2006 Honorees

Vogel decided to raise funds for Jarod's medical expenses. She organized three car washes, enlisting neighbors and volunteers from Sonrise Christian School and Christ's Church of the Valley. "The San Gabriel Valley Tribune" ran announcements about the event. And on Oct. 22, 2005, they washed 150 cars -- in drizzling rain. Raised: $6,000.

"The whole thing -- from beginning to end -- was meant to be," she says.

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits military families via Christ's Church of the Valley,San Dimas, Calif.

Extreme volunteering: Daring urban river cleanup - Milwaukee

Working along 75-foot-tall, overgrown riverbanks in freezing drizzle, amid clumps of dead fish, is no treat.

Grappling with 6 tons of trash, including scrapped shopping carts, bikes, tires, a wheelchair -- even a 15-foot-long, snaking guardrail -- is no treat, either.

But it is a treat to have a clean river in your neighborhood. That's what 80 Milwaukee South Side residents of all ages -- half of whom were first-time volunteers -- learned on Make A Difference Day.

"The difference is staggering," says Derek Dunn, 24, who researched Make A Difference Day online and helped organize the Kinnickinnic River cleanup through Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers. "This massive effort was the community coming out and reclaiming its river."

The work took heart as well as muscle. This particular waterway bisects two blue-collar communities -- one mostly white, the other Hispanic; the united effort forged new friendships. The area also marks the point where the riverbed changes from concrete to a natural bottom. Concrete channelization fuels flash flooding, which carries with it more garbage, erosion and drowning risk.

"The backs of the community have historically been turned on the Kinnickinnic," says Ben Gramling, of Sixteenth Street Community Health Center, which recruited helpers from the predominately Hispanic community it serves. "That day, residents saw what was going on, stopped by in their cars, asked questions and were exposed to this activity, which really was quite foreign. It was part of a huge first step -- raising awareness that the river is even there."

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Friendsof Milwaukee's Rivers.

Real estate agents are sold on helping 5,000 non-buyers - Chicago

It's a fact of business life: Saturday finds real estate agents chasing commissions. But one special Saturday in Chicago, employees at Baird & Warner turned off their cellphones and spent the day improving the lives of an estimated 5,000 needy people.

Among Make A Difference Day accomplishments by the 300 executives, agents and staff members: a face lift for group homes, landscaping enhancements for schools, and a refurbished children's play area and new swing set for a downtown women's shelter. Donors provided gutters, paint, tile, linens, window treatments, light fixtures, furniture and landscaping.

"We were just overwhelmed with how good it made us feel," says agent Laura Miller, who painted and landscaped at a suburban homeless shelter.

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Orchard Village, Skokie, Ill.

Students go far to reopen hurricane-ravaged school - Hendersonville, Tenn.

Classroom buildings were stripped to steel frames, sacred artifacts steeped in muck, records lost to mold. Only the namesake statue at Our Lady Academy had been miraculously spared when Hurricane Katrina demolished the beachfront, all-girls Catholic school in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

In the aftermath, a text message between junior Victoria Romano, 16, and a new friend, Robert Peel, 17, of Pope John Paul II High School in Hendersonville, Tenn., set off a new whirlwind of caring.

Seven weeks later, for Make A Difference Day, the Tennessee students dispatched a donated semi-truck loaded with 95 student desks, a new commercial freezer, tables, lounge furniture, filing cabinets, carts, household appliances and school supplies on a nine-hour trip to help Our Lady Academy accomplish its Nov. 1 reopening.

Five Tennessee school friends, led by hockey player Danny Molnar, 17, delivered the goods. Then, over the course of two days, they did $20,000 of work to a teacher's home, tearing out drywall to the window-level black-mold line and clearing debris.

"Once we started, we didn't want to stop," Danny says. "Your priorities kind of change."

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Pope John Paul II High School, Hendersonville, Tenn.

Boys & Girls Club showers the homeless with towels - Broken Arrow, Okla.

Each day, 500 people come to Tulsa's Day Center for the Homeless, lining up eagerly to use its 15 showers. But there was a problem: The masses had access to only 100 clean towels, so some didn't get a turn.

When swimmers and staffers at the Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club read in the Tulsa World about the towel shortage, they dove into action. (After all, who better to empathize over a lack of towels than a bunch of swimmers?)

The result: a snappy collection of 300 towels.

On Make A Difference Day, 45 volunteers ages 6 to 60-something targeted motorists in suburban Broken Arrow for help by dramatically draping towels across a makeshift clothesline and waving towels at traffic. They even held their director and assistant director "hostage" at the top of a 20-foot donated cherry picker and "ransomed" them only by collecting towels from passersby.

"What everybody walked away with was how easy it is to make a difference in somebody's life," says Shelley Persinger, 44, the club's aquatics director who led the drive. "What's so insignificant to us is huge to someone who doesn't have something."

Think about that the next time you're in the shower.

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club of Broken Arrow, Okla.

Habitat home rises -- this time from the ashes - Albany, GA

In 2004, calamity struck. The home of Donald Kelly, 47, a single father of two young children, burned down, and the family was displaced to a one-bedroom apartment. The fire destroyed more than a structure: It ravaged Kelly's effort to provide stability and a decent home life for his children.
Neighbors materialized to lend a hand.

You see, that house had been a dream that was realized on Make A Difference Day 2001, when Kelly and Habitat for Humanity built it.

"As soon as the fire happened, we wanted to fix it," says Stacey Odom-Driggers, Habitat executive director in the Flint River affiliate region. "Donald is a hard worker, and this is a good family."

And that's why, on two different Make A Difference Days, one family got two new homes.

On Oct. 22, 2005, volunteers began arriving at 6:30 a.m. to put up the frame for the house. As they started, many neighbors emerged from their homes to pitch in. "Normally that doesn't happen," Odom-Driggers says, "but since the Kellys were already part of the neighborhood, everyone wanted to help."

On moving day, volunteers presented Kelly's kids with a memento from the old house -- a wooden nameplate salvaged from the ashes, freshly repainted and ready for hanging. For Kelly, it was the homecoming he'd longed for. "Habitat helped me and helps other folks who have nothing."

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Flint River Habitat for Humanity, Albany, Ga.

A close brush for 302 uninsured people - Burlington, NC

Jeri Loy, 49, didn't have money or insurance -- just pain. But when she arrived at the Open Door Dental Clinic of Alamance County on Make A Difference Day, no one asked how she would pay for an extraction and three fillings. Dental volunteers just went to work. "I needed the tooth pulled," Loy says. "There wasn't hardly [anything] there. Just pain."

Emergency dental care is available to needy adults two nights per week at Open Door. But for Make A Difference Day, organizers expanded, offering basic, preventive and emergency dental care at a two-day, 30-chair marathon session in a MASH-style setup at a Burlington, N.C., church hall. "Needy folks really have nowhere to go," says Steven Slott, 53, the dentist who established the two-day clinic in his town and sees it as an annual Make A Difference Day event.

Slott and 174 other volunteers saw 302 patients, doing $80,000 worth of work total. Many of the needy began lining up each day well before the volunteers arrived at 7:30 a.m. "So many people are in pain, and they've been living with it for months," Slott says. "This is satisfying because once we see them, they're better."

Kim Hammersmith, 24, a second-year student at the University of North Carolina's School of Dentistry, oversaw several gnarly procedures. "Some patients just had teeth rotted to the gumline," she says. "Others have had toothaches for a year -- and we just fixed them."

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Open Door Dental Clinic of Alamance County, N.C.

A vehicle for good - National

If you took your General Motors car to the dealership for servicing Oct. 22, 2005, you may have spied something special among the grease racks: an opportunity to help children.

Nationwide, GM dealers held fundraisers, including oil- and filter-change marathons, galas and silent auctions, raising money to fulfill the wishes of at least 150 seriously ill children via the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The enterprise has been thoroughly test-driven: In three years, GM and United Auto Workers-General Motors have raised $3.5 million on Make A Difference Day to grant 548 heartfelt wishes.

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Make-A-Wish Foundation of America.

Town builds 10-year tradition - Westport, Conn.

Each October, Greg and Emilie Wrapp's basement in Westport, Conn., is deluged with sports equipment -- thousands of shoes, balls, bats, lacrosse sticks and pads -- gathered by sons Paul and Bryan to give to needy kids. "We live in a town that is so privileged, and we drive by places that aren't," says Bryan, a high school senior. "When we bring this stuff to those towns, the kids are so grateful."

He's just one of 3,500 Westport residents who gear up each year for Make A Difference Day. For the past 10 years, the town has declared the last week of October "Make A Difference Week," and much of southwestern Connecticut has benefited.

Projects this year included a computer collection for poor children in Bridgeport, a sewing project in which 35 Girl Scout troops made 370 fleece pillows for ill children (see photo below), a coat drive by Coleytown Middle School students and a canned-goods collection to fill area food pantries.

"It's just the right thing to do," says organizer Barbara Pearson-Rac of their efforts. "We really want to foster a sense of giving in our community."

They certainly succeeded.

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits United Way of Westport-Weston, Conn.

Children bake bread for needy - Wayland, Mass.

It started as a response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That year, recalling comforting memories of her mother's Irish bread, Karen Kiefer and neighbor Juliette Fay asked kids in their Boston suburb to bake bread for police officers, firefighters, postal workers and the needy. That year, about 400 lovingly packaged, child-baked loaves were distributed.

By Make A Difference Day 2005, Spread the Bread and its young bakers had delivered more than 9,000 loaves, nearly half of them on the national day of giving. "People really want to give," says Kiefer, 45. "We are just giving them a real simple road map so they can do it."

On Oct. 22, 2005, the bread spreaders expanded their effort and organized a community festival to spotlight volunteer opportunities. About 500 people turned out for food, fun and philanthropy on a Wayland athletic field. Naturally, bread -- 800 fresh loaves -- was part of the fun, much of it sent that day via a fleet of volunteers' minivans to agencies serving the needy.

Katie Stack, 17 -- who has spread bread since she was 12 -- helped her family deliver 1,000 leftover festival bagels to a Boston homeless shelter the next day. "It was just cool," she says, "to do something good for people and get the whole town involved."

$10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman benefits Volunteer and Service Learning Center at Boston College.