Foodshare Commission of Greater Hartford

The Foodshare Commission of Greater Hartford was started by a small group of volunteers in 1982. Working directly from trucks parked at local churches, these volunteers managed to collect and distribute 63,000 pounds of food that year. Since 1982, the needs of hungry people have grown and so has Foodshare’s response. In 1996, Foodshare distributed 4.5 million pounds of food, with a retail value of $10 million, to 200 local groups and organizations. In addition to this tremendous growth in the amount of food distributed to hungry people, Foodhsare has been a leader in outreach and education.

In 1990, Foodshare started a food rescue program. This program picks up leftover prepared food from local hotels, restaurants, caterers and other food service establishments. The program includes more than 100 donors and “rescues” more than 75,000 pounds of food each year.

In 1991, Foodshare started a new food drive called “Food for Families.” This effort provides local businesses, churches, synagogues, schools and other organizations with pre-printed boxes or bags for each of their members. The box or bag tells a little about the hunger issues and asks that donors fill it with ingredients to make a complete meal. This drive has improved the quality and quantity of food received because donors put more thought into their donations.

Another food drive that Foodshare is responsible for is “Tons of Tuna and Pounds of Peanut Butter.” This drive takes place at elementary schools and is focused on collecting just those two items, while incorporating a variety of tools and curriculum materials to make it both educational and fun for children.

Foodshare has also worked cooperatively with groups that sponsor major food drives, coordinating the “Governor’s Care and Share” statewide holiday food drive. Foodshare also developed and implemented two national events devoted to feeding the hungry. Foodshare’s annual Thanksgiving Turkey Drive brought in more than 12,000 turkeys in 1996. Their annual “Feed Connecticut Telethon” is the only telethon in the nation in which all of the commercial television stations in a market simultaneously broadcast a fundraising ad. This telethon has raised a tremendous amount of awareness and more than a $500,000 for the food banks in Connecticut.

Foodshare has raised awareness about hunger issues and funds for the hungry people of Connecticut. The organization runs on a budget of less than $1 million, which means for every dollar they spend, $10 worth of food is getting to the hungry.

Commun-I-Care

The Palmetto Project is a private, nonprofit organization that puts new and innovative ideas to work in a variety of populations throughout South Carolina. Their mission is to help empower communities by providing them with the skills necessary to contend with the problems they face. In 1993, the Palmetto Project established an Advisory Board for the Commun-I-Care initiative, to help the more than 300,000 South Carolinians who do not qualify for Medicare or Medicaid and cannot afford health insurance for themselves and/or their families.

Volunteer physicians were recruited to see at least one patient a month, at no charge. Advertisements were posted and information was given to the population about Commun-I-Care, including an 800 telephone number to locate a participating physician in their local area. A screening process was designed and Commun-I-Care was open for business.

Since its inception, nearly 2,000 health care providers have helped more than 27,000 people with their primary health care every Monday-Friday. Commun-I-Care now provides emergency dental care and treatment by nurse practitioners, follow-up by nurses, Diabetes Outreach Services and is starting a pilot partnership with the South Carolina Coalition of Black Church Leaders, to spot and treat low-income congregation members with hypertension in the Pee Dee and Low County areas. Other states are considering modeling Commun-I-Care.

Communi-I-Care was initially supported by a grant from the Palmetto Project. Currently, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides funding, and the program receives various grants, in addition to free prescriptions from pharmaceutical companies, as well as help from the South Carolina Pharmaceutical Association, the South Carolina Medical Association and the South Carolina Hospital Association.

Friends of Reading

During the fall of 1996, Mrs. Georgia Turk, a reading specialist at Madison Elementary School, developed the Friends of Reading program to get more individualized tutoring for her students. The program focuses on second grade students who are in need of specialized attention in the area of reading. Since its inception, the program has grown to include 87 children at three area schools.

Twice a week, volunteers from the community go to their assigned schools and work with three different children, one-on-one, for half an hour. During their session, each child reads a book that is specifically chosen for their independent reading level. As the sessions go on, the difficulty level is increased.

Each volunteer is required to observe a session and go through intensive training before they can work with the children. During the session, they learn about basic teaching techniques in the field of reading. Teachers are also actively involved in this program, donating their time to develop individualized lesson plans for each child and their tutor.

Volunteers involved with this program come from all walks of life, including superintendents, secretaries, retired teachers, former principles, as well as retirees and grandparents. The program gives those volunteers who no longer have children in the school system a connection to the schools and it gives them insight to what is going on in the school system.

Although minimum funding is required for the program, Wal-Mart has contributed $500 per child for reading resources, and the district pays for their annual ‘end of the year’ luncheon for the volunteers.

Monica Ponoroff

In 1994, Monica Ponoroff established the For The Children reading program at James Lewis Elementary School in New Orleans. The program began as one-on-one tutoring sessions in reading. Shortly thereafter, she sought to expand the program and actively recruited more than 100 volunteers from the community and extended the program to 20 weeks. Currently, the program, which has relocated to Lafayette School, has approximately fifty volunteers and runs for 22 weeks.

Volunteers spend the first 10 weeks of the program reading to four children on a one-on-one basis, for one hour a week. During the next two weeks, the tables are turned, and the volunteers listen as the children read to them. Volunteers, who range in age from their late teens to late forties, represent churches, civic organizations, colleges and the local government.

As a major supporter of the program, Tulane University not only provides volunteers, but also provides free copying services. Volunteers donate more than time; some also donate books or money to the school. One volunteer, David Sheinbein, former senior class president of the student senate at Tulane University, took forty kids to a university football game.

Christian Whitton

Christian Whitton started his service work when he was nine years old. Over the past five years, he has continuously been an advocate for the physically challenged.

Because the houses in his community were mainly wooden, Christian was concerned about the citizens in his community who did not have smoke detectors. He raised money to purchase smoke detectors for his community by selling 2,000 candy bars. He continues to raise money today, though he has switched from selling candy bars to mowing lawns.

Christian, also a young advocate for the disabled, has been on a crusade to have every sporting field in West Monroe equipped with handicapped facilities. He believes that disabled children should not be limited by lack of restrooms or ramps. Last summer, one of Christian’s friends, who is physically challenged, wanted to play football but could not, because the field did not have the right facilities nor did the coach know what kind of equipment the boy should use. Christian had the initiative to contact the head football coach at the local college who was able to locate equipment for his friend.

Christian has received numerous awards for his service, including the JC Penny Golden Rule Youth Award. He is an honors student and star football player, who still finds time to devote to others daily. Christian also donated his $1,000 prize from the JC Penny Golden Rule Youth Award to make the fields in his community handicap accessible.

Robert Cincotta

Robert Cincotta has been a teacher at Hempstead High School since 1985. In addition to teaching, Cincotta coaches the Hempstead baseball team. During his years at Hempstead, Cincotta has been involved in a variety of worthy projects.

One such project is teaching his baseball team the value of community service and academic success in school. Because of Cincotta, these young men build houses for the poor and needy through Habitat for Humanity, visit ill children in hospitals, raise money for scholarships and are successful students. The latter accomplishment is the one Cincotta is most proud of, especially after Hempstead High was labeled “Crisis High” for consistently ranking at the bottom of every statistical measure of performance for area schools. Although only one out of every three students at Hempstead High graduates, all of Cincotta’s players not only graduate, but many do so with honors. This is mainly attributed to Cincotta’s ‘no pass, no play’ policy.

Every year, Cincotta hosts the Grand Slam Baseball Event, another project that he has undertaken. This event, created and planned by Cincotta, helps raise scholarship money for worthy Hempstead students. The Eugene Grant Scholarship (in memory of the slain Hempstead coach) is endowed by the funds raised at the event. The coach was shot dead, in 1992, while breaking up a fight between two students at the high school. The event is a tremendous source of community pride. In its fourth year, Wilson Sporting Goods chose it as a finalist in the Best Baseball Promotions Contest.

The Parents Record: My Own Unique Diary (P.R.O.U.D.)

The Parents Record: My Own Unique Diary (P.R.O.U.D.) book is an innovative family literacy activity that uses the idea of a diary to encourage low-income parents with low levels of literacy to keep a written record of their children’s lives. Children receive a personally written P.R.O.U.D. book from their parents, describing accomplishments that their children have made. Together parents and children verbalize and write about their hopes and dreams. These books, which usually become family keepsakes, emphasize the importance of communication, especially in regards to the love and support each parent has for their child.

A corps of approximately 20 to 25 senior volunteers and staff members at participating facilities guides the P.R.O.U.D. program. The volunteers work with about 450 HeadStart parents in the Montgomery County area. Typically, the program begins in January and continues until May, culminating with the parents hosting a ceremony where each child is presented with their parents’ P.R.O.U.D. book.

The original concept for the program was developed after a family literacy coordinator observed disadvantaged preschoolers interacting with their teenage mothers, many of whom seemed unenthusiastic about the achievements of their children. Today, the program has grown to include agencies throughout the Montgomery County area and is used as a model for other programs throughout the country.

Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller, owner of Fuller’s Plumbing, donates his plumbing skills to make minor repairs, from faucets to toilets, for low-income seniors and disabled persons. The Lutheran Social Services’ Caring Neighbors program in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego, CA, makes referrals to Fuller and provides low-income persons with assistance in mobility and home maintenance. The program utilizes a network of service persons, i.e. mail carriers, trash collectors, etc., to provide a check-in service with the homebound.

The program’s clients are financially unable to afford the services of a professional plumber. Because Fuller and his four person staff provide these services free of charge, the clients are able to maintain an independent and healthy living environment. In addition to prompt, professional service, Fuller and his staff show a caring attitude toward the clients, always working with a smile and a kind word.

In 1994, Fuller initiated contact with the Caring Neighbors program based on the needs he had seen in the community. Particularly impacted by a newspaper article that related the needs of the homebound elderly, he felt compelled to give back to those among the community’s neediest individuals. Seeing the impact that Fuller’s efforts made, his staff soon joined in.

Since 1994, Fuller and his staff have completed more than 80 projects with Caring Neighbors.

Green Street United Methodist Youth Group

In 1995, the youth of Green Street United Methodist Church decided to get involved in a mission program that would allow them to provide service to low-income individuals and families in the Appalachian region. Once a year, youth ages 13-17, spend their spring vacation traveling thousands of miles to renovate and repair homes.

This youth group travels to a pre-selected Mission Center or community. For the first year of the program, the kids went to the Red Bird Mission in Beverly, KY, where they painted classrooms, installed a coal burning stove, mowed lawns and washed windows. The following year, they went to Lumberton, NC, where they worked to save the home of an elderly resident from being condemned. The teens replaced the roof and broken floor boards, weatherproofed the windows and doors, replaced the screens in the windows and doors, and built new stairs and a new porch.

This past year, the teens went back to North Carolina, where they installed a roof, repaired kitchen cabinets and built a deck, stairs and ramp for a cancer victim.

Each teen personally raises the funds necessary for travel and room and board. This past year, in addition to the funds for themselves, the teens also decided to raise funds to pay for their chaperones and transportation.

John McKenzie

John McKenzie is the founder and president of the Tub Mill Arts Association of Salisbury, PA. Tub Mill Arts is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1987 to provide local artists with a forum to display and sell their work. McKenzie is also on the advisory board for the Salisbury Family Center, which is affiliated with the extremely rural, mountainous region of southwestern Pennsylvania. Through these two organizations, he has been able to provide many needed services to his community.

Some of these services include reclaiming the Casselman River, remodeling and insulating the Tub Mill Arts building, creating a summer art camp instructed by members of Tub Mill Arts, running four annual successful Healthy Kids Days events and the completion of a one-room school house as an addition to the Family Center.

McKenzie also started an Adopt a Grandparent program five years ago, which has been a tremendous success—doubling in size within two years. An upcoming project from McKenzie is the construction of a nature trail on land owned by the school district.

McKenzie, despite his crippling arthritis, spends countless hours at local schools teaching children about the history of Salisbury. Jeanne Miller, Director of the Salisbury Area Family Center acknowledges, “he has been an inspiration to the community, young and old alike, and has improved the quality of life in Salisbury, PA.”