of introductory accounting, which sometimes number in excess of 800 students. In spite of these large masses of students, Nemrow still somehow makes each student feel like a personal friend. It’s amazing that, as an accounting professor, Nemrow is one of the most popular professors on campus; both in 1997 and 1998, he received the BYU Alumni Award as The Best Overall Teacher on campus. Enrollments in accounting programs are slumping at universities across the country. A big reason that interest in BYU’s accounting program has bucked the national trend is that Nemrow inspires introductory students with his enthusiasm for accounting as the foundation for a variety of business careers.

In 1998, Nemrow embarked on an immense project to transform the delivery of introductory accounting at BYU. After two years of development, Nemrow introduced the “Introduction to Accounting” CDs, which present over 50 hours of learning materials, via computer, in a video-lecture format with synchronized graphics. Student reaction to the CDs has been overwhelmingly positive with over 93% indicating that they learn more efficiently and effectively through the CDs than through a traditional textbook/lecture approach. With the learning efficiencies created through Nemrow’s CDs, he now has time to introduce his students to real world topics that can really make a difference. Presentations on career choices, personal financial planning, investing, taxes and other areas of application and interest greatly enhance the student’s educational experience. In fact, Norm’s current course receives some of the highest student ratings ever achieved at the university.

In addition to improved educational tools for the students, this new approach also allows for more efficient use of valuable university resources. Nemrow currently services all 3,000 students taking the introductory course at BYU each year. At other schools up to a dozen full-time faculty members might be required to handle such numbers. No wonder many universities across the country are in the process of implementing Nemrow’s effective new teaching approach.

In addition to his contribution to the School of Accountancy and Information Systems, Nemrow has also been active in a number of BYU alumni and advisement boards as well as the founding board of Habitat for Humanity of Utah County.

LEARN AND SERVE NIAGARA

Niagara University, a four-year, comprehensive, independent, nonprofit, liberal arts college, was founded in 1856, by the Vincentian Fathers and Brothers who take their name from their founder, Vincent de Paul, a French priest, devoted to serving the needs of the poor and helpless.

The creation of the Niagara University Community Action Program (NUCAP) in 1965 formalized the involvement of Niagara’s students in community service projects and currently places more than 1,000 students annually in community service settings. In 1994, a grant from the Corporation for National Service enabled the University to expand community service efforts by establishing the Learn and Serve Niagara program, designed to enhance academic skills and life-long learning by promoting and advocating social change and by attempting to instill in students the value of service to others. It also ensures the continued provision of necessary assistance to the poor, infirmed, aged and youth of the Niagara community. The Learn and Serve Niagara program focuses on education and human needs.

Learn and Serve Niagara offers tutoring and mentoring to high risk elementary and secondary students in 37 sites in 10 Niagara and Erie County School Districts and 14 private and after-school sites. Over 700 Niagara University undergraduates and graduate students annually help an average of 10,000 school-age students. Each tutor contributes between 18 and 20 hours per semester. Social and cultural activities, in addition to tutoring, are provided at after-school sites. All tutors/mentors are required to participate in training provided by Niagara University’s Learning Center or the College of Education.

Learn and Serve Niagara addresses a variety of human needs such as domestic violence prevention, homelessness, hunger, help with tax preparation and financial planning. Students work at soup kitchens, hospitals and nursing homes. Students and faculty in the College of Business have been working with a group of community women teaching them the skills to start their own businesses. This project is in collaboration with the Center for Joy and Center City Neighborhood Corporation.

The Learn and Serve Niagara program promotes service learning by encouraging faculty to either revise existing courses or develop new courses, which have service learning components. During the 1998-99 academic year, more than 30 classes with a service-learning component were taught. The courses were offered in each of the five colleges of Niagara University and involved 1,900 students in excess of 40,000 service hours to the community.

ASSOCIATION FOR GRAVESTONE STUDIES

The Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS), founded in 1977, consists of nearly 1200 volunteer members spread throughout North America, with a scattering of members on other continents. The majority of these volunteers lives east of the Mississippi and are passionately dedicated to the preservation and study of grave markers of all periods and styles.

These fragile, yet, irreplaceable stone markers are often the only remaining record of historical, artistic, and genealogical information for families, individual towns, or entire areas. The markers are slowly deteriorating due to inclement weather, vandalism, or poor cemetery maintenance. AGS volunteers not only aim to preserve these markers but to educate the public of their societal importance.

Each year, AGS conducts a number of free programs for this purpose, including arranging volunteer cemetery clean-up events, disseminating information on stone restoration techniques, and assisting local groups in the preservation of their own cemeteries.

Additionally, the Association is presently involved in the compilation and publication of the first comprehensive record of African-American burial sites and practices. AGS has saved numerous cemeteries and gravestones from the ravages of time and neglect. In the past few years alone, AGS, through its annual conferences, has led restoration projects in Boston, MA, Portland, OR, Providence, RI, Washington, DC, and just this past summer, in Savannah, GA.

CAPTAIN BARNARD, CAPTAIN TORELLI AND LIEUTENANT MINICH

Captain Bruce Barnard, Captain Andrew A. Torelli and Lieutenant Adam Minich volunteered their time with East Anglia Children’s Hospice (EACH) from January 2001 to January 2002. Officers Barnard, Torelli and Minich organized tremendous support from Royal Air Force Lakenheath and Royal Air Force Mildenhall, United Kingdom. The support they generated from these military base communities helped in EACH’s goal of maximizing the quality of life for terminally ill children, their families and all who are special to them.

EACH, a consortium of three hospices located in East Anglia, United Kingdom, operates as a support facility for 200 terminally ill children and an additional 100 bereaved families. In order to raise funds, the hospices have several “charity shops” located throughout East Anglia where they sell used clothing. Fund-raising is critical to the operation of the hospices, as only 16% of their funding comes from the government.

Officers Barnard, Torelli and Minich organized the collection and recycling of nearly 600 sets of Battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs) by 41 units on both bases. They coordinated the collection of old, serviceable uniforms and removal of all rank, nametapes and patches. Once the hospices’ charity shops had possession of the BDUs they sold them to teenagers who think they’re ‘cool’ and to laborers who use them as work clothing. The project was nicknamed Kammies for Kids (K4K) and is expected to raise nearly $15,000 for EACH.

Because of the innovative and unique approach to generate much needed funds for EACH, the officers’ efforts were highlighted in the European Stars and Strips newspaper, United States Air Force Airmen magazine and newspaper, two military base papers and on the local television news. The officers helped establish processes and tools for others to sustain K4K over the long term. Due to all the assistance EACH has received, 352 children across the region have been helped as well as 100 bereaved families over the past year.

ASHLEY JO CARTER

Ashley Carter has served more than 500 hours on her Veteran’s project. This started out as a request from Ann Landers to send Valentines to Veterans in Veterans Centers and Hospitals and has grown into each major holiday. Each Veteran at the Clinton Center is remembers on the eight major holidays. Some of Ashley’s specialties are making and coloring cards, baking cookies, filling bags, buying treats, writing letters for help with her project, sending thank you cards, shaking hands and trading hugs with the 145 residents at the Center.

Ashley’s goal is to make every Veteran feel special and show them they are remembered. She also thanks them for giving their time serving our country. She makes it a point to do something unique for each Veteran on Valentine’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day, July the Fourth, Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. She accepts donations to help defray the costs.

Her time has also been valuable to the Seiling VFW. Ashley helped build their memorial, helps entertain, cook and clean for fundraisers. She has raised more than seven thousand dollars to date. Ashley creates and distributes “Get Out and Vote!” signs in addition to raising, lowering and folding the 44 American Flags the VFW puts out on patriotic holidays.

Ashley is also very active in 4-H, FFA, Art Club and is the school mascot. She judges at contests, sells FFA plants and sausage. She has also been a 4-H camp counselor for several Years. In addition, Ashley teaches workshops for children for 4-H as well as for Community Education. She makes craft items for an annual Cancer Bazaar and has raised 800 dollars for that cause to help benefit a special cancer patients.

Ashley picks angel from the Angel Tree each Christmas and buys and wraps clothes and toys for needy children. She helps the VFW members repair, sand and paint bicycles for need children in the county for the holidays. She also works at the booths at the Town Halloween Carnival each year, and Ashley and other members of the 4-H club held a car wash to raise money for Cordel tornado victims. Another charity Ashley works to support is the Ronald Mc Donald House. She works to get donations to forward to the families and children being served at the House.

Because she sees the impact of her service to the Veterans, Ashley approached the elementary school principal about having a school-wide project. She suggested the children make Christmas cards for the Veterans.

Ashley has sacked 275 pounds of candy, signed more than 1,200 Valentines, baked in excess of 1,800 cookies and collected almost 650 pairs of socks. She has created, colored and cut more than 3,350 cards and filled almost 910 plastic eggs with candy. In addition, she has contacted 32 major companies for donations of personal items to give in the Christmas bags. All of this work is done to help the Veterans who have served our country with such dedication feel appreciated and remembered.

BABY HEALTH SERVICE

Baby Health Service was founded in 1914 to provide baby formula at no cost to needy families. Today the mission has expanded greatly to meet the changing needs of children in the community. Since well over 18% of Fayette County children have no insurance, the focus and mission has evolved into providing total health care to children between the ages of birth through 12 years. Baby Health Service is now a pediatric health clinic that provides free medical care to children whose families are ineligible for a medical card, yet cannot afford health insurance. These are the children of the “working poor”, who often fall through the cracks in the current health system.

The clinic is open five mornings a week. It is staffed by 15 physicians who volunteer their time on a rotating basis prior to attending to their own practices. Volunteer board members actually work in the clinic and facilitate the running of the clinic during clinic hours. The only paid staff consists of a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, an R.N. and an L.P.N. This personnel assists the physicians in providing well and sick child examinations, immunizations, x-rays and blood tests. Medicines are also dispensed at no cost to the families that come to Baby Health Service.

In 1998 over 3,500 children received medical care at Baby Health. Annually, the numbers of clients increase, but the clinic is operated without any United Way or federal funding. The board members work to meet an operating budget by soliciting funds through grants, foundations, corporations and individuals in the community.

Through the volunteer efforts the physicians and board members in 1997, President Clinton and the Points of Light Foundation presented Baby Health Service the prestigious “President’s Service Award”. Baby Health Service truly demonstrates what can be accomplished in a community without government reliance.