Kevin Lewis

Since the founding of the Lee County Coalition for a Drug-Free Southwest Florida in 1989, Kevin Lewis has been involved in a leadership capacity as a direct service volunteer, and as a community booster for Coalition for Families in Lee County. Lewis serves on a number of statewide task forces on drug and alcohol treatment and prevention, including the board of directors for the Florida Addiction and Drug Abuse Association. In addition, he is the president of the Rotary Club of Fort Myers.

The Richard Family

Eight-year-old Martin Richard became a symbol of what was lost after the Boston Marathon bombings a year ago. The Dorchester, Mass., boy had gone with his family to see the end of the race and was killed by one of the blasts.

Martin Richard holds up a sign he made that reads, “No more hurting people. Peace.”

In the days that followed, a photo that appeared widely in the media of Martin holding up a poster he’d made as a school project became a heart-wrenching remembrance. The poster read, “No more hurting people. Peace.”

As the city of Boston mourned the three people who died, including Martin, the Richard family suffered overwhelming personal losses. Bill and Denise Richard had lost a son. Their daughter, 7-year-old Jane, lost a leg. And they, themselves, suffered serious permanent injuries – among the more than 250 people hurt at the scene.

As part of their effort to heal, the family created the Martin W. Richard Charitable Foundation this year. Its broad mission is to spread Martin’s message of peace by investing in education, athletics and community.

“Martin was a true peacemaker,” says Larry Marchese, a longtime friend of the Richards who volunteers as a spokesperson for the family. “He was an outdoorsy and athletic little boy with a high appreciation for fairness. He looked out for other kids, tried to make sure everyone was included in games and other activities, and it was common for him to moderate disputes on the playground. His school even honored him with the designation ‘peacemaker’ when he was in second grade.”

The Richard family during a 2012 visit to Washington, D.C.; Henry is in the front and in the back, from left, are Jane, Bill, Denise and Martin.

While the family foundation is still in the early stages of development, its first major initiative will culminate at the running of the 2014 Boston Marathon, April 21. Team MR8 (Martin’s initials and age), a group of 100 runners personally selected by the Richards from a large group of applicants, has been holding fundraisers since January and will compete in the marathon on behalf of the Richards’ foundation.

Team MR8 members have raised more than $800,000 for the group. The team actually has a 101st member, a U.S. serviceman stationed at an Air Force base in Afghanistan, who will run the marathon distance of 26.2 miles in the desert.

Other team members include a U.S. representative from Arizona, first responders, doctors and nurses, corporate CEOs, teachers, two wounded veterans, and a woman traveling from Shanghai, China. Fifty of the runners are from Massachusetts.

The Richards are already planning the first programs they would like to launch with funds raised by Team MR8.

“As the education component, the family is looking at creating ‘peace corners’ in school libraries, with books about famous peace figures and other relevant subjects,” says Marchese. “They also aspire to work with educators and other nonprofit organizations to develop a curriculum for peace education in schools.”

In the area of athletics, which Martin loved, the Richards would like to create social athletic competitions that emphasize giving participants the chance to get to know each other and inspire both kids and adults to come together to make change.

“The family is also coming up with ideas for programs that would bring people out of the house to get to know their neighbors and contribute together to the quality of life in the community,” says Marchese.

While the Richards are still not ready to speak publicly, the family makes regular posts to a blog to provide friends and supporters with both news of the foundation and personal family updates. According to a recent post, Jane is progressing well “on what has been a long and difficult road to recovery.” She is currently learning to use a new prosthetic running leg donated by the organization Wiggle Your Toes, which supports people who have lost limbs.

“Our gratitude will never diminish for the support and love we have received,” the blog post continues. “As the next few weeks come and go, we will be thinking about all of the families that have been impacted by the senseless events of last April, and proud of the way the community around us has persevered.”

Andrew Moyseowicz

Last year, Andrew Moyseowicz served at the New England Center for Homeless Veterans as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. Moyseowicz’s service helped the organization provide homeless and at-risk veterans with access to vocational-training courses to improve their employment and housing outcomes.

Often, veterans are overrepresented among the homeless population, and are more likely to experience higher unemployment than the national average. Moyseowicz interacted with homeless veterans of all eras, spanning World War II to Operations Iraqi/Enduring Freedom. The population is highly vulnerable, with many veterans experiencing unemployment, addiction, mental health issues, and physical disabilities, all on top of homelessness. By increasing access to vocational training, Moyseowicz assisted veterans in exiting homelessness as well as preventing veterans from becoming homeless.

As a child, Moyseowicz was convinced his dad made toys. Moyseowicz’s father served in the Navy, and every time he went away for six to nine months, he would bring Moyseowicz back exotic, Middle Eastern toys.

In spite of his father’s frequent deployments to the Persian Gulf and the Balkans, Moyseowicz remembers enjoying a loving home life and attending excellent schools. He never quite realized the wealth of support his family received through friends and community organizations that made his great life possible.

As an AmeriCorps member, serving two-yearlong terms, Moyseowicz has tried to give back, what he feels was so freely given to him. Over the last two years, Moyseowicz has interacted with homeless drug addicts, ex-convicts, traumatized veterans, none of whom have had the good fortune he has had.

He strives to excel as an volunteer, but perhaps most importantly Moyseowicz says he strives “daily to be a genuine and approachable volunteer, one who is not afraid to shake hands with a street dweller, share a meal at a soup kitchen, or be there to listen to a veteran in need.”

Isaac McFarland

As we celebrate National Volunteer Week – sponsored by Advil® – meet Daily Point of Light Award winner Isaac McFarland. Read his story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

Isaac McFarland packs food at a food drive.

When high school junior Isaac McFarland participated in a 4-H tour of a Shreveport, La., food bank last year, he found the shelves sparsely stocked. He was startled to learn that many local families didn’t have enough to eat, and that food banks and shelters were struggling to meet the needs of the hungry.

The 16-year-old, who works on his family’s cattle ranch near Shreveport, decided to help. Last spring, with assistance from his parents, Isaac created his own foundation, Game Changers, to help fight hunger.

Aided by a $500 grant from the Sodexo Foundation, Isaac launched a campaign called Let’s Tackle Hunger. He purchased 1,000 miniature lunch boxes, which he named “tackle boxes,” and asked the art teachers and students at his school, 4-H members in multiple cities and local civic leaders – including the mayor and police and fire chiefs – to decorate the boxes in some personal way.

Isaac then raised money from 4-H, other community organizations, local businesses, students and community members to purchase nutritious breakfast foods. Students and 4-H members volunteered to pack this food into the lunch boxes. Isaac got 300 of his classmates at Caddo Parish Magnet High School, from all 40 student organizations on campus, involved.

On a Saturday that spring, Isaac and 30 volunteers distributed more than 300 lunch boxes to families in a low-income Shreveport neighborhood. In July, during a cow show in Bryan, Tex., Isaac and 4-H volunteers delivered 300-plus lunch boxes to a food shelter there. Later that summer, when Isaac attended a 4-H cow conference in New Orleans, he and volunteers donated the remaining 300-plus lunch boxes to the local Boys Town. In its first drive, Game Changers collected and distributed 7,000 food items.

But Isaac was just getting started. He quickly enlisted the help of his mother, Regina, to help provide meals, cooked with beef from the McFarland ranch, to local food shelters. In 2013, mother and son prepared giant meals for two facilities, Providence House and the Shreveport Rescue Shelter. Isaac plans to cook for both shelters at least once a year.

Last fall, Isaac held another major Game Changers event. He asked police, firefighters and hospitals in the Shreveport area to set up collection sites for a two-week food drive. At the end of the drive, on Make A Difference Day, Isaac and volunteers delivered more than 6,000 pounds of donated items to the Louisiana Food Bank.

“I want to do anything I can to help people in situations so bad that they aren’t even able to get simple nutritious foods,” says Isaac. “Many of them did nothing to end up in these situations, and I think if we are able to help, we should.”

Benjamin Pohl

As we celebrate National Volunteer Week – sponsored by Advil® – meet Daily Point of Light Award winner Benjamin Pohl. Read his story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

In March 1997, a catastrophe changed Benjamin Pohl’s life. But today he insists the change was for the better.

Two weeks before his 18th birthday, Pohl, of Chicago was in a car accident that nearly killed him. He suffered multiple fractures, including a broken back, and severe internal injuries. A doctor in the emergency room said he didn’t expect Pohl to survive the night.

Pohl lay in a coma for a month. Finally, he regained consciousness.

“It was very scary,” says Pohl. “I had no idea where I was, and I couldn’t remember anything about the accident.”

Pohl spent six months in the hospital learning how to speak and walk again, and two more years in outpatient therapy. Gradually, he began leading a normal life. With encouragement and support from his parents, Pohl completed his final high school credits and, in 1999, entered college at the University of Iowa – while still walking with crutches. He had once dreamed of a career practicing military law with the Judge Advocate General Corps, but now he wanted to major in recreation therapy so he could assist people with disabilities.

“My entire perspective changed during my rehabilitation,” says Pohl. “I’ve been 100 percent dependent on other people, and now I feel a unique bond with people who have disabilities. I have a level of empathy that few can understand.”

After earning his degree, Pohl worked for the next two years as a recreational therapist at a maximum-security prison and a mental health facility. He discovered his real love – volunteerism – when he moved north, to suburban DuPage County, Ill., in 2006 and began volunteering at the Western DuPage Special Recreation Association, where he accompanied kids with disabilities on fun outings to ball games, bowling alleys, restaurants and more. A favorite with clients, Pohl has kept up his relationship with the association over the years, sometimes as a volunteer and sometimes as a part-time staffer. 

In 2007, Pohl entered graduate school at Northern Illinois University, where he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class with a master’s degree in public administration. He then joined the Peace Corps and spent a year in Jordan, where he trained teachers in special education, with an emphasis on promoting awareness and acceptance of children with disabilities.

Today, Pohl works one week a month for a tech firm in Iowa, and hopes to start a full-time career working for the government in public administration. For three weeks of each month, he spends most of his time back in DuPage County volunteering for a variety of organizations.

While his volunteer credentials are too numerous to mention, he currently serves on the board of directors of the DuPage County Habitat for Humanity. He also does volunteer development work for Celebrating Differences, a group that serves children with Down syndrome. Pohl also volunteers as a journalist, writing newsletters and promotional materials, for Easter Seals.

“After my accident, I had a lot of help, and it’s my way to give back,” says Pohl. “I pretty much came back from the dead. I was given a second chance, and I feel an obligation to help others have equal opportunities. It’s my passion and it makes me feel good. It’s an intrinsic high to help people.”

The Leali Family

As we celebrate National Volunteer Week – sponsored by Advil® – meet Daily Point of Light Award winning-Leali family. Read their story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

Walk past the Leali home in New Orleans and you’ll notice a large wooden structure with glass doors near the sidewalk. Locals say it resembles a giant birdhouse or a miniature, old-fashioned schoolhouse. Stocked with 50 to 80 books and bearing a sign that reads, “Take a Book. Return a Book,” the mini-building is the Little Free Library 8-year-old Nikki Leali founded.

Since 2012, the always-open facility has allowed kids and adults in the neighborhood to browse, select and – if they wish – keep books of interest to them.

When Nikki was 6, she and her family heard that Little Free Libraries were cropping up in neighborhoods throughout New Orleans. The idea was originally started as a nonprofit by two social entrepreneurs in Hudson, Wis., and was spreading nationally and even internationally.

New Orleans is a city especially concerned with the problem of childhood literacy. The Public Library Foundation estimates that 44 percent of city residents are functionally illiterate and that many children have never owned a book. Illiteracy is linked to crime, unemployment and poverty.

To start her own Little Free Library, Nikki personally applied for and received a grant to do so from a local church. Later, the mayor’s office gave Nikki additional funding and a Boy Scout troop volunteered to help build Nikki’s front-yard library.

According to Nikki’s mom, Joelle, as many as 100 people a day visit the family library, and often 50 books a week will be kept by visitors, which has prompted the family to participate in book drives to replenish the library inventory.

Last year, Nikki held a book drive on Global Youth Service Day, held over a weekend in April. She brought in 1,900 books, which she used to stock her own library and help the more than 20 Little Free Libraries throughout New Orleans. Nikki is now preparing for her second drive for Global Youth Service Day, April 11 to 13 this year.

Nikki also received a grant from Disney Friends For Change to hold a book donating and swapping party and to purchase books. In addition, Nikki has received book donations from the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library, the nonprofit KaBOOM!, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and Barnes & Noble holiday book drive. Several local bookstores have also provided donations.

While Nikki is the head librarian of the family, she is assisted by her twin sister Josie, sister Jenna, 11, and by her parents, Joelle and Robert.

“My favorite part is putting out the books and decorating the library for the season,” says Nikki. “I’m very happy with the library because a lot of kids don’t get many books of their own, and here they are free.”

Joelle says she is amazed at how much the library has meant to the family: “We get more out of it than we give. We love helping the community, but you should see the smiles on our daughters’ faces when someone takes a book.”

Richard Ryffel

As we celebrate National Volunteer Week, meet Daily Point of Light Award winner Rich Ryffel. Read his story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

Rich Ryffel was introduced to the nonprofit Beyond Housing – and volunteerism in general – through a business colleague. Since 1999, he has been a fixture on Beyond Housing’s board, working tirelessly to recruit board members, promoting the organization through regular speaking engagements and overseeing some of the group’s most successful new programs.

Founded in 1975, Beyond Housing has worked to help low-income families secure affordable housing and to prevent foreclosures. In more recent years, it has expanded it mission to improve the overall quality of life in communities it serves.

“I started volunteering 15 years ago serendipitously,” says Ryffel, an executive with JPMorgan Chase. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d start sooner. If I win the lottery tomorrow, I’ll become a full-time volunteer.”

Ryffel just completed four years as board chair of Beyond Housing, and is sitting out for a year from the board because of term limits. During his tenure as chair, Beyond Housing produced or acquired more than 100 housing units, built a senior housing facility, established a grocery store in an area where residents previously had to travel three miles to shop for food and helped to open the first bank in 50 years in a depressed area of St. Louis County.

Ryffel also launched Beyond Housing’s “24:1” economic development initiative to serve St. Louis County’s Normandy School District, which comprises 24 municipalities and has a population of around 50,000. The district faces serious economic, education and housing problems. By bringing residents and town mayors together to determine the specific needs of the Normandy district, Beyond Housing was able to secure $3 million dollars for development projects in the district over the next five years.

Of all the projects he has overseen at Beyond Housing, Ryffel says he is proudest of helping to open the grocery store, located in the Normandy School District town of Pagedale.

“These people had nowhere nearby to shop for groceries, and developers thought it was not economically viable to open a store,” says Ryffel. “That means the area was what we call a ‘food desert.’ I happened to meet a man from the discount food store chain Save a Lot and asked him about Pagedale. He was interested. Beyond Housing had to buy the land with grants, and financing was very difficult, but two years later the store opened and is doing well.”

The new Save a Lot store is located close to a senior center. To serve other Pagedale residents, Beyond Housing was able to arrange bus service to the store.

In his 15 years working with Beyond Housing, Ryffel says he has done just about everything, from working behind to scenes as a fundraiser to operating Bobcat heavy equipment to turning out on the group’s annual father/daughter day to help renovate houses purchased by the organization.

“I love helping in any way I can,” says Ryffel. “I always think of the story of the man who finds a beach covered with stranded starfish. He starts throwing them back into the ocean. Another man sees him and says, ‘There are too many. You can’t help.’ The first man holds up a starfish and says, ‘I can make a difference for this one.’ That’s how I feel. I can’t change the world, but that’s no excuse not to change a life.”

Rocsi Diaz

For helping kids stay in school and reaching out to her community in various ways, television personality Rocsi Diaz received a Daily Point of Light Award in Los Angeles. The ceremony was part of the One America campaign, led by Points of Light and Chase, to unite people in volunteer service. As we also celebrate National Volunteer Week, read Diaz’s story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

Known for her charismatic personality and winning smile, Rocsi Diaz has become popular with millions of television viewers as co-host of “Entertainment Tonight” and formerly of BET’s “106 & Park.” Behind the camera, and the smile, is a deep commitment to social and humanitarian causes.

Diaz spends much of her time volunteering for a wide variety of organizations and even launched her own foundation, RocStar, to help rebuild and repair public schools in New Orleans after the area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Along with other popular figures such as basketball legend Magic Johnson and actor Hugh Jackman, Diaz is an active participant in Get Schooled, an organization that uses the media and celebrity ambassadors to help inspire and empower kids nationwide to finish high school and go to college.

Diaz, who grew up in New Orleans, launched the RocStar Foundation after learning that thousands of children in the city were unable to return to public schools that had been damaged or destroyed by Katrina.

“There were many charities helping in New Orleans after the hurricane, but it wasn’t always clear to me how the money would be used,” says Diaz. “I wanted to start an organization and guarantee that all the money raised would go to helping schools.”

Working through RocStar, Diaz and celebrity friends raised more than $250,000 for the foundation’s first project: rebuilding Diaz’s alma mater, West Jefferson High School, which had served as many as 6,000 students before it was destroyed by the storm. Diaz contributed everything from money and moral support to physical labor as the school was rebuilt.

“It was amazing going back, along with (NBA star) Alonzo Mourning, to help my old school,” says Diaz. “I cried. I just like knowing that the place where I have so many good memories is still up and running and will be providing good memories for new generations of kids.”

The RocStar Foundation later gave college scholarships to some West Jefferson students and has subsequently funded repairs to several other New Orleans schools.

In 2011, Diaz got involved with Get Schooled when the group’s foundation partnered with New York City to create the Wake Up! NYC campaign to fight truancy and chronic absenteeism in the public schools. Diaz and other celebrities recorded personal “wake-up calls” for students. When the program was launched, 6,500 students with attendance problems in 25 target schools began to receive the calls each morning.

“It’s cool,” says Diaz. “They hear me saying, ‘Wake up, get out of bed and get to school on time!’ The kids love getting a wake-up call from their favorite celebrity. They tweet me and say, ‘Was that really you?’”

Through Get Schooled, Diaz has also traveled to cities throughout the country to speak to thousands of middle school and high school students about the importance of education. In Los Angeles, at an event sponsored by Get Schooled and the chamber of commerce, she spoke to thousands of graduating high school seniors and their parents about how to apply for state grants for college.

“Education is by far the most important issue,” says Diaz, who has visited troops through the USO and supports animal rights and women’s health organizations. “I want to do everything I can to encourage youth to stay in school and go to college. If we put enough energy into it, I think there’s no limit to what we can accomplish.”