Richard Fahey
Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Richard Fahey. Read his story and nominate an outstanding volunteer or organization as a Point of Light.
Liberian elementary school students use solar-powered lights from the Liberian Energy Network.Richard Fahey brings light where nearly all of the people live in darkness after the sun goes down.
Fahey had served in that country – Liberia – in the late 1960s with the Peace Corps. He returned for a visit in 2009 with his wife, Suzanne, and a small group of other Peace Corps volunteers to assess the needs of Liberians as they struggled to recover from 14 years of brutal civil wars.
“Not having returned to Liberia since the end of my service in 1968, I was shocked at how much of Liberian culture and society had been lost as a result of the civil wars,” says Fahey. “I realized that I needed to do something to help with the country’s recovery, most especially because many of our longtime Liberian friends who survived the civil wars had so little, while Suzanne and I had prospered.”
The sun is Liberia’s chief source of light. At night, the country goes mostly dark. Hospitals, schools, businesses and homes often lack light. Only two percent of Liberia’s 4 million rural residents are connected to the country’s meager electrical grid – and they spend a quarter of their $158 annual income paying to charge their cell phones.
Richard Fahey, left, spends time with staff of the Liberian Energy Network, which he founded.Fahey and his wife met with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She she acknowledged the challenges the Liberian people faced and noted the special relationship the country had with Peace Corps volunteers who had lived among them.
She invited the Faheys to help Liberia recover and move forward.
In 2011, Fahey launched the Liberian Energy Network, to sell “plug-and-play” solar-lighting and cell-phone-charging units through a network of Liberian health care, education, religious and job-training organizations.
“Upon our return to the States I decided to retire from my law practice and founded the Liberian Energy Network, with the goal of creating a social enterprise which empowers Liberians to provide themselves with solar power on a national scale, based on the principals of doing business at the base of the economic pyramid.”
Since 2011, the organization has sold more than 5,000 solar lanterns at break-even cost. In the next five years it aims to distribute more than 100,000, providing light and electricity for basic needs to 516,000 rural Liberians.
Nicholas G. Jaeger
At 16, Nick Jaeger developed an advocacy group to support victims of domestic violence, using the concept of allies—those who are empathetic and speak up in support of victims.
Nick lives in a home filled with love and was taught early on that while disagreements happen, it’s how conflicts get resolved that is important. When he volunteered at the local shelter he was struck by how what he had taken for granted wasn’t the norm and that the people who should make you feel the safest can cause you fear and that terrified him. He started to volunteer for CORA, in San Mateo County, a domestic violence prevention organization and worked to raise funds and awareness, in his school and in other high schools.
Nick developed this idea of being an “ally” to victims of domestic violence. An “ally” is someone who isn’t necessarily a victim themselves but who will stand up against such violence, be supportive to someone who is experiencing domestic violence and is willing to speak out against it.
He has raised more than $85,000 for his local domestic violence prevention organization in San Mateo County, California. Additionally, he speaks at local high schools to raise awareness about domestic violence and has volunteers directly at the shelter.
Urban Connections
Urban Connections is a nonprofit organization is located in an area identified ‘low performing’ due to not having 75 percent of students pass statewide tests in reading and math in grades 3-5. The majority of the students live in poverty and do not have access to many resources and supports outside of school.
Urban Connections, today’s Daily Point of Light Award winner, recognizes this need and visits two different schools once a week to provide reading tutoring and mentoring for one hour. This reading buddy program not only helps student improve and achieve their goals in reading but also serves as a mentoring program, giving students a mentor that they see weekly helping them to have a positive outlook not only about themselves but about the work that they can accomplish.
Urban Connections works collaboratively with the school to provide ongoing training for recruited volunteers ensuring that the program remains focused on goals of increasing reading achievement for students. Urban Connections works with approximately 43 third grade students at their school last year and saw an 11 percent increase in the school’s third grade reading scores.
What began in 1999 with a Vacation Bible School in a vacant lot run by volunteers has grown today into an organization that address broader-based community needs.
Nominate a group that addresses community needs where you live for a Daily Point of Light Award today!
Kimberly McDowell
Every year, groups of volunteers from across North America come together to make miracles happen for kids.
“Sixty-two children enter a Children’s Miracle Network Hospital every minute. Eleven years ago, our son Kody, was one of them,” says Kimberly McDowell, founder of Models for Miracles and today’s Daily Point of Light Award winner, “We started Models for Miracles in 2009 as a way to give back to other families who might be going through some of what we went through as parents of a premature baby who battled developmental issues as a young child.”
McDowell’s mission is twofold–actively seek out ways to engage teens and young adults in meaningful service activity and raise money for and awareness of the needs of sick and injured children and their families.
Models for Miracles is a fashion show that benefits Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals by helping to raise funds and awareness so that sick and injured children and their families’ needs are met. Says McDowell, “Models for Miracles is an opportunity for individuals to engage in leadership opportunities, serve their community and raise money for sick and injured kids globally.”
The entire program is volunteer run and donates all proceeds to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, an organization that helps offset costs incurred by funding therapy, treatments, travel to medical specialists, and equipment that traditional insurance doesn’t cover.
At its core, Models for Miracles is about mentoring, leadership development; many communities see a lack of civic engagement and volunteerism within the teen young adult population. Models for Miracles specifically targets this demographic and engages them in a fun, novel way to raise money and awareness for sick and injured children, growing future leaders and givers.
To date, McDowell has engaged more than 680 teens and young adults from Kansas and Pennsylvania. Additionally, she has engaged more 50 volunteers who donate their time at the events and there are now teen advisory groups in six states.
Do you know someone who works to positively impact the lives of others? Nominate them for a Daily Point of Light Award today!
Fran Knoizen
Fran Knoizen has raised more than $100,000 to fight cancer over 30 years, she served more than 50 senior attendees weekly for more than 26 years in a church outreach lunch that is self-sustaining and she has been part of the leadership that has protected the environmental conditions of the pristine natural lake for more than 30 years.
Thirty years ago, Fran Knoizen started a fundraising luncheon for the American Cancer Society in Marion County, Florida. She knew that fundraising for this cause was exceptionally important, but she felt uncomfortable following “the door-to-door strategy” that the national campaign suggested.
The wife of a renowned Admiral, she was very experienced in leading and organizing important events related to her husband’s responsibilities here and abroad so she felt much more comfortable picking up the phone and organizing a small luncheon fundraiser. Eleven women accepted her first luncheon invitation and together they raised more than $1,000 dollars.
That was only the beginning.
Today, Knoizen still hosts these annual fundraisers. Everything about these luncheons is supplied by volunteers. All of the food, wine, services and even valet parking are provided at no cost by a wide variety of volunteers, businesses and sponsors. Many of those volunteers have been giving their time and resources for decades.
This continuity in the volunteer effort permits every dollar raised in ticket sales and donations to be given to the American Cancer Society.
Knoizen’s leadership and long-term community service is also actively present in other local service programs. This year marks the 26th anniversary of the weekly “Tuesday Timeout” luncheon she initiated at Lake Weir Presbyterian Church. Originally planned to be an outreach for senior citizens, this self-sustaining luncheon now attracts 30 to 75 weekly attendees.
The physical center of Knoizen’s community is the beautiful and pristine Lake Weir. When the health of the lake was threatened in 1983, Fran and a group of residents formed the Lake Weir Association called “Save Lake Weir,” a 501c3 to study the inter-relationships between planning, housing development and pollution in Lake Weir. Fran Knoizen passionately believes that service is its own reward and is always quick to recognize every other volunteer who is part of the efforts. Her strong but self-effacing leadership style has endeared her to her co-volunteers and the community.
Wendy Moore
Wendy Moore uses her painfully modest, often challenging, beginnings to fuel a passion to help kids have access to brand new books of their own, with the hope that through books other kids would develop dreams, wishes, fantasies and goals that lead them to a better life.
Moore grew up in rural Illinois in a very economically challenged family. Her dad was a coal miner and her mom worked in a local cafeteria. One of five daughters, she knew she would grow right out of that small town and she dreamed of bigger things through the books she read. She recalls making her plans and setting her goals through the inspiration of one book after another. She learned about the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center from a children’s book and she made it a goal to go to New York and see the tree.
Today, Moore provides kids, especially those from low-income families with new books.
Over the years she has hosted a First Book Virtual Book Drive to raise funds to buy new books for kids at Title I schools and uses her business as a host site to collected donated school supplies. She mobilizes her neighborhood association and book club to inspire others in the same vein.
Moore’s volunteer efforts raised $1,200 that provided 420 elementary school aged kids with a brand new copy of their own of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ as a part of her community’s back to school celebration.
Eva Haller
Today, on Amnesty International Day, we celebrate Daily Point of Light Award honoree Eva Haller. Read her story and nominate an outstanding volunteer you know as a Point of Light.
Eva HallerBorn in Budapest, Eva Haller left Europe after the Holocaust and arrived in the United States – by way of a three-year detour in Ecuador – in 1952. Now 85, she says she’s “never looked back.”
Except, in a way, she has – constantly.
Shaped by the wrongs she witnessed firsthand as a youth, Haller has spent her life working to make things right.
She looked back when she pursued a degree in social work. She looked back when she and her then-husband supported civil and equal rights causes.
And she’s looked back when acting as a “connector” who helps young people with “good ideas about improving the world” turn their dreams into reality.
Ever since she was 13, when she distributed anti-Hitler leaflets, Haller has understood why one needs to help others.
Her strength in organizing, fundraising and bringing people together has come to the fore during the last 25 years or so when she’s made a specialty of nurturing startup nonprofits.
One of her most significant of these efforts was in 1995 when she met the older brother of a 12-year-old Canadian who told her about his sibling’s idea to help children less fortunate. Haller agreed to meet with the boy, Craig Kielburger.
Thanks to her mentorship, his fledging nonprofit, Free the Children, grew into worldwide network of kids helping kids. Kielburger would go on to earn three Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
The program encourages American, Canadian and English schoolchildren to “adopt a village” in emerging and developing nations and, says Haller, “to brick by brick build hospitals and schools and other services for them.”
Besides the obvious benefits to those on the receiving end, the program also enriches the lives of the young people who participate – including eight of Haller’s 14 grandchildren.
“These kids become aware of their power to change the world,” she says, “and they carry that power with them throughout their lives.”
Haller says she’s lost count of the number of the organizations she’s helped to grow, but another that comes to mind is Video Volunteers, a program that gives village women video cameras and turns them into amateur documentarians.
“I’ve been really impressed by the way in which these women, many of whom cannot read or write, can be the eyes and ears of the oppressed,” Haller says. Nearly 300 million viewers have seen the videos, she adds.
Haller says she is drawn to helping children and the powerless, because: “With education and the right tools, they can change the world.”
Sydney Wilson
College freshman Sydney Wilson started Ocean Hour, a beach cleanup club when she was a junior in high school. “A lot of people go to the beaches and leave their trash without a second thought, and then the trash will make it into the ocean and harm the marine life,” says Wilson when explaining what inspired her to start cleaning.
The club hosts two monthly cleanups and also helps volunteers become scuba certified so that they can participate in reef cleaning. Wilson does her best to accommodate all schedules, making sure she can get the most participation possible. “Volunteering is very important to me. Every little piece you help with can create a wave of participation from others.”
Do you know someone that helps make the world a cleaner and healthier place to live? Nominate them for a Daily Point of Light Award!
Rich Garland
Rich Garland is a hands-on volunteer and board member for the The Blessing Board, a Pittsburgh-area nonprofit that serves victims of abuse, violence and drug addiction through the provision of food, household items and financial assistance.
Garland has been instrumental in securing needed funding for the organization, and helping volunteers meet the mission’s goal of serving the disenfranchised.
He has underwritten the total cost of several radio programs aimed at promoting the mission of The Blessing Board, and has also played a key role in securing a 24-foot box truck to pick up needed household items for those the organization serves.
Garland also volunteers on a consistent basis picking up and delivering furniture to the organization’s warehouse.
Due to Garland’s efforts, The Blessing Board is able to serve a larger percentage of the more than 400 calls that the organization has received each month from those who need help.
Garland’s leadership, financial support and volunteer work serves as a valid testimony to the vital service that The Blessing Board provides to hundreds of families.
There is no task too large that Garland will not do to advance the scope and reach of The Blessing Board, an organization whose purpose is to bridge the gap between those individuals who have ample resources to live a productive life and those who are less fortunate.
Do you know someone who works tirelessly to help the less fortunate? Nominate him or her for a Daily Point of Light Award today!
Katie Prior
Shortly after Katie Prior began playing the trumpet, her great-grandfather, a war veteran was admitted into hospice care.
Katie’s family talked about how great it would be if she could play Taps, a musical piece usually played at U.S. Military funerals, at his funeral. Sadly, he passed before she had a chance to learn the notes.
But Katie continued to practice and soon became an excellent bugler.
Through her lessons, she learned that many veterans receive a recorded playing of Taps at their funerals instead of a live performance due to the shortage of military buglers and trumpet players. Moved to action by the belief that every service man and woman deserve a live performance, Katie founded The Youth Trumpet and Taps Corps.
The Youth Trumpet & Taps Corps gives high school and college trumpet players an opportunity to use their musical gifts to serve others. Their main project is volunteering to play Taps at military veterans’ funerals and in addition to honoring our veterans, her organization also provides interesting service opportunities for teen musicians.
To date, Katie has engaged 15 high school trumpet players to volunteer to play Taps. In 2014, YTTC volunteers performed music at seven community events with audiences ranging from 25 to 500 people. Katie has raised more than $3,000 in donations to fund her program and training workshops.
Katie plans to host training workshops in Dallas, Texas, and Fort Smith, Arkansas. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin declared January 1, 2015 as “Trumpet and Taps Day” giving recognition to the Youth Trumpet & Taps Corps.
Additionally, Katie has worked with a bugler from the 145th Army Band and two funeral directors to produce a training handbook and training video to provide adequate training for her volunteers.
Do you know someone who honors our veterans in unique ways? Share their story and nominate them for a Daily Point of Light Award!
