Ben Massell Dental Clinic
Since 1911, the Ben Massell Dental Clinic has offered its services to immigrants and indigent people from Atlanta with the goal to improve teeth, relieve pain and provide education about dental hygiene. Last year, the clinic helped more than 6,000 people, including 65 children.
Open five days a week, the clinic offers every specialty of dentistry, including braces and dentures. It is believed to be the only clinic of its kind. 85 dentists volunteer their time, along with the help of a five person dental support staff, to ensure the clinic’s success. Because of their belief in giving back to the community, these people work for little or no money. Fees for patients are based on a sliding scale, so if you have money, you pay a little, if not, you are not turned down. The Ben Massell Dental Clinic has mobilized hundreds of volunteers, but because of the great demand for oral care in Atlanta, there is still a shortage of volunteers.
The Jewish Career Services, of which Ben Massell Dental Clinic is a part, donates a large sum of money to the effort, as well as the Northern District and other donators. The clinic has received positive recognition, as well as several awards, including the American Dental Association Geriatric Award and the JC Penny Golden Rule Award.
Thomas Porton
Since he began teaching high school in 1969, Thomas Porton has involved his students in community service activities. He has created many projects involving the homeless, the elderly and youth. However, his main focus is on HIV/AIDS education and awareness. In 1992, Porton decided to fight against the disease in the Bronx, NY, which was rapidly becoming one of the most highly infected areas of the country. He established a relationship between his school, James Monroe High School, and Project Bravo, the HIV/AIDS outreach branch of Montefiore Medical Center. This collaboration began with the training of 10 students as HIV/AIDS Peer Educators, who learned how to give classroom lessons about safe behaviors and virus prevention to their peers. Since its beginning, the Monroe/Project BRAVO HIV/AIDS Peer Educators Program has grown to include several components.
The AIDS-Van is Porton’s personal mini-van/information vehicle, providing street corner outreach throughout New York City. Student peer educators provide flyers, pamphlets and personalized information to passers-by throughout the year. Student volunteers work the project after school and on weekends and holidays.
Students deliver packages of needed toiletries, fruits and candies, called Baskets of Love, to hospitalized HIV/AIDS patients. Each basket is accompanied with an inspirational letter written by the students. These baskets are delivered year round. Since 1992, approximately 8,000 Baskets of Love have been delivered.
Porton has created a special Language Arts curriculum that condenses community service with reading and writing skills in order to motivate young people to reach out to people living with HIV/AIDS. The program, Creating Compassion, teaches students tolerance and compassion, disease prevention and HIV/AIDS portrayal in the media.
Porton has also organized six annual Teen to Teen Conferences, bringing together hundreds of high school students and teachers, to educate and motivate them to start peer education programs in other schools. These conferences have won citywide and national recognition.
In addition, Porton started the AIDS Lives in Every Neighborhood (ALIEN) Players. This is a group of teachers who present educational, dramatic productions to teen and other community groups at venues throughout the Bronx and New York City.
Porton’s programs are funded through donations, grants and fundraisers. He has received many honors and awards, including the State Farm Insurance Good Neighbor Award and has recently been inducted into the Teachers Hall of Fame.
Thomas “Pop” Sadler
Between the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Greenville was one of the roughest neighborhoods in Charlotte, NC. During that time, Greenville lost two of its youth: one to murder and one to prison. It was this incident that inspired Thomas “Pop” Sadler, along with his wife, Marie, to take action.
The Sadler’s realized that Greenville was losing its children to the streets and felt they somehow had to stop it. In 1991, they decided to start a drum corps for youth, ages 4-18. To remain a member of the group, there were rules that the participants had to follow or be expelled: each had to show continual improvement in their grades, obey their parents and stay out of trouble.
Since its beginning, the program, now called the Greenville Combined Youth Organization (CYO), has expanded to include a resource center with computers, tutoring and a summer day camp. CYO currently serves more than 50 kids.
Under the direction of Mr. Sadler, the drum corps performs, in uniform, at no charge, for city and county events, festivals and parades. They are also a traveling band and have won numerous competitions. The drum corps has even performed at a Charlotte Hornets basketball game during half time. The band is so successful that other communities have made contact to replicate the corps.
The most recent addition to the program is its resource center, which was opened nearly two years ago. The center is utilized by the entire community. Teachers from Johnson C. Smith University teach computer literacy in this grant-funded house to anyone interested, especially children and their parents. The computer center is also partially funded by the local government, which sponsors various job placement programs. This marks the second year that the community has had a summer day camp at the center, where neighborhood children participate in enrichment activities and field trips. Members of the drum corps and other programs help out at the camp.
Since the Sadlers founded the Greenville CYO, there has been a marked decrease in crime, especially juvenile crime. In addition, there has been an increase in community pride and self-esteem among the youth and old alike.
The Sadlers have received a lot of financial help from various corporations and local businesses to run the program. In addition, they hold fundraisers, write grant proposals, as well as receive assistance from Johnson C. Smith University.
Glenda Bentz
For more than a year, Glenda Bentz has been teaching adults with severe physical disabilities how to access computers and perform complex tasks using adaptive equipment. Recognizing the new opportunities that technology has created for adults with severe disabilities, Specialized Transitional Activities & Rehabilitation Training (START) created an augmentative computer training class. Upon hearing of this class, Mrs. Bentz was first to volunteer. Ever since then, she has volunteered her time five days a week, from nine to five.
For the first class that Mrs. Bentz taught, from June ’97 to March ’98, five of the six students who were enrolled could not speak and all of them used wheelchairs. The students learned skills such as web page design, manuscript correction and presentation design as well as basic word processing, spread sheet, and data base skills. Mrs. Bentz guided members of this class through placing pictures and resumes on the class web page and organizing a presentation for START’s 15th Anniversary Celebration. Mrs. Bentz goal was to get employment for each of her six students. Five of these six students are currently employed and the sixth is a freelance writer.
This class is the only opportunity that many disabled adults have in the Greater St. Louis community will have to learn these valuable skills. Just this past July, Mrs. Bentz started her second nine-month training class with a new set of students. She spends several hours researching the latest computer programs and making sure that each student understands the difficult new concepts that she presents. The class takes place four hours a day, five days a week. For Mrs. Bentz, the students have changed, but her goals for them are still the same: employment and greater independence.
Walton High School Volunteers
Four years ago, six students joined together to provide service to the community. Today this group has grown to include more than 175 student volunteers. Each week these students volunteer their time—providing service to the homeless, area children and the elderly.
Each Tuesday and Thursday, a designated group of high school volunteers visit a nearby elementary school where they act as role models and mentors for the children. The volunteers lead reading programs, assist students with homework, provide art projects and play games with the children. Volunteers also provide enrichment activities for the children such as a magic show, a mobile zoo and an electric car demonstration. Each student volunteers bi-weekly, donating at least two hours a week.
Once a month, volunteers prepare 200 brown bag lunches for day workers at a homeless shelter in the area. Many of the student volunteers take their lunch break from their weekend jobs to help prepare the meals. Every two weeks, a group of students visit a local nursing home where they care for and socialize with elderly residents.
Over the past four years during the Christmas season, volunteers have conducted a small-item drive for children. In addition, they have prepared 400 favor bags for homeless children and donated 200 books for needy children. The students also sponsored a drive in which they collected used eyeglasses and hearing aids for the less fortunate, helped to construct a home for Habitat for Humanity and collected more than $3,000 in entertainment items for a shelter for abused teens.
This student-run organization receives an average annual budget of $5,000 from the Parent Teachers Association as well as donations from their local partners in education, Krogers Grocery Store and The Riverside Bank.
Bob Bates
In 1989, Bob Bates joined together with Irwin Jaeger to create Inner City Arts, a nonprofit organization that provides bilingual arts education for inner-city youth in Los Angeles. The idea for the program developed in response to funding cuts in the late 1980’s, which eliminated arts education from the public schools in Los Angeles. Bates observed that the children were faced with crowded hotel and apartment housing, constant exposure to crime and drugs, vulnerability to gang activity and other daily pressures that were undermining their academic achievement. He also observed that their environment lacked the resources needed to provide a positive outlet.
The program initially served 550 children at one elementary school; today, the program serves more than 8,000 children each year. The program now runs out of The Mark Taper Center/Inner-City Arts Complex. This center was purchased with a $600,000 grant from the Mark Taper Foundation. It is entirely supported by private grants and donations and is located in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles, an area considered one of the most economically depressed areas in the city.
For six weeks, third through sixth graders are bussed to the center for art instruction where they can study painting, sculpture, ceramics, music, drama and dance. For the first part of each session, artists introduce basic concepts to the children with the goal being to increase the vocabulary of the children.
The Inner City Arts program gives children creative tools that can be applied to the daily challenges they face. The curriculum is designed to promote creative self-expression, while developing increased intuitive and rational thinking skills, improved problem solving abilities.
Hudson Cradle, Inc.
Hudson Cradle was founded in 1991 by the mayor of Jersey City, 10 civic businessmen and a local hospital with the aim to care for boarder babies, ages birth to 18 months. It is located on Kennedy Boulevard and primarily serves Hudson County, although all of New Jersey is welcome to participate. The more than 213 babies they have taken into their cradle are healthy enough to be discharged from the hospital, but do not have a safe place to call home. Some suffer from prenatal exposure to drugs, some are HIV-infected, more than half are born premature and some are victims of child abuse or neglect.
The volunteers come from all walks of life; there are approximately 100 volunteers currently. They are screened, trained and volunteer more than 350 service hours per month.
The babies are nurtured and cared for until the Division of Youth and Family Services finds them foster homes, adoptive homes or until the biological parent (s) are proven to be qualified to care for their children.
Hudson Cradle receives some state and federal grants, but their primary source of funding is private. The State Division of Youth and Family Services also contributes. Up to 50 babies a year experience this caring environment.
Sandra Rudnick
Sandra Rudnick has been a volunteer with United Friends of the Children (UFC) for 10 years. She is the founder and president of UFC Bridges, a nonprofit, volunteer-based organization that is the primary support group for youth who age-out of the foster care system. The foster care system only provides assistance to children through the age of 18. Thus, once a child reaches 18, he or she ages-out of the program. The goal of UFC Bridges is to help these young adults become self-sufficient citizens. Los Angeles County is home to the nation’s largest population of foster children. Approximately 1,000 young people age-out of the foster care system annually. Most are alone and lack support networks to help them live independently. Each year, 40-50% of these young people become homeless.
Ms. Rudnick established UFC Bridges in 1994 to provide transitional housing and supportive services to young people aging-out of the Los Angeles County foster care system. The program now provides housing to 120 and is expected to reach a capacity of 300 by June 1999. Each resident develops an individualized time-limited plan, including interim and final goals. Social workers coordinate the educational and employment guidance of each program participant and conduct weekly independent living skills training workshops. Once the youth have sufficient income and the skills necessary to live independently, a project coordinator helps these young people find permanent housing.
The program is funded through grants and donations. Ms. Rudnick does not receive any compensation for her full-time volunteer work. UFC Bridges partners with the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services, the Community Development, Covenant House California, the Salvation Army, the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles and the City of Los Angeles Housing Department.
Stacey Nash
Stacey Nash is the volunteer coordinator for the Self-Esteem and Educational Development Program (SEEDS) for the New Mexico Girls School at its Youth Diagnostic and Development Center. The school houses female juvenile offenders, up to the age 18, for the state of New Mexico. The SEEDS project is sponsored and funded by the Girl Scouts of Chaparral Council.
The Deputy Superintendent of the New Mexico Girls School determined a need for a quality program for the incarcerated girls that was value-based and would provide mentoring for the girls.
Nash took this concept and started the SEEDS program in May 1997. Her mission was to change the public’s perception and stereotypes of juvenile offenders through collaborations with community organizations, teachers and volunteers. As part of the program’s design, she included basic life skills, such as etiquette, physical fitness, sexual health, alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders and employment techniques.
While somewhat scared and slightly apprehensive at the thought of working with girls in prison, Nash embraced the project with optimism and enthusiasm. She worked with the girls at every session, gained their trust and had a significant impact on them. The girls expressed surprise and appreciation that “someone on the outside” really cared. Her gentle and caring manner, while at the same time expecting the best of each of them, gave the girls a positive role model to follow. About 6-8 girls participate in each 12-week course of the program.
Nash has collaborated with community agencies and businesses as presenters in the administration of her program. Although apprehensive, as Nash had been, about working with juvenile offenders, the partners embraced the project and a solid working relationship was established. Many have asked to return and most offer their services for free.
The program’s innovative concept and positive behavioral change on the girls has led to recognition from both the United Way and the State of New Mexico. At first, many of the girls balked at the idea of being a Girl Scout, but after completing the program, wanted to continue both the program and girl scouting.
This past spring, Nash presented a new program where the girls learned to use a sewing machine and make baby quilts that were given to the local hospital. In the process, the girls were able to give back to the community, which has now become a requirement for participation.
Lois Waterbury
Five years ago, after viewing the plight of the homeless on the news, Lois Waterbuy was moved to take action.
Ms. Waterbury recruited the assistance of others. Now 12 to 15 women meet every Friday, year-round, for five hours making ‘Care Bags for the Homeless’ and bedrolls. These volunteers are middle class women, who believed in Ms. Waterbury’s mission and like to sew. They don’t spend any money, rather they use recycled bedding, blue jeans, draperies and donated old spools of thread. Men’s neckties are used to secure the bedroll for easy carrying. In the bag, there is usually a pair of mittens, a scarf, a hairbrush and a toothbrush.
Not only do the receivers of these care packages benefit from the service, but the volunteers do as well. They find joy in caring about and helping others.
Agencies across the northeastern United States distribute these bags. Such agencies include the Rescue Mission in Syracuse, NY, The Center for the Homeless in Indiana, the Red Cross’ St. Joseph Center in Philadelphia, PA and others.
Thanks to Mrs. Waterbury’s efforts and coordination and her teams 5,000 community service hours, more than 250 bedrolls have been produced and distributed.
