2006 Awards Luncheon

Volunteer Center of New Trier Township

2006 Rewards Luncheon

Remarks

Barb Tubekis, Executive Director

Thank you Margot, and thank you Julie for sharing with us the impact Habitat for Humanity has on our society. It truly is a model for volunteerism – helping others not for profit or gain, but because as human beings, we simply don’t turn our backs on those who need help. Each Spring we come together to this recognition event to celebrate the basic goodness of people and their ability to bring about change. In honor of National Volunteer Week, we will be highlighting those who put the needs of others ahead of their own for a while or even devote their lives to their causes to bring about those changes. We are thrilled we were able to offer you all a Volunteer Fair with 40 agencies representing their important causes. I hope you were able to connect with some of them to possibly find a new passion in your life. If not, many of the agencies are still here to meet you at your tables. The Volunteer Center will always do what it can to connect these fine people and their groups to you to help further your missions.

Habitat for Humanity is such a great metaphor for today’s program. Building strong, sustainable foundations, rebuilding lives, starting new, helping others with new beginnings and better, safer lives. It seems to be the thread that runs through today’s recognition recipients. I also hope that what happens here today doesn’t stay here. This is not Vegas. Please get out there and share what you hear to continue to inspire others. We live in a world where there is so much hate and greed, but the abundance of positive acts and decency just in our own little township trumps negativity every time. As social service agencies, we will always need volunteer help to carry out our missions.

I also need to publicly thank those behind the scenes of The Volunteer Center who help us help others. Without the board of directors we wouldn’t be here. You make my job easier and organize all our National Service Days we host for the community. We must thank Onnie Scheyer and Sarah Wool for running a very successful Make A Difference Day this Fall. Ann Ross and Robin Lavin for organizing our Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service that produced over 100 blankets for disaster relief efforts. We have a dedicated board that believes so much in what we do that we can’t get them to leave the board. Some have been with us for 8, 10 and even 16 years – Kathy Heitmann, our board president three years ago has now taken on our latest venture, our new High School Youth Corps and National Youth Service Day. Thanks to Kathy and her hard working committee, Linda Ball, Julie Buerger and Pat Pappageorge, we are pleased to introduce some of our High School Youth Corps members who are present today. The students come from Loyola, New Trier, North Shore Country Day and Regina and were selected by faculty for their commitment to service. Faculty advisors Tom Kucharski from New Trier and Drea Gallagha from North Shore are here today and I can’t thank you enough for sending us such outstanding reps from your schools. Unfortunately many of the Youth Corps member have testing and Senior Institutes and prior commitments today, but we are lucky enough to have the four reps from Regina here – Grace Ansani, Nell McGann, Ellen Nicolau and Lauren Strzepek. The youth corps is working on a project to support Homeless Teens through the Harbour and Night Ministry.

I am also grateful to our luncheon committee, what a job to pull this off, and thankfully, I can honestly say after helping them with final set up yesterday, this is a group that does enjoy themselves. So Sue, Wendy, Alice, Mimi, Sarah and Dina, my personal thanks for all your efforts. But I also need to thank my office mate Mel Schwartz for keeping all our data current and for engaging me in our continuous discussion of Macs vs. PC’s. We couldn’t communicate with all of you without Mel. Thanks as always for putting up with me Mel.

Every volunteer board needs a captain to steer us away from icebergs, to keep us on course. This year’s Captain, Margot Peters, has been thankfully effective in keeping us from becoming a Titanic or Poseidon. Margot’s quiet, but firm and fair leadership has been steady and appreciated by all of us. Thank you Margot for your hundreds of hours of leadership. I also look forward to sailing through next year with Lea Murray, who will continue our charted course.

CORPORATE AWARDS

I’d like to begin our program today by recognizing our corporate involvement.

Lasalle Bank/ABN AMRO

First of all, the success of this event in recent years is due in large part to the sponsorship of LaSalle Bank/ABN AMRO. Their dedication to community is enormous, as they support the outside philanthropic activities of their employees. We are but a small entity of the many agencies they support. One of their largest commitments is their effort to expand the charitable impact of the LaSalle Bank sporting events, so they have begun a LaSalle Bank Sports Charitable Fund. They formed a partnership with the Chicago Community Trust to support community needs. Money raised will be donated to charitable organizations that assist in sustaining a healthy environment and encouraging children and adults to lead healthy lifestyles. Contributions for the fund will be raised through their LaSalle Bank sporting events, including the Chicago Marathon, the Shamrock Shuffle, the LaSalle Bank Open, the LaSalle Bank Reeds Lake Run, The Run Wild for the Detroit Zoo, The Columbus Distance Classic and the LaSalle Bank Chicago Distance Classic. The Chicago marathon alone has over 50 charities involved. Congratulations and thank you LaSalle for your sponsorship and your ongoing philanthropies.

North Shore Magazine/Pioneer Press

Those of you who joined us last year will remember we gave Susan Noyes recognition for among many other large acts of community involvement and volunteerism, the fact that she and her family decided in lieu of getting their own Christmas gifts, that they would instead donate over 100 new coats to Good News Community Soup Kitchen patrons. It felt so right, Susan joined forces with us and North Shore Magazine, where she is a contributing writer, and asked if they and Pioneer Press would like to become involved in another coat collection this past Christmas. Of course it was enthusiastically endorsed and North Shore Magazine Editor Sherry Thomas, then Susan Karol and Larry Green of Pioneer Press also accepted the challenge and Warming Hearts and Hands was born. Sherry jumped right in and wrote several editorials and a logo was created by local Winnetka artist Sally Stanley, and many full page ads occurred in both magazines encouraging the community to become involved and donate the necessary funds to purchase over 400 coats this time to a variety of homeless agencies. Enter Lea Murray as our board representative to set up with her committee which agencies were to receive the coats, what sizes and how many male and female and youth coats were needed for specific agencies. Over $27,000 in contributions from the community and employees of North Shore Magazine and Pioneer Press later, over 500 recipients from eight agencies received a new, warm coat to make the season less painful and full of warmth. Readers were asked, “If a neighbor needed the coat off your back, would you give it him? Of course this community would—and did. One woman read about it and hand knit 40 scarves, while another community group donated more than 100 gently used coats. We were proud to work with North Shore Magazine and Pioneer Press on this effort and we understand plans are under way to once again warm even more hearts and hands.

Helen Sweitzer

Our next recipient, Helen Sweitzer, lives with her family in Wilmette. Her husband is a New Trier alum and she grew up in South Africa. In an effort to involve her young children with families who have a less comfortable lifestyle than theirs, Helen connected her family with an organization called Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, the IRIM. They were looking for volunteers in numerous capacities, including working with refugee children. They began by helping with the after school program and playing with the kids and helping them with alphabet basics. She and her kids made a strong connection to the young people from Somali due to her African background. In addition to the Somali children, there were Afghan, Palestinian and other nationals that were there as well. From there, Helen volunteered to teach ESL to a group of 5 Somali women and their children. She works with them once a week for three hours. This class is part of the Women’s Empowerment Program, offering these women the skills to survive in our country. The program offers sewing classes, classes on birth control and women’s health, and a variety of other programs to empower women through education. Helen is also a mentor for a woman who fled Liberia after seeing her husband and other family members killed. It is a one on one commitment as she is her teacher, advocate and friend. She’ll help her make calls to the doctor and her children’s school for her. Helen and her family also mentor another entire family from Somalia. They visit with them every weekend, taking them to the zoo, the Hancock, Navy Pier, movies, and will bring them up here to meet their friends at their kids’ soccer and basketball games and the beach and park in the summer. The Sweitzers collect toys, clothes and food for them when needed. With a quick e-mail to her friends, she is able to gather necessities immediately. She will also take neighbors and friends down to the IRIM programs with them to share the experience. The latest adventure of the Sweitzer family is helping new refugees set up their apartments, meet them at the airport and get them settled. Helen wanted us to share with you that the IRIM needs more volunteers and has many opportunities available.

Ken Meyers

The next two recipients are helping reshape our attitudes about depression and suicide. It is not our intent to compare the two, nor provide commentary on the most effective methodology, rather to applaud both for their courage in tackling this subject and helping their community become educated by devoting themselves to raising awareness about the power of depression and its potentially devastating results. I am awestruck by their strength and contagious passion.

Ken Meyers’ focus is on providing young people with information to heighten their awareness around the difficult yet real issues surrounding suicide and acquaintance rape. In February 2004 Ken lost his beloved niece, Elyssa Meyers, a young New Trier High School student to suicide. She had been a victim of an acquaintance rape which contributed to her eventual suicide. Through Ken’s personal experience, the students engage in not only the factual and clinical information but also the emotional effects that suicide and rape can have on a family and a community.
Determined to raise awareness on the two subjects, Ken has educated over 4,000 North Shore middle school and high school students and over 300 parents about both subjects since the fall 2004 through his Links-North Shore Youth Health Service Community Education presentations. In addition to his Community Education presentations, Ken is serving his second year as President of the Links’ Board of Directors. Links-North Shore Youth Health Service is a not-for-profit social service agency that supports adolescents by providing them with resources to make informed decisions about their health and sexuality. Those who know him describe him as a giving, sweet and generous man.
By interacting with teenagers, Ken’s hope is that we are arming young people with information to prevent one more suicide or one more incident of sexual abuse in our community. Helping teens get the help they need by identifying the prevalence and prevention of acquaintance rape are such important goals that Ken wishes to share. Thank you Ken, for your generosity in spirit and strength to help bring about positive solutions.

Erika’s Lighthouse

Out of our tragedies so often come our successes. Erika’s Lighthouse is an organization that is the embodiment of that statement. It was created at the Neucranz’s kitchen table in April, 2004 as dear friends grieved with Ginny and Tom over the loss of their 8th grade Washburne daughter Erika to suicide. The measure of success in this particular case is the degree to which this organization has penetrated the community, and how many tentacles of volunteers and activities have grown from this grass-roots group. They began by incorporating and becoming a 501-C-3 tax exempt organization, and created a Professional Advisory Board consisting of educational, mental health and social service professionals. There is a Board and executive council who have attended and researched mental health seminars, video and written materials which helps them support education and treatment for adolescents suffering from depression. They also have a youth board to help kids become a part of the solution and help plan events. One of the best descriptors of Erika’s Lighthouse is the first line from its mission: Erika’s Lighthouse: A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression, is a charitable, educational organization dedicated to protecting the precious lives of children suffering from minor and major depression disorders.

They helped fund and implement a depression awareness and intervention program called Red Flags that includes the video “Claires’ Story” at Washburne School, where students, their parents, and all school staff are helped to recognize and respond appropriately to signs of depression and related mental disorders. There is much discussion and evaluation with the students. Erika’s Lighthouse has an upcoming walk-a-thon and fundraiser and encourages all to join in this effort to help children and their families deal with depression. Their volunteers for their events number in the hundreds.

We cannot go back in time, but we can move forward and arm ourselves with the necessary information to help each other get the help that is needed. Although not all the board members and major players in Erika’s Lighthouse could be here, we are lucky enough to have five of their core members. Could Ginny Neuckranz, Elaine Tinberg, Susan McGill, Jeni Spinney and Eileen Hovey please join me up here so we can thank you appropriately for your important work?

LAKE COOK HELPING HANDS

Much like other agencies, The Volunteer Center goes into a slower pace in the summer, and we use that time to regroup and make plans for the coming year. We are on a reduced schedule and when school is back in session, we are back full time. On August 30th, I stepped into my office for the first full day of the year. What is normally a day in which I ease into our busy Fall season, began as a hurricane, because of a hurricane. Katrina had just ravaged New Orleans and Gulf states, and our country and specifically our community stepped into its “gotta help” mode. The phone was “HOT”, the emails came even quicker. We tried hard to stop people from jumping in their cars to drive down there ill prepared to help.
Not a week later I got a simple email on a Sunday morning from Nina Schroeder and Linda Ginsburg, two women from Glencoe who had just learned that hurricane evacuees were heading to Lake County to settle for an unknown length of time. Nina and Linda created Lake Cook Helping Hands or LCHH from the Serve the Homeless Program at Congregation Am Shalom to assist and support the PADS organization – PADS stands for Public Action to Deliver Shelter and Supportive Services. LCHH’s mission was to obtain goods and distribute them to evacuees and also to collect monetary donations to be used for direct services and goods for evacuees.

As soon as I got the email, I forwarded it on to our broadcast list of about 300 people who are always on the prowl for the hottest opportunities. So between the many others on their original email and I, the message was networked to thousands on the north shore. You’ve just gotta love the email capability. Now we’ve got all the busy people out there loading up their minivans with anything not tied down in their homes, eager to donate and help out. Within a day truckloads of stuff were heading north to the PADS sites. So much stuff was collected so quickly Am Shalom looked like it was hit by a hurricane. So a drop off center was rented on Skokie Blvd and Dundee in Northbrook that became the warehouse for evacuees to shop for their essential items, all donated by the North Shore residents. The warehouse as a matter of fact was just recently closed down and has been maintained all this time to help out approximately 150 displaced persons. Both Nina and Linda state that they couldn’t have sustained this effort and organized the items and the myriads of volunteers to help sort, prepare and man the program if it weren’t for Claudia Schwartz, who they feel truly kept it fully functioning. Volunteers were needed Saturday mornings and weekdays to stay on top of the drop off site and keep it organized and available for our new neighbors to shop. Claudia kept that organized. Because of the generous donations from the community, LCHH was able to provide Cell phones, Target and Jewel Gift cards, hot dinners on a daily basis to those families still around in the winter, continued opportunity to pick up items in the donation warehouse. Lake Cook Helping Hands is an extraordinary example of a community at work! It was developed overnight, supported without question and structured with flexibility and compassion to accommodate a traumatic situation for people in need. LCHH hopes that the generosity and volunteer energy they inspired will continue as people seek ways to service the everyday homelessness that occurs on the North Shore. Nina, Linda and Claudia, please come up and collect this one last item.

Martha Drake Volunteer of the Year Award

Lake Cook Helping Hands was not the only group of people who stepped up to help last Fall. A day after Katrina hit, Nic Zerebny called and suggested we form a long term committee to help rebuild the South once the mud and debris and infrastructure had been settled. So Nic and about 20 community members met many times last Fall in an effort to help organize groups of us to help Habitat rebuild through the Operation Home Delivery Program. We all knew it would take some time for the Habitat headquarters to get this organized, and we know we have interested people on the ready to help. Nic went down to Americus Georgia in December to help build the staging area to build these portable houses and he is remaining in contact with them as the process unfolds. This is going to take a long time to rebuild so we have our group ready to promote whenever they are. In addition to Nic, we learned about huge efforts from every single one of our township schools, public, private and parochial and all grade levels that collected money, adopted schools in Missippi and completely restocked them with desks, supplies, AV equipment. Our schools also collected kitchen supplies for a group of employees in the south whose homes were wiped out. There were car washes, lemonade stands, walk a thons, read a thons, and any type of item collected you could imagine. Marilyn and Bobbie Vender collected mens and women’s clothing, and the list goes on and on. One thing we recognize this area has is an abundance of heart and generosity and frankly a lot of stuff! We were amazed at the new efforts that popped up almost daily. So much so we couldn’t keep on top of it. Basically, there was not a school, religious institution or business that did not get involved in some way in this relief effort. Whether it was dropping dollar bills in cans or donating an 18 wheeler, a driver and candy to get the massive quantity of supplies down to Mississippi, we all did something. We are here when we’re needed and obviously judging from today, simply when we can. So it is in this spirit that I would like to graciously grant this year’s Martha Drake, Volunteer of the Year Award to our community that is so overflowing with a commitment to helping others in a crisis.

Named for our founder, The Martha Drake Volunteer of the Year Award is given every year to the individual or individuals who: