WILLIAM VATAVUK

After William Chandler Vatavuk noticed that many students at this school were having trouble reading, the young man decided to pitch in and help. The 10-year-old boy, called by his middle name of Chandler, accompanied his school principal to a Durham housing project on his 10th birthday to tutor children, in lieu of having a birthday party. Since that day more than seven years ago, he has continued to mentor and tutor hundreds of youth.

At a Saturday Academy he tutored 30 at-risk children, many of whom live in poverty and have one or both parents in jail. The children’s test scores and self-confidence have improved greatly. To help disadvantaged youth, Chandler also organized, taught, and sponsored environment, wildlife, and science camps and a writing class, and volunteered at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, helping 202 children.

Chandler’s 4-H friend, who has cancer, was badly abused at school, so Chandler became determined to help prevent school violence. He wrote his school superintendent, Governor Hunt, and President Clinton to suggest establishment of alternative schools to separate violent students. He also wrote a newspaper article on this topic. For three years, Chandler has volunteered weekly as Durham Teen Court attorney to help troubled youth admit their misdeeds and repay society, so that they can learn to become responsible citizens.

When Chandler saw many classmates dropping out of school, he decided to try to get them to return. He wrote another newspaper article and a letter to his school superintendent and school board, offering to help solve the dropout problem. He served on the Durham Public School Task Force for Dropout Prevention, helping to finalize the school’s strategic dropout plan. He also served on the Durham Public Schools Student and Family Focus Group and Durham’s Youth Advisory Board. Through his speeches at regional, state, and national conferences on drug prevention, school violence, and dropouts, Chandler reached 2,900 people. Alternative schools were established to separate violent students, many dropouts returned to school, and school violence decreased.

Chandler continues to volunteer hundreds of hours every year in all these activities. Furthermore, through Chandler’s baking and selling at an area farmer’s market, he has provided four scholarships for needy 4-H’ers through a fund he established to memorialize his grandparents. After reading about all of the problems in Yugoslavia, he decided to organize a Kosovo relief effort to collect vitamins, clothing, school supplies, and toys to send to Kosovan children. His appeals to the Bayer Corporation prompted them to airlift $350,000 worth of vitamins and medications to Kosovo. However, even with many successful attempts to effect positive social change to his credit, Vatavuk continues his personal mission in life to help others. His motto is “Give to the world the best that you can and the best will come back to you.”

For more information on Chandler’s service organizations, please visit the Web site for the North Carolina State 4-H program at www.nc4h.org or link to the Durham County organizational site here www.durham.ces.state.nc.us/depts.html

SUSQUENITA HIGH SCHOOL BIG BROTHERS/ BIG SISTERS

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Capital Region has for many years attempted to place children in Perry County with much needed mentors to provide additional support and guidance. The agency and Susquenita School District, collaborated to create the High School Mentoring Program. Since August 1997, 52 children in third and fourth grade look up to a high school Big Brother or Big Sister volunteer.

The elementary students selected for the program may exhibit poor adult and peer relationships, lack of confidence, academic underachievement, and inadequate social skills. Many of them are lonely and in need of positive attention. Conversely, the high school mentors are above average academically and have exemplary conduct. Most high school volunteers are employed outside of school, active in sports and extra-curricular activities, and volunteer in their churches or communities. High school volunteers are professionally screened and trained with high school and agency staff monitoring the relationships to deal with more severe issues that may arise.

The high school students meet with the elementary children once per week during school hours. Since activities are part of the school day and always on campus, the elementary students require only parental permission for participation. The parents do not view this service as intrusive. While their activities vary, schoolwork, reading, sports and projects are among their favorites. Also, in order to instill a sense of community responsibility, each pair must do a community service project. The “community” is defined as their campus.

Since the inception of the program, the elementary children have consistently shown an increase in academic performance as well as, better relationships with teachers and classmates, improved social skills and more confidence. However, the high school volunteers have also identified benefits from their involvement including improved communication skills, problem solving abilities, and willingness to try new experiences. Volunteers further indicate their desire to continue volunteer work after graduation. It is through these high school volunteers that 52 children from the community have a better chance of reaching adulthood successfully and become productive citizens.

KETTERING CITIZEN POLICE ACADEMY ALUMNI

The Kettering Citizen Police Academy Alumni assist the Kettering Police Department by performing a multitude of tasks that free up the police officers to do more specialized work and concentrate on solving serious problems.

Police officers often have a negative perception by the public which hampers their effectiveness in addressing community problems, so in mid-1993, the Kettering Police Department initiated a Citizen Police Academy. The Academy is a series of 10 weekly classes to inform interested citizens about the work of the Police Department. Two citizens, from the early classes, were so impressed by the actual services provided by the department that they wanted to help the police enhance their services. With the Kettering Police Department, they formed the Citizen Police Academy Alumni to free up the police officers and staff to do more specialized work.

Since the organization’s inception, the 103 Citizen Police Academy Alumni volunteers have donated more than 12,000 hours of service. They perform many tasks to help the Police Department: they draw targets for the gun ranges, wash police cars, maintain the emergency equipment carried in patrol cars, enter computer data, act as regional coordinators in crime prevention, coordinate participation in parades and exhibits, deliver the crime prevention newsletter to 22,000 Kettering households, prepare mailings, review records for microfilming, help with DUI checks, keep a pin map of area crime incidents and operate a speed watch program.

One of the most visible and effective activities has been the speed watch program. Volunteers check the speed of vehicles by radar in a specially marked police cruiser. Speeders are issued a letter reminding them of the speed limit and how fast they were going. However, if the offender is a youth, the officers will talk to both the youth and the parents. The Kettering Police Chief feels that citizens are really watching their speed and says that the program has reduced accidents in the selected enforcement target area by 24 percent.

Another example of the effectiveness of the volunteer assistance is that two evenings per week, volunteers do fingerprinting for citizens who require the service for employment purposes. This past year, they fingerprinted their 2,500th individual.

Additionally, the Citizen Police Academy volunteers have helped raised funds for the Police Foundation. Funds are used for disaster relief, scholarships, criminal justice students and field police training.

At least six citizens from each of the 15 classes are now volunteering for the Kettering Police Department. They are constantly suggesting areas where they can help. Additionally, the success of the program encouraged the department to initiate a Student Police Academy during the after school hours. These students, some of whom were considered at-risk, are now volunteering for the police.

OPERATION BAJA, INC.

Operation Baja (OB) is a multi-faceted, multi-cultural non-profit organization, created by Commander John Bretza in 1995 after he witnessed a young girl abandon her child on the roadside in Mexico. Her actions were motivated by her hope that an orphanage would provide a better life for her child, but this image left an indelible impression. The idea of Community Policing International Style was commenced when Bretza, a Commander with the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD), developed OB to promote unity, cooperation and caring between police departments in Mexico in the United States as they worked together motivating community groups and individual volunteers to collect food, clothing and necessaries of life for the poverty-stricken children of Baja.

Operation Baja has broken through many cultural, generational, and gender barriers by enabling all people to participate and learn to trust and respect others. Spearheaded by Bretza, OB and the LBPD are able to reach out across international borders to police departments in Mexico. OB is a unique opportunity to unite community groups, schools, churches, citizens and police officers and engage them in working side by side to minimize the social problems of the less fortunate.

The operation is comprised of volunteers, no paid or salaried persons are involved. Volunteers contact donors, pick up donations, and organize those donations to ensure they are ready for distribution to Mexico. Then, just before Christmas, a Caravan of trucks, vans and cars are loaded full of donated goods, and LBPD officers and civilian volunteers depart from Long Beach en route to meet their Mexican counterparts at the border where, after customs approval, they drive directly to the impoverished villages.

OB has aided the impoverished in Ukraine, Cambodia, South Africa and the United States. Through community policing, the project has touched the lives of more than 20,000 individuals and helped minimize social problems that arise from ignorance, prejudice, economic poverty and a lack of genuine love and caring.

Five long years of hard work and unbearable stress may have made most people give up, but not Commander Bretza. Tears glistened in his eyes as a three year old Mexican girl planted a “thank you” kiss on his wind blown face, an expression of gratitude for a pair of warm socks and new shoes given as a result of efforts by volunteers of Operation Baja. Overwhelmed by her reaction, he realized that this is what makes the effort worthwhile.

BINKY PATROL

Binky Patrol, a non-profit organization, began as a small local group in Southern California in 1996. Volunteers with Binky Patrol create hand made blankets or “binkies” to give to children in need of comfort. The binkies are given to children with AIDS or other life threatening or terminal illnesses, victims of abuse, children in foster care, or children in homeless shelters.

There are now more than 5,000 volunteers at Binky Patrol who have delivered more than 75,000 binkies to date. After being mentioned on the Oprah Winfrey show and a small feature in Family Circle magazine, Binky Patrol quickly became a national organization.

Binky Patrol has been operating completely on individual donations and corporate sponsorships. There is an annual “Bink-a-thon” to build up the supply of binkies and to raise community awareness of the program. Binky Patrol receives donations of fabric from businesses such as St. John Knit, True Grit and other local fabric and upholstery businesses. WellPrint of Tustin, California and Commpro also in Tustin, have helped to offset the rising costs of printing, stationary, technical support for the website, and a quarterly newsletter. Binky Patrol is fortunate that JC Carter Ground Fueling of Costa Mesa, California has donated shipping for three years to provide donated fabric to chapters across the country without monetary resources.

A large percentage of Binky Patrol volunteers are senior citizens. These volunteers say over and over that being able to sew, knit, or crochet binkies gives them a purpose. In many cases, these activities are the only things that they are still able to do despite physical limitations. Another growing group is that of students. Children from age four to ten are enjoying helping to make blankets “for sick kids or ones without moms and dads”. They take it to the simplest factor and understand how important these handmade blankets are to kids just like them.

Binky Patrol is a union between children that feel disconnected and along, and the volunteers that have a desire to make a difference in the life of someone in need. Since every binky is handmade, every stitch is evidence that there is someone out there with love in his or her heart that cares.

Binky Patrol is an outreach program that is built on caring, compassionate individuals. The volunteers give selflessly and go beyond the call of duty in their desire to make this world a better place.

For more information on Binky Patrol, visit their Web site at www.binkypatrol.org

FRIENDS FOR SURVIVAL, INC.

Friends for Survival, Inc. (FFS), a nonprofit organization, was organized in Sacramento, California, in the fall of 1982 by two mothers, Chris Moon and Marilyn Koenig, following the suicide deaths of their sons.

In the past 16 years, nearly 500,000 Americans have ended their lives by suicide, the eighth leading cause of death. Suicide has exceeded the number of homicides every year since 1981. Since approximately 81% of the suicides are males, the survivors are often wives and children. Research has shown that following a suicide, surviving family members are also at a higher risk for suicide themselves. Accurate information, referral, support and encouragement are essential to these families.

FFS is a grassroots national nonprofit outreach program. Participation is open to those who have lost a family member or friends by suicide and also to professionals who work with those who have been touched by a suicide tragedy. FFS, organized by and for survivors, has been offering services since 1983.

This total volunteer organization is dedicated to providing a variety of unique peer support services to those in grief, encouraging healing and growth, and fostering the development of skills to cope with a loss and educate the community regarding the impact of suicide. A wide variety of free services are offered to each family that contact FFS, including a Suicide Loss Helpline with an 800 number. This national 800 number, established in 1997, is the only one available exclusively for those grieving a suicide death.

Since 1982, FFS has provided immediate, direct assistance and referral to more than 4,000 grieving families. They have distributed more than 300,000 monthly newsletters and held more than 500 support meetings. In addition, they also organize all-day conferences, workshops, and retreats. They have developed and conducted training workshops for chaplains, law enforcement officials, teachers, therapists, and mental health professionals. Volunteers have also participated in research projects.

During 1998, volunteers created a memorial quilt that has been displayed at national conferences and national press conferences highlighting the tragedy of suicide. Also in 1998, FFS became a national organization offering support, comfort, encouragement and education. It is now possible to have FFS chapters across the country, something many families had been requesting.

Now, with the support and encouragement of FFS, these families are publicly expressing their grief in a positive way, with confidence that their sharing will promote suicide prevention and better health care for those suffering from depression. They continue to sew memorial quilt patches to put a face to the tragedy of suicide and to share that face with their communities.

JEFF SYKES

Disabled and mentally ill youngsters need a friend who understands pain and the challenges of making the most of each day. The children in the cancer unit at the Seattle Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center have such a friend in Jeff Sykes.

Sykes, a software quality assurance focal for the Boeing Company, suffered a spinal cord injury in 1969 playing high school football. He has limited use of his arms, and no use of his legs. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education from Eastern Washington University, and in 1983, was one of the first graduates of the Resource Center for the Handicapped (RCH) Technical Institute, in Renton. He is on the RCH Technical Institute’s Board of Directors, serving on a voluntary basis, as secretary treasurer.

Sykes has visited Children’s Hospital every Wednesday for the last 10 years to develop a one-to-one relationship with young patients. He tells them jokes, plays games, helps them eat and encourages them. He makes a special point of visiting young people with spinal cord injuries, to help prepare them for what lies ahead.

Sykes is also a member of a Children’s Hospital Guild to raise money for uncompensated care at Children’s Hospital, is on the Church Council for the Spirit in Truth Four Square Church in Kent, and is a booster captain for the Boeing Employee Community Fund. He and his wife, Beverly, after 15 years of marriage, adopted a son. Each Thanksgiving and Christmas, they provide another family with holiday cheer. Sykes’ volunteer efforts earned him the William M. Allen Award from the Boeing Company.

The children he befriends laugh when he is around. Recently, a small boy with sickle cell anemia asked Sykes, “Can I call you Dad?” The nurses and staff at the hospital find their work easier and their burden lighter when he is around. The physically challenged students at RCH pay attention to what he says: “You have to realize that you need to depend on your brain and not on your physical attributes. Life doesn’t end when you have a spinal cord injury.”

Sykes’ energy is unlimited; his enthusiasm for life and joy is catching. He is just one person, but his light shines very strong, particularly for his frail little friends on the Hematology/Oncology floor at Children’s Hospital.

JOE GAMBLE

The Sons of Abraham Mentor Program is in its third year of providing one-to-one mentoring, teaching and extracurricular activities to promote the educational, social, emotional, spiritual, and physical development of young men between the ages of 7 and 17. In addition to founding the program, Joe Gamble has served in the capacity of director of the Sons of Abraham Mentor Program for three years on a volunteer basis. Currently, the program services 85 young men who are identified as at risk of dropping out of school, juvenile delinquency, and/or low academic achievement.

Gamble conceptualized and planned the program from his home and presented it to the Greater Bethany Economic Development Corporation (GBEDC) for implementation. It was recognized to be a well-developed plan and GBEDC granted him use of the facility for future mentor training and bi-monthly mentee and mentor activities. Gamble’s plan for the program included by-laws, an application process, DMV and Department of Justice screenings, a mentor interview process, a monthly evaluation process for mentees, and a mentor/mentee pairing process.

Tackling the task of establishing a mentor program with fervor, Gamble enlisted other volunteers with like passion to effectively implement his plan. He recruited several men from Greater Bethany Community Church and community to form a volunteer and parent support team called “The Booster Club.” This group works to ensure that the boys are first matched one-to-one with a mentor and then exposed to activities that are not ordinarily available in their neighborhoods.

Gamble also makes available to all participants and interested parties an annual calendar of structured, yet fun, activities for the young men in the program. The Sons of Abraham Mentor Program has exposed more than 150 boys to Broadway musicals such as “Show Boat,” sponsored by the Shubert Theater, and “Bring-N-Da Noise, Bring-N-Da Funk,” sponsored by Claudette and Smokey Robinson. Gamble seeks to offer activities that stimulate a change in attitude and direction for boys who are considered at risk of dropping out of school, teen pregnancy, low self-esteem, gang involvement, and poor grades. These activities are coupled with a sound curriculum developed by Dr. Sheldon Nix, designed to guide a boy from “boyhood” to “authentic manhood.”

With Gamble’s assistance, the Sons of Abraham Mentoring Program sponsors a variety of educational and enjoyable activities. Twenty-five mentors, 60 mentees, and 15 members of the Los Angeles Police Departments Explorers served as hosts for the grand opening of the “Expressions in Stone” Art Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. They volunteers were given a tour of the facility and the boys discussed the sculptures with the curator of the gallery. The program sponsored a four-day community carnival attended by 4,000 people of African-American and Hispanic descent. Gamble and 15 of the Booster Club members walked door to door to give away tickets to community residents and gang members, and everyone participated in the day’s events without hostility.

A partnership was formed by Gamble with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Sparks, Los Angeles Lakers, and the San Diego Chargers in order to expose at-risk youth to exciting career options and additional positive role models that will motivate them to be productive, as well as provide a way for them to experience an environment different from their own.

Under Gamble’s leadership, the Booster Club, mentors and community residents operate Project Refugee, an after-school tutoring program. Gamble has enlisted the help of the Black Engineers Society of University of Southern California to serve as tutors. The tutorial program has serviced 30 students with a community volunteer base of 15 for the months of April through December of 1998.

Not only has he mobilized volunteers to assist in rebuilding and reconstructing the minds of at-risk youth, his efforts also includes networking with other community-based organizations in efforts to establish beneficial collaborations. For example, he inspired a collaborative effort between the Greater Bethany Economic Development Corporation Sons of Abraham Mentor Program and the California Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Churches to provide Rites of Passage quarterly camps and ongoing mentoring to youth in approximately 100 United Methodist Churches. This partnership will encourage more men to serve as mentors to the boys in South Central Los Angeles neighborhoods and provide men to serve as camp counselors at Rites of Passage camps.

THE SCHOOL PEER MEDIATION PROGRAM

Why is there so much violence among America’s youth and what effect will it have on society in the future? After a girl jilted a 13-year-old boy from Jonesboro, Arkansas, he warned friends he had “a lot of killing to do,” and a day later, police said he and his 11-year-old cousin lured classmates out of school with a false fire alarm, then mowed them down with gunfire. While this recent incident may be an aberration, it represents a cultural shift where violence is deemed an appropriate response to anger and frustration.

The Clark County Social Service (CCSS) Neighborhood Justice Center’s School Peer Mediation Program is taking a proactive response to the increase in school violence. The program teaches students how to use alternative methods of conflict resolution to avoid disputes and reduce crime while encouraging a healthy, more self-sufficient neighborhood. Students learn mediation, critical thinking, problem solving, life, and conflict resolution skills. These skills lead to improved values and an ability to come to peaceful resolutions when faced with adversity, peer-pressure and conflict in their everyday lives. These children function better within their peer group, families, and neighborhoods, so that viable community connections are formed.

CCSS’s program, in collaboration with the Clark County School District, began in 1993 starting with two schools. Presently, there are 42 schools participating, and more join this ongoing program yearly. Funding comes from a variety of sources – Title VI through the Clark County School District, a Weed and Seed grant, a Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention grant, Title XX, and the Byrne Memorial Grant.

School Mediation Specialists conduct extensive training for students, faculty, staff, and parents who are involved in the program. All students are taught conflict resolution skills and the student body at large selects peer mediators, with assistance from school faculty, to ensure representation of a cross-section of the entire student body. Peer mediators provide models of effective communication and cooperation for fellow students, and work in pairs, on the playground and in the lunchroom, to help students resolve problems.

Methods used to evaluate program effectiveness include measuring the change of school climate, and tracking the number of mediations occurring during the program period, and the percentage agreement rate of disputes resolved. From 1993 to date, 6,400 mediations were attempted and 5,778 (or slightly more than 90 percent) were resolved.

The School Peer Mediation Program uses peer pressure in an innovative and positive manner. The use of peer mediation to resolve student-to-student disputes has reduced incident of violence, improved communications among students, teachers, administrators and parents, reduced faculty time related to disputes and promoted a safer school climate. Peer mediators have stated that the skills they learned in the program help them to get along better with their parents, siblings and neighbors.

SAN ANTONIO FIGHTING BACK’S MANAGEMENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The mission of San Antonio Fighting Back’s (SAFB) Management Board of Directors has been to help create a supportive network of volunteers, neighborhoods and service providers working together collaboratively to change the quality of life for children and families through volunteer power.

Individually they had already accomplished much. One played football in two Super Bowls, but is more proud of his work with youth. Another launched the first bilingual support group for HIV-infected women and helps pediatric AIDS patients, while another works with law enforcement agencies to rid neighborhoods of crime and drugs. Together, the 15-member, all-volunteer group, share a vision of a crime and drug-free community and are working towards that end.

Throughout its five-year history, this nonprofit comprehensive substance abuse, crime and violence prevition, and community improvement and development program of the United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County has enjoyed much success. In the past year alone, they have helped lead the effort in the creation of a Management Information System (MIS) provider-linked system. Unprecedented in Bexar County, this system connects substance abuse prevention, intervention and treatment providers and allows them to share information and eliminate the duplication of services.

They have also led the way for programs that helped create a significant drop in drug-related crime with the SAFB target area. Through the successful efforts of neighborhood mobilization endeavors and substance abuse prevention and intervention program, crime in the target area has dropped a reported 10.3 percent.

Together, they have formed the necessary collaborations needed to maintain the viability of the agency. Collaborations have been created with state and federal agencies, private sector businesses, and community groups. They have hashed out long-term goals and strategic plans to maintain the vision and promise they made when they came together for the first time — the promise of increasing the capacity of communities to solve their own problems and become self-sufficient.

The greatest accomplishment of SAFB’s Management Board of Directors has been to help create a supportive network of volunteers, neighborhoods, and service providers. Since its inception in 1992, SAFB has generated nationally recognized program and more than 1,384 public events. More than 1.6 million individuals have volunteered in one or more of SAFB’s programs in the past five years.