2007
Volunteer Center Volunteer Fair and
Recognition Luncheon
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Sponsored by
Featured Speaker:
Tom Behrens, Founder and President, The Night Ministry
The featured guest speaker at the Luncheon was Tom Behrens, Founder and President of The Night Ministry and 2007 Chicagoan of the Year (Chicago Magazine). Since 1976, The Night Ministry has responded non-judgmentally to the needs of people on the nighttime streets of Chicago. The Night Ministry serves homeless and runaway youth, working poor adults, uninsured and underinsured individuals seeking medical assistance, children who are unsupervised and need a place to gather in safety, and others who have "fallen through the cracks" of our social service systems.
Through the vision, tenacity, and guidance of one man, The Night Ministry has emerged from being a one-man operation touching hundreds of lives to an organization with over 50 staff and 400 volunteers that now affects the lives of thousands on the nighttime streets of Chicago.
Tom Behrens, Speaker
Sue
Blomberg and Wendy Irwin,
Luncheon Co-Chairs
Margot
Peters, Past President
Lea Murray, Current President
Onnie Scheyer, President Elect
Barb Tubekis, Executive Direcor
AWARD RECIPIENTS
ZENGELER
CLEANERS
The Volunteer Center presents a corporate award every year for a local
business that has gone out of its way to provide support for those who
need it in the community. This year's recipient is Zengeler Cleaners.
For the last five years, Zengeler's has had a strong partnership with
the Glass Slipper Project, a Chicago non-profit, which collects new and
almost-new gowns, jewelry and handbags and gives them away during three
consecutive shopping Saturdays each spring, to thousands of high school
women who aren't able to buy their own outfits for Prom. The Volunteer
Center was proud to add the Glass Slipper Project as one of its recipient
agencies during our annual fall Make A Difference Day collection drive.
Zengelers has cleaned AND repaired gently used prom dresses for the last
five years and announced this past December that it will also store and
be the official north suburban collection point for the Glass Slipper
Project at all seven of its stores in Lake and Cook Counties in the coming
years. This includes dresses and accessories. Glass Slipper Project had
recently lost it's storage provider after 2006.
On the company's website, Tom Zengeler, President of the 150 year-old
family owned cleaner, commented that they are excited to expand their
“support for the Glass Slipper Project. He further states that their
work provides an extremely important service for at-risk teenagers at
a very vulnerable time in their lives. Finding a new storage facility
for donated dresses was a pressing need for them, one we are happy to
help them met. We look forward to another very successful collection drive
in 2007.” It's Prom season again folks. As your daughters hand you
their prom dresses vowing never to wear them again, please think of the
Glass Slipper Project and remember that the Volunteer Center will take
it off your hands this October during Make A Difference Day and Zengelers
will take it from there. Bob Zengeler is here to receive a well earned
recognition.
Bob Zengeler
HIGHCREST
MIDDLE SCHOOL - Teresa Dobson, Jen Parilla, Joe Taylor
Speaking of Make A Difference Day, it became clear to us this year that
it was time to publically recognize the efforts of Highcrest middle school
to involve an entire community in this one day collection drive for 10
social service agencies. Jen Parilla, a 5th grade teacher there announced
to the parents that she really wanted to get the students involved in
some service activities and the ball began to roll when fellow parent,
Mimi Dray - now the current President of the Wilmette Village Wide PTO,
gave Kaci Smith, one of our board members and the room parent for Jen's
class a flyer about Make A Difference Day. Only Parilla's class participated
that first year.
The following year, Kaci presented the idea to the school administration
and Principal Cathy Rosen signed on and agreed to make this an all 5th
grade event as the three faculty members joined forces to make this a
full 5th grade effort. Teresa Dobson, Jen Parilla and Joe Taylor as point
person for the staff, guided their fellow faculty through this project
and helped those very valuable PTO moms organize the volunteers to collect
and categorize the goods and load an ENTIRE gymnasium packed FULL of items
in the vans for drop-off on Make A Difference Day. Every single 5th grade
class in the school collected items as requested and the students themselves
were the ones who promoted the activity by handwriting flyers to distribute
to their neighbors, and then went back and collected their donations one
house at a time. By the time they were finished, nearly every block in
the village of Wilmette was covered and between 25 and 30 vans FULL of
clothes, food and toiletries were collected and donated to the agencies
represented at Make A Difference Day. PTO parents Mary Quirke and Mary
Beth Cyze organized the project for their fellow volunteer parents. The
past two years, Make A Difference Day has seen more gently used stuff
from Wilmette channeled into waiting needy hands than a Salvation Army
outpost.
All of us parents know that the demands placed on our faculty are huge,
and special projects, no matter how beneficial we perceive them to be,
aint gonna happen unless there's buy-in from the one who wields the chalk!
How lucky we are to live in a township where our teachers value and find
time for their students to experience the gift of giving of themselves.
Teresa
Dobson and Jen Parilla
(Joe Taylor could not be present)
Kathy
Dodd - CURE - Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy.
I like to
think of this next story as a terrific metaphor (and you'll later find
out, a bad pun) for “giving it the old college try”. Kathy
Dodd is a North Shore mother of a daughter who is 8 years old and has
epilepsy. For the last seven years, Kathy has served on the board of
an organization called CURE - Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy.
But the story is not about her board involvement, while we applaud her
for that, it is her relationship with Northwestern that is so remarkable.
Every year Northwestern hosts a Dance Marathon that the whole campus
rallies around as the proceeds - which are hundreds of thousands of
dollars are given to one selected charitable cause each year. This coveted
selection is a grueling process of verbal and written proposals that
Kathy Dodd decided she would pursue for her Epilepsy Research. She submitted
and presented her first proposal four years ago, and was rejected. Undaunted,
she rewrote it, tackled the sell from a different approach and was rejected
the next year. She did this a total of four times, each year a new proposal
and new approach, seeking input from her fellow board members until
finally - they signed on with CURE. Understand that each proposal involves
not only the emotional plea for the cause, but also what impact the
money will have, as well as how the recipient would promote it to the
university students so they would feel the same passion and fundraise
as well for the cause and involve their fellow students in the dance
marathon. The work did not end once Northwestern agreed that the Dance
Marathon proceeds would for 2006 would go toward her cause. She would
spend the next six months, 10 - 15 hours a week organizing planning
sessions and giving speeches on campus to highlight the need. The students
organize the dance marathon, but the pressure is on the selected charity
to get them there. Because of her passion, she was able to raise huge
awareness on the campus, and the dance marathon for her cause signed
up over 600 dancers grossed over $700,000 - the most ever raised by
any dance marathon at the school. The Campus had indeed rallied behind
her cause. She brought in kids who were living with epilepsy to talk
to the students, and of course shared her own personal story of her
daughter.
Kathy is also a weekly volunteer at Misericordia and is currently helping
them in their bakery. She is sharing her experience as a systems implementation
manager for Hewitt to help streamline the processing in their bakery
and is consulting with them on how to improve their packaging.
Kathy Dodd
KWBA
-- GRIFFStrong Home-Run Derby
On a Sunday
afternoon in April of 2005, Dan Griffin, a Junior at Illinois State was
on his way to a Cubs game when he was in a car accident which resulted
in his paralysis from the waist down. Dan, or “Griff” as he
is known, was one of three coaches to a KWBA (Kenilworth-Winnetka-Northfield)
travel baseball team of middle school students. Griff was the lead coach
and with his close buddies, Greg Dorka and George Smith, formed a strong
trio of coaching for the boys. According to parent team managers Donna
Voges and Ann Smith, Griff taught the boys to “have heart”
in baseball as well as in life. He fostered much more than batting and
pitching techniques in these boys' worlds.
Knowing their good friend was facing astronomical medical bills, Dorka
and Smith started the GRIFFStrong Foundation and held fundraising events
to lessen the bills. During the summer of 2005, the KWBA team was on a
bus headed for a game in Iowa, when some of the moms and the boys noticed
their two young coaches wearing the GRIFFStrong T-shirts and decided they
would also support the foundation. They contacted the 2004 team members
who knew GRIFF best and had been searching for a way to help Dan. Together,
with the endorsement and underwriting of the KWBA organization, headed
by Larry Gordon, they hosted the first ever KWBA-GRIFFStrong Homerun Derby
and Baseball Carnival. The energy and efforts by these boys was amazing,
and let's not forget the parents - we all know behind every great kid
is an even greater parent, right? Well, certainly in this case it was
true…They enlisted the support of the KWBA board, the KWBA email
system and NTHS baseball team pitchers, the Winnetka Park District, the
Strike Zone Baseball Academy and the Chicago Cubs. Through power emails,
flyers and word-of-mouth they generated a lot of enthusiasm from the boys
in the KWBA. They sold wrist bands, raffle tickets and prizes, and the
New Trier Varsity baseball team even came out and shagged balls to these
awestruck young boys. The derby included hitting contests, dunk tanks,
pick-off games and various other events. In the end, in over 2 hours,
they had raised $13,000. This is truly a pay it forward story. The boys
wanted to give back to their beloved role model.
Ironically, Dan Griffin had a dream to become a high school history teacher
so he could share with kids the lessons he learned from his teachers and
coaches. Not to be daunted by his new physical limitations, Dan decided
he would do his best to graduate on time and begin his teaching career.
He had to undergo extensive therapy at a Rehab Center and while still
in his wheelchair, he did graduate last Spring and is currently teaching
history at Lincoln Middle School in Mt. Prospect - And thanks to the hearts
and determination of those he affected in his young life he had met his
goal, and young boys learned what it really meant to hit one out of the
park… Could all the KWBA boys who helped with the GRIFFStrong Homerun
Derby, please come up here and accept our appreciation for your kindness
and energy? 13 of the original 18 are here with us today. The names of
all the KWBA players involved are Jack Wascher, Robert Voges, Joe Madigan,
Brantner Jones, Rajiv Chopra, Christopher Paik, Kevin Coquilette, Michael
Clark, Danny Smith, Cal Handelman, Charlie Moore, Mick Parks, Thomas Merriman,
Greg Smart, Jimmy Slovitt, Scott Kennedy, Tim Kinsella, and Andrew Skolnick.
13
of the original 18 KWBA team members
who made GRIFFStrong happen
Martha Drake Award - Volunteer of the Year
KRISTINE SMITH
Think back to your junior year in high school -- or if that's too
far back, think about your own kids or your friend's kids who have
been through the junior year. Frequently labeled as one of the most
pressure-ridden years of a young person's high school career, most
kids spend most of their time studying, writing junior themes, dealing
with obnoxious friends or parents and basically just keeping their
heads above water. That's why this next recipient is so remarkable.
When Kristine Smith was a Junior in high school, she undertook a project
of her own volition that raised nearly $25,000 for the awareness of
Juvenile Diabetes. Kristine's sister Jenna, four years younger than
her and coincidentally on our Junior Board, had juvenile diabetes
and Kristine wanted to help educate others about the disease.
So, after hearing about a housewalk her mother Cheryl had attended,
she wondered why she couldn't plan one on her own, charge admission
and give the proceeds to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
She contacted her neighbors on her street in Wilmette, and asked them
if they wanted to participate. Soon, the Chestnut Avenue Housewalk
for JDRF, featuring seven homes, was born. It took her a year to plan,
and she assigned family members and neighborhood kids different jobs
to accomplish the task. According to her Mom, working under Kristine
was a quite a responsibility. Says Mom, she is quite a tough taskmaster.
“Have you gotten your volunteers yet? Do they know what they
are supposed to be doing Mom?” I think you'll need more people.
Cheryl knew she wasn't allowed to take her job lightly.
Kristine promoted and marketed the walk through email lists of her
friends' moms, flyers around town, appeared in a feature in Pioneer
Press and spoke to Rotary about her event. Tickets were sold and literature
about Juvenile Diabetes was prepared and shared at the last house
in the walk - the Smiths'. She organized refreshments for the event
attendees, and she got a local florist to donate flowers in each of
the homes. A booklet was prepared with the history of each of the
homes and over 60 volunteers helped pull it all together. The day
of the walk, over 400 people came and learned how deep affection and
understanding can run in a family.
Named for our founder, the Martha Drake Volunteer of the Year Award
is given to the individual who has stepped beyond his or her comfort
zone to act as a role model, motivate others to volunteer and provide
much needed support to those in need. Kristine Smith embodies this
as a young person who ventured into new territory to help people who
live with this disease. Her selfless and mature acts as a young 16
year old have earned her this distinction.
She will be entering USC this Fall, studying International Relations
with an Emphasis on Global Business. Let us send her off with this
celebration of her generosity. Congratulations Kristine, our 2007
Volunteer of the Year.
Jenna and Kristine Smith