Isabella Cunningham
Mrs. Isabella Cunningham, a senior citizen and retired teacher of Riviera Beach, Florida, has devoted more than 20 years of her life to neighborhood clean-up and revitalization efforts. She has volunteered numerous hours to helping the elderly, poor, and youth of her community.
In 1990, Mrs. Cunningham founded Neighbors United, an organization comprised of residents, law enforcement, and city officials to educate citizens on vital issues pertaining to neighborhood maintenance and crime prevention. She encourages homeowners to beautify their areas, mitigate any issues, and to assist neighbors and persons in need. Through her efforts, Neighbors United has grown to include an informal membership of approximately 500 citizens.
Mrs. Cunningham also participates in the federally funded Palm Beach County Weed and Seed Program. This federal initiative addresses many of the social and economic problems present within specific targeted areas. She serves on the Seed Policy Board, and is a member of the Weed and Seed Steering Committee. She was the driving force behind beautifying the common areas within one of the programs targeted locations.
In addition to her participation in the above mentioned efforts, Mrs. Cunningham volunteers with her church, is a volunteer teacher, and is on the Community Committee involved in Risk Focused Assessment of the City. She is also a member the Committee for Rosewood Memorial Gardens, a place for recognition of the burial site for the survivors of the Rosewood Massacre.
Social Action Committee
The Social Action Committee, founded by the Jewish Association for Residential Care for Persons with Developmental diseases, was started in 1995. The organization gives disabled individuals a chance to give their skills and efforts to others.
The Social Action Committee provides agencies with assistance in different projects. They volunteer their time helping and in turn they receive the joy of giving.
Some of the projects they have participated include canning, labeling and packaging food for indigent families, repairing and painting a home for Habitat for Humanity and canning food for victims of famine in Bosnia. Currently, they are putting together Valentine goody bags to give to children with HIV/AIDS. The Social Action Committee sets a goal of one project per quarter. However, they are usually participating in projects nine to ten months out of the year.
The Social Action Committee is based in Southfield, Michigan and serves the Detroit metropolitan area, but there are no geographic boundaries to where they will help. The organization, which started with five volunteers, has ballooned to 50 volunteers of all religions.
Funding for the Social Action Committee is minimal. They rely mostly on donations and small grants. They like working on a small budget, because it makes them proud to be an organization that does not have to be rich in order to meet its goals.
L. Ann Voight
Since 1996, Ms. L. Ann Voight has devoted her time to women in need of healthcare and the homeless in Atlanta, throughout the country and around the world.
Ms. Voight coordinates the Stephen’s Ministry, a national movement comprised of 4,000 churches across the nation, which offers peer support during times of loss or personal difficulties. In addition, through her church she assists homeless individuals and families in need at the Intown Community Center.
She also serves as a volunteer pet therapist at a local nursing home. In 1996, during Christmas she helped bring joy to the lives of one family helping them find a home, jobs and warm clothes.
Ms. Voight’s international contributions, as a professional and a volunteer have been extensive. For the past several years, this teacher/mentor/nurse has taken a school nursing instructor and a group of nursing students to Haiti providing medical services to those in need. Ms. Voight used her personal vacation time and finances to support this mission. She also served as a medical missionary for ten years in Nigeria and the Philippines.
Ms. Voight also involves her co-workers in her community efforts at work by keeping a box in her office, encouraging her colleagues to deposit unused hotel soaps, lotions, and shampoos collected on recent business trips. She then takes these toiletries to a local shelter for women.
All of Ms. Voight’s efforts are funded through donations.
Karen “Batchelor Farmer” Allen
In 1995, Karen “Batchelor Farmer” Allen gave up her career as an attorney and created “The MichCon/Think Twice Foundation’s Block Club” in Detroit, Michigan. With the goal of rebuilding Detroit block by block, Ms. Farmer has brought together a unique collaboration of businesses, community organizations and individuals to revitalize depressed neighborhoods in the city by pooling both financial and physical resources.
Ms. Farmer empowers the community with a series of workshops about various ways to revitalize a community. Though she offers ideas, the community makes the final decision about the plan of action based on what they learned in the workshops. She believes this is the most effective way to get the community invested in the project. If community participants feel a sense of pride in the project, they are more likely to maintain the finished product.
The Block Club’s objectives are to remove unsafe or abandoned structures, create affordable housing through the rehabilitation of salvageable structures, clean up vacant lots and identify new uses, provide home ownership and home maintenance training.
Since its inception in 1995, The Block Club, under Ms. Farmer’s leadership, has mobilized a widely diverse, at-risk community to get involved in a revitalization process. It has provided extensive repairs to senior and low-income homes, rehabilitated two single-family homes and one four-family home and removed unsafe and abandoned structures.
In 1996, The Block Club expanded its outreach with the creation of “City Style Salsa”, a summer youth employment program. Funded by a grant from the Skillman Foundation, the Sports and Recreation Commission and New Detroit, this six-week program allowed 13 teens from Southwest Detroit to start their own business making salsa. The Salsa Kids have learned life skills as well as business, employment, marketing, banking, food processing and sales skills.
John Miksch
Since 1988, John Miksch has been volunteering his time to teach volunteers to become state-licensed emergency medical technicians. He has also helped as an EMT in Millburn/Short Hills, NJ, for more than a dozen years.
Mr. Miksch coordinates an emergency medical technician training course at the Millburn/Short Hills Volunteer First Aid Squad. While the nine-month course is 110 hours for students, it is twice that many for the coordinator. He is responsible for every aspect of the class, including arranging for speakers, designing course work, testing, and dealing one-on-one with students.
The free classes offered by Mr. Miksch often have at least 35 people because numerous municipalities send students. Classes are hands-on and demand participation. Some state funding is provided to the program, but the First Aid Squad and the volunteers pick up the cost of books.
If each of Mr. Miksch’s students saved one life per year—and that’s a very conservative number for emergency medical services—the lives saved as a result of his course would number in the thousands.
Cheryl Burton
Cheryl Burton is a model volunteer who helps the homeless and less fortunate in her community. Among other service activities, she makes a consistent effort to feed and clothe the homeless in her neighborhood.
On Christmas Eve of 1997, Ms. Burton joined a group of people to provide food and clothes for the homeless at a nearby park. While there, she gave a winter coat to a very appreciative little boy who was wearing only a sweatshirt and shivering. This was a life altering experience for her and because of it, she decided to do more for the less fortunate in her community.
Ms. Burton began cooking food in her kitchen and taking it to a nearby park to feed the homeless people who slept there. She does this every Saturday and the residents of the park have come to rely on her. She also gets restaurants to donate their leftovers. In addition, she gets others involved by recruiting two to four volunteers to help her out at the park each week. Her family and friends offer their help by donating clothes, blankets, shoes, etc., and by spreading the word of what she is doing so that more people can contribute.
In addition to her activities to help the homeless, Ms. Burton brought a young boy, who had just suffered the loss of his parents, into her home. She took care of him until willing family members were found to take her place. She also took an interest in a special homeless family with four kids and successfully completed her mission of finding them a home.
Milton Levy
Austin H. MacCormick Island Academy is an alternative New York City high school located on Rikers Island, which is the country’s largest maximum-security prison. Island Academy is the first high school of its kind to be located within the prison facility since 1985.
Milton Levy is a successful New York City businessman, who felt that he was doing well in his life and wanted to do something for others. He decided to offer his services to the Department of Corrections for Rikers Island in the form of a six-week workshop on job readiness skills.
The Island Academy assembled a group of young incarcerated men and Mr. Levy traveled to Rikers Island from December 3rd, 1997 through January 14, 1998 every Wednesday to meet with this dedicated group of inmates. In the Island Academy school library, Mr. Levy shared materials and personal information designed to assist inmates with the process of positively re-entering society upon their release. He gave his students his business phone number and address, which they were told to use whenever they needed.
Mr. Levy’s involvement with his students did not end upon the conclusion of the workshop. He makes a point to write back to those who write him and takes calls from any of his old students, including those still incarcerated. He has employed two of the gentlemen and referred one for employment in Pennsylvania. Mr. Levy has also opened an 800-number where ex-offenders from his class can leave messages for him. In addition, he has recently started an Employee Support Panel (which includes himself and several other businessmen) who are available to talk to ex-offenders about problems in the workplace, home, neighborhood, etc. He also serves on the Private Sector Advisory Committee where he advises those that work with inmates about the job market and how they can improve pre- and post-release programs for ex-offenders so that they work.
Prior to starting the workshop program at Rikers Island, Mr. Levy worked with the Board of Education for more than 8 years on a similar job training/career workshop program that he implemented in the New York City Public School System. Due to budget cuts, the program was eventually eliminated. Wanting to continue his volunteer work, he turned to the Island Academy of Rikers Island, and has been working with inmates and ex-offenders ever since.
Brownie Troop #644
Brownie Troop #644 of Demarest, NJ had a life altering experience during the spring of 1997 when one of its members, 8-year-old Lauren Costanzo, was diagnosed with brain cancer. Instead of pushing her away and making fun of her changing appearance and increasing physical limitations, this group of thirteen 8-year-old girls had the courage and compassion to rise to the occasion by providing support for Lauren and her parents in any way they could.
Brownie Troop #644 kept Lauren involved in all Brownie activities with a special degree of concern and care. When she was able to go to school, they watched over her and treated her as they always had, as a friend. They made frequent hospital and home visits to Lauren, including accompanying her to treatments. They made their visits into parties by reading to her, joking around, and doing her hair and nails. They made gifts and cards for Lauren and her family, including a special quilt of Lauren’s favorite things that was textured so that she could still enjoy it in the midst of her deteriorating eye sight. To help Lauren’s parents with the high medical costs, Brownie Troop #644 held several successful fund-raisers (car washes, bake sales, etc.), raising thousands of dollars for the family.
When Lauren passed away on December 3, 1997, eight months after her diagnosis, the young girls of Brownie Troop #644 actively participated in her memorial service. They were part of the entrance processional during which, they put a single rose in a vase on the altar in her memory. Immediately after Lauren’s death, the Troop bravely went to the hospital where Lauren received her treatments to deliver holiday cheer to other sick children in her memory.
The tragic experience of losing a dear friend sensitized these 8-year-old girls to the fact that there are so many people in need, and they have all vowed to service their community in memory of Lauren Costanzo. So far, they have kept their word by developing several community service projects that they plan to continue. Brownie Troop #644 has committed to visiting Lauren’s hospital every year during the holiday season to give gifts to sick children. They collect baby clothes and supplies to make “Baby Bundles” which they donate to the Woman’s Rights Info Center in Englewood, NJ to benefit young mothers in need. They also cook food provided by donations for the homeless shelter, Shelter Our Sisters. The troops conduct a Library Bazaar fundraiser to benefit their local library, as well. They plant trees, send valentines to disabled veterans, sing songs at Heritage Nursing Home in Norwood, NJ, and are currently developing a program to read to the elderly.
Brownie Troop #644 showed courage and compassion, and exemplified the spirit of giving throughout Lauren’s tragic illness and continues to do so in memory of her life. They took a devastating circumstance, learned from it, and set the example for an entire community that young people are capable of making a difference and giving to people in need.
Marion Perrotti
Marion Perrotti first became aware of the Dell Ridge Nursing Care Center in 1994 when her mother became a resident. Ms. Perrotti quickly became more than just a visitor. She took on the role of volunteer with the recreation department and became an unofficial spokesperson for the relatives of residents who were unable keep a “hands-on style” watch over the Nursing Center. In addition, Ms. Perrotti also learned how to properly feed those residents who were unable to feed themselves so that they could eat during regular meal times with their fellow residents.
After her mother’s death in 1997, Ms. Perrotti decided to become a regular volunteer with Dell Ridge. She now spends 10 hours each week assisting the recreation staff with daily programs. Ms. Perrotti also transports residents to all of the center’s events and spends time talking one-on-one with residents. Her positive demeanor gives many residents the self-esteem and joy that they may have lost through the years. During a recent Mardis Gras Celebration at the Center, a resident grabbed the hand of Ms. Perrotti and said,” You are so lively and pretty, you make me remember when I was young like you.”
In addition to her hours of volunteer service, Ms. Perrotti spends many hours talking to family members who are uncertain about their decision regarding nursing care, and giving them comfort and reassurance. She is also an active recruiter for volunteers.
Shark Team
In 1994, Catherine Roberts and Margaret Duffy created educational strategies that allowed their students to make real world applications of the math and science they were studying in their classes. These strategies soon became the Chesapeake Challenge, an environmental project that links community service with academic learning, personal growth and civic responsibility.
During the fall of each school year, students study the Chesapeake Bay. They then select projects that are aimed at educating adults, as well as youngsters. The projects include creating posters and bookmarks and distributing them to the public, stenciling storm drains with “Don’t Dump” messages, creating educational materials for and teaching mini-lessons to elementary school students and cleaning up a local shore line.
The students use water conservation and anti-pollution themes to design bookmarks and posters. The bookmarks are distributed through bookstores and Learn and Serve displays throughout Virginia and the posters are exhibited in businesses throughout the area. Those students who elect to teach mini lessons receive mentoring from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the US Coast Guard after which they develop and implement lessons to help second grade students understand the importance of the Chesapeake Bay. These lessons often include activities on ecology, pollution and water quality.
Participants of the Shoreline Debris Cleanup Project team up with second graders for the collection and classification of debris. They then record the data on the NOAA debris survey and send it to the Office of Marine Conservation. The students have collected over 70 bags since the program began.
Last spring, the students started their involvement with an oyster restoration project in conjunction with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. They constructed a “Taylor Float,” and by October, the float was filled with seed oysters. The students then placed these oysters in a local creek. Each month the students take a trip to the creek to inspect and monitor the oysters. After ten months the students will stock the oysters on a sanctuary in the Lynhaven River.
The students are currently planning a web page that will educate others about environmental issues, as well as provide project updates to interested readers.
