Mickey Darcy
Mickey Darcy will forever be known in Wickliffe, OH as the person who brought Christmas in April to the city. After attending a seminar in Washington, DC in 1989, she realized how beneficial Christmas in April program, a volunteer home repair program that rehabilitates the house of low-income homeowner, could be to her city and embarked on a mission to start a branch of the program in her hometown for elderly and disabled residents.
The Christmas in April program of Lake County originally began in the basement of Mickey’s home, operating for several years from this nerve center location. At this site, Mickey organized a board and thought of various ways to obtain necessary financial support. She eventually moved the base of operations to her business address. Things moved along quickly, propelled by Mickey’s drive and desire to see the program implemented and within a year the program became a 501(c) (3) organization gaining support and credibility within the county. The expansion of the program continued until a separate program was set up in Cleveland, a direct result of Mickey’s persistence.
Mickey is the director of the Christmas in April Northcoast, Inc. program that makes repairs in cities within Lake County and one city in Cuyahoga County. Day-to-day activities for Mickey include maintaining daily office tasks, assigning volunteers and house captains, soliciting donations and writing grants. Within the program, she wears many volunteer hats and even makes presentations to local businesses to inform them about Christmas in April. She and her team of volunteers provide constant service to the 2,500 city households that earn less than $5,000, most of which are residents over 60 years old who lack the resources to pay a contractor for the repairs.
The success of the Christmas in April program in Lake County has garnered Mickey several local honors and awards for her endeavors. Despite the hectic schedule she maintains with the Christmas in April program, Mickey contributes “spare” time to her community by holding active memberships in several local organizations. She plans to continue her work with her local branch of this nationwide program, offering a safe and secure environment to those could not otherwise afford to fulfill this basic need.
Arthenia Filer
Arthenia Filer is responsible for raising awareness about child abuse in school children from all areas of the city of Huntsville and Madison County. For the past five years, she has served as the most dependable and expert volunteer for SCAN (Stop Child Abuse and Neglect). As a SCAN Volunteer, Arthenia presents programs to children in the third, fifth and seventh grades using hip examples, including anecdotes, to illustrate points about child abuse. She also uses her extensive volunteer experience to train new volunteers for SCAN and assist staff with presentations at the National Symposium on Child Sexual Abuse, the second largest conference held in Huntsville.
In the youth-dominated environment of the school classroom, Arthenia is a grandmother who engages the students in lively discussions about child abuse and its implications. To the third and fifth grade classes, she presents a program called “Inside/Outside” and to her seventh graders she presents “Come In From The Storm.” Over the years, she has learned to adjust to difficult situations with the students and handle talkative or inattentive classes. She has received excellent evaluations from teachers and counselors who observe her presentations. Also, Arthenia was the recipient of the 1998 JCPenney Golden Rule Award in the Adult category.
Her affiliation with SCAN allows her to reach a large audience because its school-based child abuse prevention program is the largest in the state of Alabama. The program involves a massive undertaking to reach 20,000 students. During the 1996-97 school year, the programs reached 10,079 students. Although sometimes difficult to teach because of the subject matter (incest, anger management, and physical and sexual abuse), Arthenia has proven she is able to handle these topics in a delicate, yet appropriate manner that the children can understand. In some instances, Arthenia is able to identify and discuss abusive situations that have happened to some youth, which acts as a source of empowerment and often leads to the healing and strengthening of families. She often works 50-75 hours per month in a show of amazing dedication to ensure that the programs are completed and beneficial to students.
Dorothy Masterson
The people that Dorothy Masterson has devoted her life to help are people we see every day. They are the single parent families whose housing is in jeopardy, the struggling individuals trying to make ends meet with minimum wage earnings, the elderly and the disabled. These are the persons, whom we may not notice on our busiest days, that Dorothy Masterson works with each day she volunteers at the Housing Crisis Center.
The lives of thousands of Dallas County citizens have been affected by Dorothy’s work. She strives to help those who are on the verge of homelessness and those who are already without shelter to find affordable, permanent housing. She believes wholeheartedly in folks helping themselves, so she advocates employment counseling to encourage those who are able to seek employment. She also promotes an atmosphere in which her clients help each other, through programs such as the Gal Pals mentoring project. Every Wednesday and Saturday, landlord/tenant workshops are led by former clients who have benefited from the Center and choose to return and pass on information to those that are less fortunate.
Dorothy began volunteering on housing issues more than 20 years ago and works an average of 60 hours per week. She directs the work of the Housing Crisis Center/Dallas Tenants’ Association, which she founded, and contributes her own money to continue the work of preventing homelessness. Constantly looking to expand upon her past efforts, Dorothy has created new programs that deal with job advocacy, a family and children’s center, and training youth to give back to their community. She has contributed greatly to the quality of life for many and is inspired only by her own sense of giving of herself to others. She is bound by a duty to comfort the afflicted and plans to continue working to better the lives of everyday people who need a helping hand.
Gerald Stoops
Gerald “Jerry” Stoops has been a community volunteer in San Bernadino, CA with the Natural Beauty Program he founded for the past 39 years. During that time, he has almost single-handedly inspired more than 50,000 volunteers who have left a lasting imprint on the local community through service. There has been immeasurable success with a reforestation project involving two urban forests affected by area wild fires. Jerry’s grassroots program has had to overcome many obstacles, both personal and professional, but he has always managed to put first his dedication to service and recruiting others to volunteer.
The reforestation project, which has the best survival rate of any similar project in the southwest, involves teens that have been labeled as “at-risk” or “troubled.” The teens, from San Bernadino County Juvenile Hall, care for the young seedlings to keep them healthy. Other projects that have been completed throughout the years include development of a community park and greenbelt in a depressed area of San Bernadino, community planting projects and an innovative elementary school recycling project that collected seven million pounds of paper and raised more than $70,000.
Former teacher Jerry Stoops started his community restoration program in his eighth grade science class in 1959 and the program went community-wide in 1965. At 82, although he suffers with many physical ailments, Jerry still runs the program with the same fervor and commitment of his younger days. Community members admire his “never give up” attitude and are motivated to participate in his programs. He is well known for his ability to find volunteers to participate in mass recycling of tons of aluminum, paper, steel, glass and plastics, and planting thousands of trees. Jerry plans to continue his tree planting and restoration projects for as long as he is able, but the legacy of the Natural Beauty Program will last as long as the trees his volunteers have planted are growing and beautifying the countryside.
Janice Katz
Service to satisfy human needs is a way of life for Janice Katz. A special education teacher for 11 years, she knows what it means to work with people who are in need of service. Yet, for years she has contributed time above and beyond her 8-hour workday to ensure that her help extends to people of all walks of life. Most of her volunteer service hours are for Samaritan House, a nonprofit organization helping people within Central San Mateo County, CA.
Through several programs, Katz is able to lavish her boundless care on needy citizens. In addition to her work for Samaritan House, she is a volunteer for “Shut In” Senior Citizens, which she has participated in for 20 years. She has volunteered for the San Francisco Tenderloin for 10 years and held the city Chairman post for the March of Dimes in 1970. For several years, Katz has also solicited contributions to benefit the Leukemia Society and the American Heart Association.
Her largest volunteer role is for Samaritan House where she serves as the Office Volunteer Coordinator of the Samaritan House Clinic. She volunteers many hours with the clinic to assure that patients are seen in a fast, efficient manner. The Samaritan House, which is now in its 25th year of service and has a monthly average of 600 client visits, plus an additional 400 phone calls requesting services. Their clinic provides medical care for community members who are uninsured and have little or no access to health care. With her positive outlook and ability to empower people, clinic workers and patients alike leave the clinic feeling more positive about themselves. Her motivation has helped to eliminate staff turnover at the clinic for the past two years.
Through her volunteer work, Janice Katz has made a profound impact on society by creating a strong momentum of committed volunteers at Samaritan Hose who work with people in serious need of medical, social and behavioral assistance.
Jeannette Graves
Jeannette Graves has been a resident of Co-op City since 1976 and during that time she has provided the community residents with invaluable and dedicated service. She has organized and directed volunteer initiatives which have enriched the lives of the most vulnerable segment of the population—the elderly and young children. Through her programs, she has connected people of different generations, racial and ethnic groups.
For more than 25 years, Graves was employed as an account executive with Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New York. Now retired, she realizes the knowledge and expertise that other retired Blue Cross/Blue Shield representatives could offer to the senior community. She singularly organized and developed a program that reached out to senior citizen centers, identifying retired professionals to provide insurance information to members of these agencies. This program is now known as the Ambassadors Club of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and is a direct outgrowth of Graves’ quest to utilize the untapped resources of the senior community.
Graves also recognized that there are hundreds of newly retired seniors who can contribute greatly to the social service community and bridge the gap in service delivery. Thus, she sought to develop volunteer opportunities for young seniors through service to frail, chronically ill elderly persons, many of whom have no family or informal support systems, are homebound and unable to meet their most basic daily needs.
In 1995, Graves assumed the role of project coordinator for the Co-Op City Interfaith Caregivers Project under the auspices of the National Faith-In-Action Movement of Volunteer Initiatives. This project is invaluable to the citizens it serves, due to the nature of Co-op City itself. The largest tenant owned housing development in the country, Co-op City is a low to moderate income community in the northeast Bronx consisting of 35 high rise buildings. Approximately 55,000 residents are in the community and the sheer physical nature of the area forces the most vulnerable and disabled elderly residents into premature isolation. They often have virtually no contact with neighbors or the outside world, except for occasional visits to the doctor’s office. The Interfaith Volunteer Project was established to address the special needs of these elderly Co-op City residents.
Through the Interfaith project, Graves has reached out to help the elderly community in Co-op city with a shared vision of neighbor-helping-neighbor. She coordinates volunteer efforts between the mostly Jewish at-risk elderly and the African-American or Hispanic new residents, uniting these groups in service. Outside of her service with the Interfaith Caregivers Project, Graves developed a volunteer program that provides school based literacy volunteers to elementary schools as part of the Everybody Wins program. The volunteers read to children in kindergarten through 4th grade. In addition, she has served on the board of directors for The Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of Co-op City and mobilized the community to engage in volunteer service on a large scale.
The Salvation Army Gateway Service Center
The homeless of Philadelphia are getting a helping hand from the Salvation Army Gateway Service Center, a program that provides a low demand residence for homeless males and a twelve hour Day Program. For those in need of short-term emergency shelter, the residence can accommodate up to 70 individuals and necessary support services. The Day Program offers the homeless access to showers, bathrooms, three meals a day, laundry and clothing.
Overall, Gateway serves as a volunteer center for services rendered to the homeless. Formed in 1993, the Gateway program has evolved in significant ways but the center’s philosophy has not changed—to address the minds, the bodies and spirits of its clients. To accomplish its goals, Gateway mentors are available to discuss the client’s problems and connect them with appropriate long term services.
The Day Program is open at the center from eight in the morning until eight in the evening, seven days a week. Monitoring staff, security, maintenance, kitchen employees and supervisory personnel attempt to provide, whenever possible, at least two programs at any given time for client choice. The daily programs are structured and there are specific times for opening the bathrooms and shower areas for client use. The clients break into groups to discuss topics with mentors that include drugs and alcohol, relapse prevention, self-esteem issues, women’s issues and sexual health.
The volunteer program component of the Gateway Service Center is comprised of an inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional health care program. The Jeff HOPE Medical Clinic, The Hands of Hope Physical Therapy Health and Wellness Clinic, Jeff HOPE Advocacy, Fairmount Medical Center, and Pennsylvania Hospital’s Hall-Mercer Mental Health Unit are among the health institutions that provide outreach services to Gateway Center clients. All of these services are voluntary. Negotiations are being conducted to add students from Allegheny University to those who staff The Health and Wellness Clinic.
In collaboration with two other homeless shelters in the city, Gateway also offers a Life Skills Program to its clients. The Center is waiting for funding for a Work Readiness Program to link with the Life Skills Program. Both programs have been designed to ready clients to return to society. The Gateway Service Center also focuses on traditional education, serving as a host site for the Mayor’s Commission on Literacy and offering courses such as English as a Second Language and Basic Adult Education. Links are maintained to the major area universities to educate people about the homeless and their plight.
Denise Haala
The PALS (Partners Assisting Learning in the Schools) mentorship program is an after school program that assists students who are suffering from poor academic achievement. Students in this program have difficulty with either organizing themselves for school or sustaining the motivation to complete their schoolwork. Some of the students do not have strong family support.
Through the PALS mentorship program, Denise Haala has made a significant difference in the lives of the students for the past four years. She has helped students to study “smarter” and taught them valuable organizational skills. Students who work with Denise become more connected to the school community and more confident in their abilities.
Denise actively builds a rapport with students through encouragement and friendly conversation while limiting behavior that is counterproductive. Through her involvement students are able to perceive adults as helpful and school as a positive place. Students who are mentored by Denise show an improved attitude and greater motivation toward academic achievement.
In addition to one-on-one mentoring, she has worked with groups of students during times of volunteer shortage and has gradually assumed an increasing level of responsibility, currently functioning as an assistant program coordinator for PALS.
Denise recently designed and implemented an effective attendance incentive plan for the PALS program, which has increased student after school attendance and motivation. In addition to all of her work with the PALS program, she established the Mac n’ Math program. Within this structure, Denise, who has a background in education, utilizes a variety of activities in order to increase student skills and confidence in mathematics.
Mentors From General Electric Industrial Systems
In 1992, General Electric Drive System employees launched a new program in an attempt to combat social problems at a local school. The employees serve as adult mentors to individual students at Oakland Intermediate School. The program has been well-received by students, parents and staff. The mentors work one-on-one with an individual child throughout the school year. Some mentors have been with the same child for as long as three years.
A large percentage of Oakland’s student body is students from one parent, disadvantaged homes. Teachers are asked to identify those students who would most benefit from the program. The students and the mentors must fill out a questionnaire pertaining to their likes, dislikes and interests which are then used to match the student and mentor.
The students selected usually have few positive role models in their lives and therefore the mentors provide guidance and structure in the student’s life. As a result of this mentor program, attitudes of the students toward school, teachers and peers have greatly improved. The mentors help steer the students from activities that may be dangerous and/or illegal. The mentors provide the needed connection between the larger community and the child and show the importance of becoming a good citizen despite the odds.
The mentors have lunch, play games, work on computers with the students, help with class work and just listen to the students concerns. In addition to mentoring, the GE group has contributed computer equipment and donated funds to purchase laser discs for the school.
In 1996-1997, the GE volunteers totaled more than fifty people, each of whom contributed an average of 40 hours of service to the school. Some mentors keep in touch with their mentees by phone or e-mail and others take the student on outings.
Career Closet of Santa Clara
The ability to dress for success is something most working women in Silicon Valley take for granted. Many women have the resources to purchase an outfit for work that will make them look and feel great. After completing job-training programs, many economically disadvantaged women have the skills to compete for an entry-level job. Unfortunately, the only clothes some women in this situation own will immediately disqualify her from consideration for jobs.
Career Closet of Santa Clara County was founded in 1991 by a group of professional women to meet this need. There are numerous programs throughout the area that provide vocational training and job search assistance to economically disadvantaged women. However, upon completion of these programs, the women cannot afford even a modest interviewing outfit at a thrift store; much less the kind of clothing that will give them an equal advantage with others seeking the same job. It is for women in this situation that the Career Closet of Santa Clara County helps.
The clients of Career Closet are referred by job training agencies and all the professional clothing is provided free. This is the only agency of its kind in Silicon Valley. Since opening in October 1992, the Career Closet has given more than 3,000 women in Santa Clara County professional interview attire and additional items of clothing to put together several days’ worth of work outfits.
The Career Closet volunteers work one-on-one with the clients to select their business outfits and give the women a much-needed boost of self-confidence. Leaving Career Closet with a professional wardrobe, the women feel empowered by the knowledge that they have both the skills and the presence to stand equal with others in a job interview situation. Through this one-on-one personal experience, Career Closet helps each woman believe that the quality of her appearance increases her opportunity for a successful job search.
