Honorees
| NEBRASKA
STATE AWARDS: Lexington. Supporters of the Lexington Public Library use $1,000 Wal-Mart grant to promote literacy. Librarians like Ruth Seward had noticed that some children attending story time at the library seemed unfamiliar with pop-up books and nursery rhymes. And in this small town, where jobs are precious, many families who came here to work in the meat-packing plant speak little English. The library decided that "discovery packs" would help parents enhance their children's early education and better prepare children for their entrance to school. With the money from Wal-Mart, the library bought packs filled with puzzles, puppets, books and games. On Oct. 24, community volunteers taught families how to use the packs designed for preschool, primary age and intermediate age in Spanish and English. In addition, Lexington residents Mitzi and Ron Leininger used Make A Difference Day to unveil a rack they had built on which to hang the discovery packs. Their participation was in appreciation of the library and its use by their children and grandchildren for the past 30 years. $2,000 award benefits Lexington Foundation. North Platte. Handymen help elderly with "honey-do" lists. For two weeks, Wilma Neal, 68, had had to feel her way through her darkened kitchen to find the remaining working light switch in the room. For three months, Twilla Stanley, 64 and disabled, had been unable to work her beloved jigsaw puzzles because of a broken light fixture. For Neal, Stanley and 10 other North Platte residents, Make A Difference Day became a day to fix the small, but important things in their homes. North Platte's Retired & Senior Volunteers Program (RSVP) sponsored the first-ever repair project. The needy were found by word-of-mouth, the RSVP newsletter and fliers delivered by Meals on Wheels in early October. Seven volunteer handymen - retired plumbers and electricians - were solicited. RSVP chose 19 jobs at 12 homes. $2,000 award benefits United Way.
Beatrice Daily Sun. More than 40 fifth- and sixth-graders from Diller Community School District rebuilt their worn-out playground.
STATE AWARDS: Las Vegas. Parent-teacher groups at two elementary schools raise $2,000 for 4,200 books for low-income Hispanic school. In early October the students at two Las Vegas elementary schools - Louis Wiener Jr., and Charlotte Hill Elementary - with the help of the PTA, decided to give something of their own to a neighboring elementary school. They collected new and good-condition used books for the 900 mostly Hispanic, low-income students at John S. Park Elementary. Many of the books came from the students home collections. In 15 days they accumulated 4,200 books and raised $2,000 for the school - enough for each child to have four books. On Oct. 24, the volunteers gathered and sorted the books for a special presentation that Monday. $2,000 award benefits John S. Park Elementary. Reno. Lawyers donate 1,350 men's and women's business suits to three organizations that help people keep or find jobs. Did you hear the one about the lawyers who gave away nice work clothes for Make A Difference Day? They called them "lawsuits." It happened in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., where the Young Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Nevada - "young" defined as either a lawyer aged 36 or younger, or a practice under 3 years old - appealed to members of the Washoe County Bar Association in Reno and the Clark County Bar Association in Las Vegas to donate used clothing. Oct. 22 and 23 in Reno and Oct. 24 in Las Vegas, 950 business suits and 450 women's professional dresses were collected for three groups that assist retarded or disadvantaged citizens wanting to work. The money saved on cleaning - about $650 - was donated along with 700 suits, shoes, ties and belts to the Washoe Association for Retarded Citizens in Reno, which runs four thrift stores. That agency teamed up with Project ReStart, where low-income job seekers were given a voucher for a free suit and accessories. Stacey Brown, Santos' counterpart in Las Vegas, collected "lawsuits" at a mall Oct. 24, where 18 volunteer lawyers repeated the essence of the group's 1997 Make A Difference Day "Ask a Lawyer" project: giving free counsel to the public. $2,000 award benefits Volunteer Lawyers of Washoe County and Clark County Pro Bono Project.
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Bruce Shapiro, a physician with the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, and 150 of its patients recognized children as the "gifts of life" by donating the proceeds of the center's 10th anniversary party - more than $4,000 worth of toys and clothing - to a facility for neglected and abused children. Reno Gazette-Journal. United Blood Services kicked off its annual holiday coat drive for the needy. They also began painting a mural for the Good Shepherd Lutheran Clothes Closet, which distributes the coats.
STATE AWARDS: Concord. City businesses rally to help homeless. When a homeless intervention worker spoke in early fall 1998 to the downtown business owners of Concord, N.H., her photos of Concord's homeless - taken under bridges, in alleys and in abandoned buildings - were shocking. "Ninety percent of these people didn't realize we had as many homeless people in this area as we do," said Mike Cohen, owner of Pitchfork Records, a downtown electronics and music store, who had asked Jodie Wright to make the presentation to Downtown Concord Inc. (DCI). Board members decided to piggyback a project for the homeless with its annual Halloween Howl, when children trick-or-treat, decorate pumpkins and go on hay rides in downtown. Using the slogan "Homelessness is Scary," the project raised $1,000 in canisters at 30 businesses. About 250 people brought to Cohen's store canned food, sleeping bags, blankets, clothing, tents and toiletries worth an estimated $10,000. The donations filled a medium-sized moving van. One citizen donated a VCR to a formerly homeless woman. Another woman set up her own table at the local Sam's Club and auctioned chances on the hot toy of 1998, a Furby. She raised $900, which Sam's Club matched. $2,000 award benefits Community Action Program. Keene. An estimated 600 Keene State College students participated in Make A Difference Day supervised by Student Volunteer Coordinator Abby Webster, a freshman. The Friday before kicked off the sixth annual Keene Fall festival, which attracts 40,000 people to the area. The fall festival weekend focus is on breaking the record for the most carved jack-o-lanterns. Eager to lend a hand in the festivities, an estimated 20 students helped children at the Wheelock School carve pumpkins. A number of students, many from Phi Sigma Sigma sorority, Phi Mu Delta and the college's Habitat for Humanity chapter, spent Oct. 24 painting. By day's end, two fences around community centers at the Keene Housing Authority were freshly painted, as well as an American Red Cross building. Five students spent the day playing games and talking with children at the Cedarcrest Children's Home, for disabled children who cannot live at home. There was also a clothes and can drive by other campus organizations. $2,000 award benefits Manadnock Habitat for Humanity.
Concord Monitor. Two dozen people in Center Ossipee replaced the leaking roof of the house of a family whose mother had died Oct. 16, shortly after giving birth to twins. Connie Billings, a self-employed logger, had been prepared to tackle the project until the sudden death of his wife, Debbie, 43, left him alone to raise their five small children. (Dover) Foster's Daily Democrat. Thirty men who had resided at the Somersworth Group Home - for boys ages 12 to 18 who have left abusive homes or need supervision - returned to the live-in facility to share their success stories with the 22 current residents. The day-long event included softball and basketball games and a barbecue dinner. The Keene Sentinel. About 30 dance students of middle-school age from the New Hampshire Dance Institute gave two free modern-dance shows in an effort to expose a wider audience to the performing arts. One was for 500 people at a Nashua conference on gifted and talented children; the other was at the annual Pumpkin Festival in Keene, which drew 40,000 people. (Lebanon-Hanover) Valley News. The volunteer instructors at both sites of the High Horses Therapeutic Riding Program - which provides riding instruction for children and adults with physical, emotional or mental disabilities - held community events: in Cornish, a horse show for riders to demonstrate the skills they have learned and confidence they have gained, and in Corinth, Vt., an open house explaining the benefits of program. Nashua Telegraph. On four weekend days, 32 members of the Manchester Kiwanis Club volunteered to keep open the historic Weston Observatory, which sits atop a hillside in Manchester. The 100-year-old granite structure is closed the rest of the year, but on these two weekends nearly 1,000 people climbed the observatory and experienced the view of autumn foliage.
NATIONAL AWARD: Vernon. Vernon Township High School students read about Make A Difference Day in their local newspaper and decided to volunteer at their local soup kitchen. But there wasn't one. So they created one - temporarily - and then went on to trigger events in the adult world that they hope will bring hungry residents permanent help. It began when teens discovered the nearest soup kitchen was a long bus ride away. Not fair, they reasoned: If the needy could afford to take the bus, they wouldn't need free food. So Oct. 24, they opened a one-day soup kitchen in the Vernon High cafeteria. On the menu: soup for 60. Needy families packed up all the free groceries they wanted from half a ton of food - bagels, vegetables - collected by the school's community service club. But the students were still hungry for a permanent solution. So they studied hunger in their community and on May 1 were to lay the facts before government and business officials. At last the teens may a satisfied feeling: They hope their area's first permanent soup kitchen to open on the next Make A Difference Day. $10,000 award will help start Harvest House soup kitchen.
STATE AWARDS: Bridgewater. Three suburban teens establish foundation to encourage bone marrow donation and hold walk-a-thon for the cause. Too young to donate bone marrow to help cancer patients, high school sophomore Jean Lutkenhouse and two friends did the next best thing: They held a Make A Difference Day walk-a-thon that raised $5,500 for the cause. Along the way, the three Bridgewater, N.J., teens established a foundation called Embrace Life to encourage bone marrow donations. The publicity for the walk began raising awareness of the need for these lifesaving transplants. Proceeds from the walk-a-thon will defray the $40 cost of the blood test used to type donors. As many as 137 potential donors could be tested thanks to that money. $2,000 award benefits HLA Registry. Nutley. Mother and daughter give beautiful gifts to cancer patients. Claire Centrella and daughter Melissa, 21, who is severely disabled with a neurological disorder, set out to add a little sunshine to the lives of women who had recently been diagnosed with cancer and have been or will be going through chemotherapy. Twenty-five volunteers solicited funds by standing at traffic lights in the 10 participating towns, collection cans in hand, on Oct. 24. Collection cans and balloons were also put in local businesses. Hundreds of cancer patients entered a drawing, but the number of winners would be determined by the amount of money raised. $1,700 was collected enabling five women to receive discounted gift certificates. They were each given a $125 gift certificate for shopping, a $160 gift certificate for a spa, and a $125 gift certificate for a wig store. $2,000 award benefits Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.
Bayonne. Police Officer Antonio Nardini and Bayonne's finest (1997 national award) first led schoolchildren and community volunteers to stock nine empty food pantries. The next year, they upped their crew to 20,000 and the pantries to 10. This year's totals: 20,000 volunteers, 20 computers, more facilities helped, two 24-foot trailers jammed with food, and new futures for a few teens. Nardini explains: He recruited 50 mentally and physically challenged volunteers, ages 10-50. "We teamed up the disabled with the high school kids sorting food," Nardini says, "and I think we changed some careers that day. Those kids' eyes and minds were opened wide." $1,000 award from benefits Youth of Bayonne Foundation, Inc. The Home News Tribune. Spearheded by the New Jersey Fitness and Sports Foundation, more than 150 volunteers spent Make A Difference Day telephoning season ticket holders and franchises requesting they donate tickets they won't be able to use to needy kids. Make A Difference Day resulted in more than 1,200 entertainment and sports event tickets for needy children. The (Bridgewater) Courier-News. Ashlee Drozd, 14, wondered if more animals could be adopted from the full-to-capacity Somerset Regional Animal Shelter if they were more presentable. So she singlehandedly organized a pet fashion show, securing donations from groomers, food donations for guests and even a donated carpet as a runway. Ten dogs and eight of the 20 cats were adopted. (Cherry Hill) Courier-Post. Adam Hornstine and his organization, MAGIC (Morristown Alliance for Goodwill and Interest in the Community), organized a food drive, playground cleanup, neighborhood beautification program and a church renovation in Camden. The Jersey (City) Journal. The Irvington Jr. Environmental Club, whose members are third- through eighth-graders, held an anti-graffiti and general cleanup day. They even got assemblyman Craig Stanley to help. (Neptune) Asbury Park Press. The CentraState Health Awareness Center initiated a community-wide baby shower and used-clothing drive for Birthright of Freehold, which assists pregnant women of all backgrounds. Items such as maternity wear, baby clothes and diapers were collected. (Parsippany) Daily Record. In Randolph, 85 members of the sixth-grade Middle School Ministry at Resurrection Parish decorated pumpkins and delivered them to homebound seniors and shut-ins. The Press of Atlantic City. 10-year-old activist Leanna Dattolo motivated classmates to help stranded marine mammals. Saving and rehabilitating one animal can cost thousands, so the Marine Mammal Stranding Center allows adoption of mammals for a nominal fee. Leanna adopted a seal, then encouraged nearly 600 fourth- and sixth-graders of the George L. Hess Complex School to hold bake sales and adopt five seals, with 20 more on the horizon. (Toms River) Ocean County Observer. A dozen members of the American Brotherhood of Conservationists, concerned about pollution in the Barnegat Bay coming from run-off through storm sewers, stenciled more than 150 storm water drains with a blue fish symbol and "no dumping." The (Trenton) Trentonian. The Bristol Township Senior Center raised $8,000 at an outdoor carnival and indoor craft bazaar and auction for community intergenerational programs, Senior Net Learning and Online Centers, and distributed food and gift baskets to homebound seniors.
STATE AWARDS: Santa Fe. Youth group leads fund-raising to help teen moms, kids in foster care, homeless. 450 volunteers from Our Lady of Guadalupe Youth Group and community members held a day of diverse fund-raising to benefit homeless shelters, children in foster care, the elderly, teen moms and a blood bank. Everything from an enchilada dinner, to a dance, to selling concessions at a car show helped raise more than $1,500 for disposable diapers, needed items for children in foster care and adults in adult protective services, and building funds for the Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity. Numerous winter coats and blankets were collected and donated to two homeless shelters. Volunteers also held a blood drive from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., resulting in 14 pints of blood for United Blood Services. $2,000 award benefits Our Lady of Guadalupe Youth Ministry. Santa Fe. The gardens of popular Amelia White Park, located along the historic Old Santa Fe Trail, were groomed and cleaned on Make A Difference Day by 40 community volunteers. Led by the Santa Fe Garden Club and the Old Santa Fe Trail Neighborhood Association, white and Hispanic citizens, ages 5-80, spent seven hours planting roses, pruning, mulching, weeding, painting walls and cleaning walkways. Residents near the park (whose homes range from $250,000 to $2 million) felt the park was poorly maintained and needed to be spruced up. Local businesses donated paint, plants and other supplies. The city of Santa Fe provided tools. $2,000 award benefits Santa Fe Garden Club.
Gallup. Low-income, Native American school kids' home-grown effort. a soup supper to benefit the homeless. Roosevelt Elementary School pupils in Gallup, N.M., sold homemade vegetable soup, raising more than $500 for two agencies serving the homeless. Eventually their plan is to have a greenhouse to grow their own vegetables and seed an ongoing "soup kitchen." For Make A Difference Day, each classroom brought in a specific item for the supper, from canned or fresh vegetables to plastic bowls and paper cups. On Oct. 24, about 30 volunteers chopped, peeled and simmered three huge pots of vegetable soup. They sold 180 bowls at $3 a bowl, taking leftover ingredients and soup to the homeless shelter and a home for the elderly. One soup taster was Andrew Urbina, vice president of Gallup Transient Relief Services, a volunteer group that helped about 1,500 stranded travelers last year. Although the $253 his group received from the effort was substantial ("more than some churches give all year"), he was more impressed by the kids: "It really made us feel good that our children are doing good things." $1,000 award benefits Roosevelt Elementary School.
(Carlsbad) Current-Argus. Habitat for Humanity of Carlsbad Area organized nearly 100 volunteers to help build a house. Gallup Independent. Two hundred volunteers from Thoreau gathered to raise money for the future Castle Rock Sportsplex Center - what will be the only recreational facility in a community that houses several schools. Roswell Daily Record. Gun violence had rocked the community all too often. So students Renee Alexander and Tashina Tarter, in conjunction with DECA and the Association of Marketing Students, gathered at a shopping mall to solicit more than 600 "I Pledge Against Gun Violence" promises. The Santa Fe New Mexican. Catholic Daughters of the Americas joined with the youth group of the Santa Maria de la Paz Church to help build a house for Habitat for Humanity, feed more than 65 people, visit and take care of the sick and homeless, and furnish a shelter.
STATE AWARDS: Forestville. Schoolchildren and community honor memory of late Make A Difference Day organizer. Make A Difference Day 1998 marked Forestville Central School's eighth year of participation. Last spring, assistant principal Pam Cleary died after a short bout with ovarian cancer. Not only did the community lose a beloved friend and neighbor but they lost the woman who for the past three years had coordinated the school's ambitious Make A Difference Day efforts. This year's project was dedicated to Pam's memory. This rural school situated in western New York raised $4,570 for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute's pediatric unit. The project, dubbed "For the Love of Pam," included hosting a spaghetti dinner, taking pledges for reading books, collecting cans, and holding dances and bake sales. The local sheriff's department gave out free safety helmets to needy children, and students recorded books on tape for young cancer patients and sewed teddy bears for them as well. $2,000 award benefits Forestville Central School. Utica. Men adopt boys, seal their contract to stay in school and stay well-groomed. A shove and a haircut. That's what the Greater Utica Sunrise Rotary and Mohawk Valley chapter of Frontiers International gently gave 15 African-American inner-city boys on Make A Difference Day - and will continue to give for the next 10 months. "The children have a hard time coping in school because of not having proper grooming," says Dorthea E. King, a member of both organizations. "Most come from homes without adult men, so spending time with a caring adult [such as a barber] is a plus." In return for twice-monthly haircuts, the boys, 7-12, promise to attend school and strive for personal growth. "You can see the difference," King says. "They're more positive about themselves." $2,000 award benefits St. Martin DePorres of Catholic Charities, Thea Bowman House, Cosmopolitan Center.
New York City. For the second year, New York City Housing Authority residents (1998 national award) banned together in all five boroughs of the city to help others instead of receiving help. Three times as many participants were involved in 31 programs, including a youth hospital volunteer program begun last Make A Difference Day. $1,000 award benefits Housing Authority Symphony.
(Binghamton) Press & Sun-Bulletin. Thirty volunteers manned shovels and wheelbarrows to move piles of dirt in their efforts to build a wheelchair-accessible baseball field for kids 6-18 with physical, emotional and developmental disabilities. The project was done for the Challenger League of the Southern Tier, which uses baseball to strengthen the social and developmental skills of children with disabilities. (Dunkirk) Evening Observer. The National Honor Society of Dunkirk High School and citizens of Dunkirk paraded through the city to raise awareness about living substance-free. (Elmira) Star-Gazette. The Steuben Churchpeople Against Poverty Inc. repaired a dilapidated and abandoned four-unit apartment building, which now houses four special-needs residents. The (Glens Falls) Post-Star. Students at Big Cross Street School collected food for the poor and hungry in Russia. The project gave students a geography/civic lesson and raised their awareness about the needy worldwide. The Ithaca Journal. Reachout '98 hosted Family Fun Day as a means of bringing families together and raising money for Third World countries. Through raffles, spaghetti dinners and other activities the group raised more than $8,000 for the needy in Nigeria, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. The (Jamestown) Post-Journal. Fifty Special Olympic bowlers collected food and money for a soup kitchen and money for an animal shelter. (Kingston) Daily Freeman. Students at West Hurley Elementary School raised $266.25 and collected 65 cans of dog and cat food and 139 pounds of dry food for the Ulster County SPCA. New York Daily News. For the 25th teaching anniversary of four teachers at Most Precious Blood School in Brooklyn, students made 25 baskets of silver-plated items to raffle for three charities. Niagara (Falls) Gazette. Cub Scout Pack 841 cleaned a park, the grounds of a nursing home and the 1.6 miles between them. Then the Scouts visited with the residents of the Heritage Manor nursing home and donated a 7-foot artificial Christmas tree and ornaments. The Olean Times Herald. The Kids Care Club of Cattaraugus County raised $1,100 and collected goods for a domestic abuse shelter. (Oswego) Palladium-Times. Led by Cornell Cooperative Extension, Tioga County and Tioga County Legislature, 4,284 volunteers worked on 92 projects county-wide. Poughkeepsie Journal. Premier National Bank Inc. hosted a party for matched and unmatched children within Big Brothers/Big Sisters to increase the awareness of the program, attempt to match any unmatched children and provide a day of fun. (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle. United Church of Marion's Youth Group collected 75 bikes - 25 donated by Wal-Mart - and parts for the Bicycle Ministry at Asbury First United Methodist Church, which provides a means of transportation for those unable to get to job training and interviews. The group also arranged a storage area for the bikes. The (Saratoga Springs) Saratogian. State Farm North Atlantic Regional Office coordinated 650 volunteers on 35 projects including building a Habitat for Humanity home, clothing and food drives and a highway cleanup. The (Schenectady) Daily Gazette. The first annual Dog Day Afternoon, sponsored by co-workers at Jardine Insurance and Mohawk & Hudson River Humane Society, set up a multigroup adoption and education clinic. The day resulted in the adoption of 14 dogs, 26 cats, two birds, a bunny and a ferret and raised nearly $2,000. The (Troy) Sunday Record. American Association of Retired Persons No. 3991 baked and sold cakes, pies, cookies and breads to raise $600 for "Clothe A Child," which outfits needy children in the Troy area. (Utica) Observer-Dispatch. Utica Community Action Inc.'s Youth Corps, a group of at-risk volunteers, converted a dilapidated property into a permanent home for foster children who would otherwise be separated from their siblings. Watertown Daily Times. The Ogdensburg Correctional Facility and St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center teamed up to host a 3- to 5-mile run/walk/rollerblade event to raise $4,700 for Special Olympics. The (White Plains) Journal News. Recent water-related tragedies motivated the American Red Cross and the YMCA of Yonkers to offer free swimming safety instructions to underprivileged children.
STATE AWARDS: Kinston. AIDS support group helps family make home repairs. The all-volunteer AIDS services support group Circle of Friends found a worthy project when it was brought to their attention that one of their own longtime volunteers was living with her 6-year-old daughter in a trailer home unfit for habitation during the winter months. The group approached the woman, 26, who is HIV-positive, with the idea of winterizing her home. On Oct. 24, a crew of eight patched holes in the ceiling and floor, screwed the windows closed and sealed and caulked them, replaced the missing glass in the storm door, replaced missing insulation underneath the home, attached all the underpinnings and fixed the heater by putting in a needed element. $2,000 award benefits Lenoir Memorial Hospital. Swan Quarter. High school honor students publish a Spanish-English phrase book to help residents and Hispanic migrants communicate. Beta Club members at Mattamuskeet School in Swan Quarter, N.C., compiled a Spanish-English phrase book that could be used by speakers of either language to communicate in everyday situations. The 30 students, mainly juniors and seniors, printed 300 copies of the pamphlet and distributed them to churches on Make A Difference Day. (That was after they painted the school hallway in black and yellow and took 30 senior citizens to dinner.) Deanie Dunbar, Beta Club sponsor, said the Beta Club probably will print more copies before summer, when the Hispanic migrant population swells to about 1,000. $2,000 award benefits Pungo District Hospital Foundation, Inc.
Camp Lejeune. Last year, two teachers (1998 national award) rallied two communities and the Marines in a drive to fulfill the needs of charities around Camp Lejeune and Jacksonville, N.C. This year, 2,416 volunteers, led by Debra Bryant and Kerri Helsel at Russell and Bell Fork elementary schools, extended the good works to 23 charities. $1,000 award benefits The Onslow Women's Center.
The (Asheboro) Courier-Tribune. The Homeschool Helpers 4-H Club recorded children's books on tapes and donated the books and tapes to the Randolph County Family Crisis Center in Asheboro. Sixteen children, ages 6-12, recorded 14 books with the help of eight mothers. Asheville Citizen-Times. Almost 1,200 McDowell County residents participated in 36 projects that included home repairs, yard work, food and clothing drives, a blood drive and beautification projects. The recently established McDowell County Volunteer Coalition coordinated the Make A Difference Day effort, the county's first. (Burlington) Times News. Twenty-two employees and family members from the GlenSpun Division of Glen Raven Mills Inc. in Glen Raven landscaped the Hospice Home of Hospice of Alamance-Caswell in Burlington by creating and mulching flower beds, removing dead shrubbery and planting trees, shrubs and flowers. The (Durham) Herald-Sun. Seven women representing churches in the Flat River Baptist Association, which covers Granville County and part of Vance County, brightened up the adolescent ward at John Umstead Hospital, a regional state psychiatric hospital in Butner. The women covered 59 beds with brightly colored corded bedspreads and coordinating pillowcases and also delivered new pillows, much-needed board games and toiletries. The (Elizabeth City) Daily Advance. About 110 Moyock Elementary School teachers, students and parents mulched and landscaped the school grounds, protecting a century-old oak's roots with a raised flower bed; painted and installed 12 birdhouses; crafted concrete footstones accented with objects from nature (rocks, pine cones, leaves), and planted tulips, daffodils and pansies. The (Gastonia) Gaston Gazette. The Sonbeams, Bluebells and Joybells of Life Church of God in Cramerton raised more than $5,000 to help an autistic boy in nearby Gastonia by inviting friends and community leaders to a "fantasy ball." Sixty-six people responded with donations in lieu of attending. The money was used to pay for a special training session for the boy's parents and to start the Son-Rise Fund for other special-needs children. Goldsboro News-Argus. Almost 200 United America Free Will Baptist church members visited 3,006 elderly or sick people in Wayne, Lenoir, Greene, Wilson and Duplin counties. The members of the Northwest B Home Mission Convention, ages 7-80something, gave out religious tracts and bookmarks, sang and read with the elderly and helped with care and meals at nursing homes, retirement villages and hospitals. Hickory Daily Record. Six members of Disabled American Veterans and Ladies Auxiliary Chapter #84 of Alexander County treated about 50 veterans at the Asheville VA Medical Center Nursing Home Care Unit to an afternoon of tasting (homemade and store-bought) pies, from pecan and fruit to egg custard and chocolate. High Point Enterprise. About 250 volunteers helped on 10 projects in High Point, culminating in a festival with games and food. Projects included major cleanups in two areas that are the focus of city revitalization efforts, landscaping at two elementary schools, interior painting at a home for recovering substance abusers, exterior painting of an elderly woman's home, and delivery of canned goods, paper goods and toiletries for AIDS victims. The (Jacksonville) Daily News. The 250 students of PHASE Academy Public Charter School in Jacksonville spent three days putting their "hands to help, hands to heal" theme into action. They delivered toiletries to the Onslow County Women's Shelter, helped disabled children with arts and crafts projects, stocked shelves at the Onslow County Soup Kitchen, made up beds at a homeless shelter, distributed 6,000 items of used clothing, delivered canned goods, cleaned and served meals at the USO, and sang, danced and gave manicures at three Jacksonville nursing homes. Events culminated with an anti-violence rally attended by 500 schoolchildren and church youth group members. The (Kannapolis) Independent Tribune. Connie and Ron Clark and about 25 relatives and motorcycle-riding friends painted the exterior of an elderly couple's one-story frame home. The couple live on a limited fixed income and had not painted the house in 10 years. The Kannapolis Home Depot donated most of the 20 gallons of white paint also sent two employees to help. A friend power-washed the house at no charge, and the electric company donated a new porch light. The (Kinston) Free Press. Mary Coples of Kinston rallied members of St. Joseph Disciples of Christ Church to collect diapers, toiletries, socks and blankets and to pay for a year's subscription to the large print version of a monthly Christian magazine for six Kinston-area rest and nursing homes. (Lenoir) News-Topic. Tammy Yearwood of Lenoir gathered donations of food, clothing, paper goods, toiletries, toys, paint, car seats and meal gift certificates from local businesses and individuals for the Shelter Home of Caldwell County Inc. and the Family Resource Center in Lenoir. Her husband, Rick, their three children and three children from her home day care helped by packaging items and loading them into the family's Jeep Cherokee for delivery trips over a two-week period. The (Lumberton) Robesonian. Twenty-eight Fairmont High School students treated about 50 children they had been tutoring to a morning of academic competition - a math-a-thon, a spelling bee, reading contests - capped off with pizza and hamburgers. The (Monroe) Enquirer-Journal. Eleven members of the Waxhaw Busy Bear/Youth In Action 4-H Club, with the help of four parents, held a carnival to raise money for school supplies for Thompson Children's Home, a residential treatment facility in Charlotte for abused or neglected children. Thompson officials sent some of the supplies to their group homes in Goldsboro and Fletcher. The (Morganton) News Herald. More than 1,000 Burke County residents helped out with 17 projects coordinated by the Volunteer Center for Burke County. Projects included trash pickup, smoke detector installation, toy repair, stenciling at a nursing home, a major spruce-up of Dry Ponds Community Park in Morganton and collecting of disposable cameras for servicemen stationed at the DMZ in Korea. A second-grade classroom at Hildebran Elementary School made cards for a woman who lost four limbs due to meningitis, and a radio station solicited donations to buy the woman a compact disc player and CDs. The Mount Airy News. The 600 students of Dobson Elementary School donated their snack money for a week to the Children's Center of Surry County, an emergency shelter for children. Seven Student Council members presented a check to the center for $462, used to purchase children's clothes, cleaning supplies and food for the center. (New Bern) Sun-Journal. Twelve members of VFW Post 2514 Auxiliary in New Bern stocked the pantry of the Ronald McDonald House in Greenville with $250 worth of non-perishables, ranging from cereal and toaster pastries to peanut butter and rice. The group also delivered toiletries. (Roanoke Rapids) Daily Herald. The Northampton County Office on Aging coordinated a collection drive that netted almost 3,000 canned goods for the county food bank and about 2,500 toys and stuffed animals to be distributed to needy children and those in frightening situations. In addition, county employees collected items for residents of seven county nursing and rest homes, and local businesses donated pencils, tissues and canned goods for 50 recipients of home-delivered meals. Rocky Mount Telegram. About 90 volunteers from Nash and Edgecombe county schools, churches, businesses and non-profit agencies prepared an old school for its new life as a homeless shelter for families. They raked leaves, removed weeds, cleared trash and prepared a site for a vegetable garden on the grounds of the old Bassett School in Rocky Mount. Salisbury Post. Thirty people solicited sponsors and rode bikes on either a 12-mile family fun or 23-mile advanced course through southwestern Rowan County, raising about $1,200 for a 5-year-old boy suffering from hypospadia. Godstock, a non-profit group that organizes fund-raising events for children with chronic illnesses, plans to make the bike ride an annual event. The Shelby Star. Eight members of Disabled American Veterans Auxiliary Unit 18 of Shelby spent the day at Yelton's Health Care, a young adult care home in nearby Fallston, where they planted mums and pansies with the residents, decorated pumpkins and prepared an evening meal of hot dogs, baked beans, slaw and cakes. Auxiliary members also donated shoes, socks, sheets and toiletries to the facility's clothes closet. Statesville Record & Landmark. Members of Altrusa International of Statesville created a library at the Mulberry School, an alternative school for students with behavior problems in the Iredell-Statesville school system. Club members solicited book donations, then sorted the books, organized reference materials, built bookcases and created a bulletin board. The Wilson Daily Times. Twenty women from American Legion Auxiliary Shirley Hill Unit 94 participated in individual projects that included visiting the sick and elderly, planting daffodil bulbs along a bank, picking up trash along a highway, and cooking for elderly neighbors.
STATE AWARDS: Grand Forks. Skateboard park effort lifts spirits of youths post-flood. More than 100 young people rallied on Oct. 24 to open an indoor skateboard park and rollerblading facility at a site where one had existed before being destroyed in the unprecedented flood of 1997. The rally built a volunteer base for the work that needs to be done, to attract media attention to the project and raise public awareness of the need for the park and to cement fledgling alliances with city government, civic organizations and the business community. $2,000 award benefits The Greater Grand Forks Committee. Niagara. 14-year-old farm girl helps residents of a homeless mission contact family members. North Dakota farm girl Shanda Borgen, 14, put together 100 packages containing stationery, pens and envelopes and urged Grand Forks Mission residents to write home. She also donated about 125 long-distance calling cards to the mission. One of the calling cards ended up in the hands of Ben Reuben, 46, who lived at the mission from early August through mid-January. He contacted the state of New York about his GED transcripts as well as his mother in Oswego, N.Y., with news that he was enrolled at the University of North Dakota and had a fixed address and his own telephone for the first time in 25 years. In addition to the stationery kits, Shanda prepared 74 bags filled with toiletry items like disposable razors, tissues, toothbrushes and toothpaste, shaving cream and combs. With the money left over from her $1,000 Wal-Mart grant, she also bought a VCR and microwave popcorn for the mission. $2,000 award benefits Grand Forks Mission.
Grand Forks Herald. Denise Kramer got more than 100 students at the East Grand Forks Elementary Schools and Day Care Centers to help the elderly wash clothes, cook, garden and perform other household chores. The (Wahpeton) Daily News. Pine-to-Prairie Girl Scout Troop 244 showed movies to nearly 50 children. Admission was a canned good for a food pantry.
NATIONAL AWARD: Miami University, Oxford. "Anything you can do, I can do better," college brothers say. Here's how to tell the Griffiths twins apart: Jeffrey is the one who organized a "free store" where the needy could shop, a 200-strong city clean-up crew, and enough volunteers to make 1,000 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a homeless shelter. . Frank's the one who masterminded a book drive, elderly visitation, a carnival for needy children and an orchard-gleaning project that salvaged 17,000 pounds of apples for a local food bank. Their dueling Make A Difference Day extravaganzas at campuses 600 miles apart - Frank's at the University of Virginia, Jeffrey's at Miami University of Ohio - are typical of the way the 21-year-old twins "feed off of each other," says their mother, Sharon Griffiths. The brothers graduate next year, but at each school, student organizations have adopted Make A Difference Day as a long-term cause. So, who won the sibling rivalry? Jeffrey rallied a total of 1,500 volunteers; Frank, 1,000. But now the colleges' presidents are talking about adopting the two-campus rivalry. The competition continues! $10,000 award benefits the University of Virginia Fund and the Miami University Make A Difference Day Organizational Fund.
STATE AWARDS: Cincinnati. American Airlines reservationists raise money, paint murals at teen drug treatment facility. Fifty American Airlines reservationists raised about $2,200 at three fund-raisers (an office buffet with a kid food theme, a sundae sale, and a diet-a-thon) - enough to purchase a much-needed commercial freezer for Kids Helping Kids and finance a $1,200 scholarship for a needy client at the facility. They also painted murals, dramatically brightening the drab, institutional walls. The main meeting room, where teens talk with their parents on Friday nights in what are often tense, emotional sessions, is now called "the serenity room" because of its peaceful scene of mountains and sky with puffy white clouds and the words of the serenity prayer stenciled in. Kids Helping Kids is an intensive five- to six-month therapeutic treatment program for chemically dependent teens. $2,000 award benefits Kids Helping Kids. Toledo. City creates model for rejuvenating blighted neighborhoods. 225 volunteers swarmed through the Old Towne neighborhood, home to many African-Americans, to revitalize historic property and renew community spirit. Government workers, residents and students razed two abandoned buildings, painted four homes, landscaped 10 yards, collected 13 tons of garbage from three alleys and installed a yard pole light donated by the local utility. Said resident Goldie Aldridge, 65, a recently retired school cafeteria worker, who thinks the clean-up will lower the crime rate: "If you had come here before and then after, you wouldn't have believed it was the same neighborhood." It was such a success that the city targeting four other Toledo neighborhoods for similar renewal. $2,000 award benefits Altrusa Club of Lebanon.
Toronto. Last year, Adam Chesnut asked his paper route customers to fill up bags with used clothes and household items to be donated to the Goodwill thrift store in nearby Wintersville. They responded with 50 bagfuls. This year, Adam, 15, a sophomore honor student and golf team member at Toronto High, decided to involve the entire town. Final haul: more than 530 bags collected at a 20-foot trailer. "This thing was packed tight, top to bottom," said Adam. "It was a real fun day. I loved helping out." $1,000 award benefits Goodwill Industries.
The (Ashtabula) Star Beacon. The Ohio Fire Safety Association in Ashtabula organized a food drive, gave away 35 carbon-monoxide detectors to needy families and organized a fire-safety lesson for kindergartners. The Athens Messenger. The Zaleski Super Kids 4-H Club held a Health and Safety Kidfest, which taught more than 300 children and their parents about the dangers of drugs and the various public programs available in their community. The (Canton) Repository. Delona Yohe worked with the Salvation Army, Wal-Mart and nearly 100 volunteers to deliver 1,200 pounds of diapers and baby wipes to needy families. Chillicothe Gazette. The Girl Scouts and Goodwill Industries held a donation drive in a park. More than 50 Scouts helped collect nearly 100 bags of donations to help provide employment and training opportunities for residents who are disabled or unemployed. The Cincinnati Enquirer. Lens Crafters employees gathered at nursing homes and health fairs to provide vision screenings, eyeglass adjustments and repairs and new eyeglasses to the needy. Many other employees cleaned homeless shelters, volunteered in soup kitchens and held food and clothing drives. The Columbus Dispatch. Lindsay Broadfoot, 16, collected nearly 750 pairs of socks for the homeless. Coshocton Tribune. The VFW Ladies Auxiliary Post 2040 gave the First Step Shelter for battered women a lift, stripping wallpaper, collecting more than $800 worth of donations and contributing toiletries. The (Defiance) Crescent-News. VFW Gold Star Post 5087 Ladies Auxiliary checked smoke detectors in nearly 125 homes of the elderly and disabled. They replaced batteries and smoke detectors as needed. The (Dover) Times-Reporter. Julie Warther and the Dover First United Methodist Church Youth group rallied the community to make more than 2,000 school and health kits for disaster-relief sites. The (East Liverpool) Review. The 1998 second-grade class of Garfield Elementary held a "Begin Life with Reading" program. They raised money to buy new children's books, which they donated to a maternity ward. Each new mother will receive one book to encourage her to read to her baby from birth. The (Findlay) Courier. The Findlay Service League gathered 35 volunteers and rejuvenated YMCA's Camp Mosshart. They painted a craft shelter, planted flowers, built picnic tables, benches and shelves and graveled a launch area for canoeing. The (Fremont) News-Messenger. St. Joseph Elementary School students in Fremont collected 339 pounds of school supplies to help the San Jose-St. Joseph Mobile Mission School, which follows children of migrant farm workers from state to state to ensure they do not lose out on an education. (Gallipolis) Sunday Times-Sentinel. Pupils at Washington Elementary School collected personal items for hurricane victims in the South and a women's shelter, raised more than $7,000 for the American Heart Association through a jumping rope fund-raiser and made treats for 200 Meals on Wheels clients. Hamilton Journal-News. Kathy Beatty joined with the St. Vincent de Paul Society to make more than 60 gallons of soup, fed more than 200 senior citizens and made many new friends. The Ironton Tribune. Wheelersburg High School's Class of 2001 held a spaghetti dinner to help children with neurological disorders. They raised more than $750 for the Mighty Oaks and Little Peanuts Organization. Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. Elena Larue, 17, and sisters Bethany, 15, and Alyssa, 13, with the help of their family, made more than 30 quilts for infants and children who stay at the Haven House of Pickaway County, a shelter for battered women and children. The Lima News. Employees of Ford's Lima Engine Plant fanned out on six projects: They collected baby clothes, furniture, car seats and strollers for teen parents, cleaned up a neighborhood, passed out fliers for a literacy project and helped restore a senior citizen's home - including replacing two screen doors, fixing electrical outlets, putting up shutters and patching the roof. The (Lorain) Morning Journal. More than 30 employees of the Good Samaritan Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center baked a large assortment of treats for the drivers of the Meals on Wheels program in their area and for the employees of a post office. (Mansfield) News Journal. Junior Girl Scout Troop 367 raised more than $500 to buy a TV and VCR for Josh Stewart, 8, who lost both his arms and was severely burned last August in an electrical accident. The Marietta Times. The Cutler Community Program gathered 65 residents to beautify the community and assist elderly and poor neighbors. They built two porches, raised a roof, cleared brush from two parking lots, picked up trash, planted flowers and painted a snack house. The Marion Star. Marion County Children Services donated its old computers, complete with printers, to the children at the Boys and Girls Club. The (Martins Ferry) Times Leader. The Upper Ohio Valley Sexual Assault Help Center held a carnival in a Wal-Mart parking lot that provided free DNA testing for children in exchange for a can of soup, which was donated to a food pantry. Middletown Journal. As part of Louella Thompson's "Feed the Hungry Project," she gathered 100 volunteers to distribute clothing and feed nearly 500 needy people in town. The (Newark) Advocate. 100 employees of State Farm Insurance's Ohio regional office visited 10 children's hospitals statewide, bearing teddy bears and other "goodies" for the patients. Another group of volunteers took seventh- and eighth-graders to nursing homes to visit and pass out magazines. (Port Clinton) News Herald. The Ottawa County Family Resource Care-A-Van organized a food drive for the needy and collected professional business attire and toiletries for a jobs closet, which distributes clothing to those trying to make the transition from welfare to work. Volunteers also hosted "Kids Night Out" for children ages 5-10, so parents could have special time alone. Portsmouth Daily Times. Gennifer Davis, 14, and numerous volunteers scraped, painted, fenced and raised money for a new roof on a disabled senior's home. They also collected more than 100 personal-hygiene kits, 30 coats and 120 pairs of shoes for the needy. (Ravenna) Record-Courier. Kathy Akers, 7, decided not to have a typical birthday party. Instead, at her party she collected more than $600 worth of donations for Safer Futures, a safe house for women and kids. Salem News. Quota International of Salem delivered hot meals to the chronically ill or disabled, preparing all meals to coincide with any dietary constraints the patients had. Sandusky Register. Reach Our Youth and Norwalk High School Key Club held a Halloween skating themed "Say Boo to Drugs." Reach Our Youth is a program that places high school students as mentors to kids 6-13. (Steubenville) Herald-Star. The Women's Health Center of Weirton Medical Center offered free breast and cervical cancer screenings. The doctors and nurses who volunteered also delivered a free lecture on hormone replacement therapy. (Warren) Tribune Chronicle. "Focus on the Future" is a five-week program for women making the transition from unpaid worker in the home to wage earner. The Warren Junior Women's League organized a clothing drive to help these women extend their wardrobe to include career attire. They also donated shoes, pantyhose, slips and hair-care products. The (Willoughby) News-Herald. John and Judith Church, with six volunteers, collected enough money to buy two computers and accessories for the Caley Home, a foster home for children 7-17. The (Wooster) Daily Record. Shirley Hipps recruited 200 from West Salem to clean up a city park. They cleared away brush, planted trees plants and bulbs and erected benches. The Xenia Daily Gazette. Starr Barr, 11, needed a heart operation, so Natalie Merrill and daughter Stephanie Henry organized a bingo/dinner fund-raiser for Starr and her family, raising nearly $10,000. Sadly, Starr died shortly after her operation on Nov. 22. (Zanesville) Times Recorder. 65 Maysville High School students conducted a scavenger hunt to benefit the Salvation Army, collecting moving vans full of clothes, food, furniture, microwave ovens, televisions, $200 in cash and gift certificates from businesses.
STATE AWARDS: Altus. Safety seats are focus of project aimed to save lives. Each year, about 1,400 children under the age of 14 die in motor vehicle crashes - most because they did not wear safety belts or sit in car seats. These grim statistics inspired the Oklahoma Association for Family and Community Education to sponsor a "Safe Kids Buckle Up" workshop and offer "Car Seat Safety Checks" on Oct. 24 in Altus, Okla. With the help of a local car dealerships, volunteers acquired a $1,000 donation form General Motors, used to purchase 24 seats. Two others were donated, and they were all given to needy families. Of 55 seats checked, 50 needed adjustments, three needed to be replaced. $2,000 award benefits County Friends, FCE. Enid. Airport worker rouses school kids to donate teddy bears and stuffed animals for child passengers en route to hospital. The purple bear that used to dwell in Emily Belknap's stuffed animal collection now awaits its Make A Difference Day destiny. Sometime, somewhere, a patient traveling aboard a specially arranged courtesy Angel Flight en route to far-off treatment will receive the bear Emily and fellow pupils in tiny Drummond, Okla., collected. A hand-made "get well" card accompanies each, in the hopes it will ease a patient's pain. Angel Flight is an organization of pilots who volunteer free flights to seriously ill patients who must travel for treatment, said Elaine Johns, the director of Angel Flight, Inc., and the Clerk of the Drummond School Board. The "Teddy Bear Roundup" included a student poster contest, with the winners slated for Angel Flight's World Wide Web site. $2,000 award benefits Angel Flight, Inc.
Enid News & Eagle. Approximately 200 volunteers, including 100 youths, completed projects for the elderly or disabled in the rural town of Fairview, including carpentry, painting, yardwork, installing carpet in a home, plumbing, winterizing, finishing a garage roof and hauling away multiple loads of trash. The (Lawton) Sunday Constitution. Thirty employees of the Goodyear Family Medical Center in Lawton collected 5,000 clothing items, filling eight pickup trucks, for the C. Carter Crane Homeless Shelter and the Lawton Food Bank. McAlester News-Capital & Democrat. Eighty-five volunteers, mostly Kiowa High School seventh- through 12th-graders, took part in an ironing competition that pressed 700 clothing items that had been collected in a six-week drive. The ironed clothes, along with other washed and boxed items, were delivered to Shared Blessings, a clothes pantry. Muskogee Daily Phoenix. To help the environment and beautify the state for residents and tourists alike, Southwestern Bell Pioneers and the Tulsa Kiwanis led 100 volunteers in planting 1,000 redbud trees (the state tree) along the Turner Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The Norman Transcript. Forty volunteers from Meals on Wheels and Irving Middle School of Norman sorted and packaged non-perishables collected in a community-wide food drive, which filled 250 emergency bags of groceries. The food packages were then delivered to each of the daily meal recipients for them to keep on hand in the event a winter storm caused a cancellation of the meal runs. Tulsa World. Two Sunday-school students and teachers from Hominy Friends Church, a Quaker congregation on an Osage reservation, kicked off a Christmas-toy drive for the children of prisoners in nearby Hominy. The students washed cars in exchange for toy donations.
STATE AWARDS: Lebanon. Altrusa Club gathers and repairs 750 books for low-income kids. The best part was when they found out they could keep the book. "One woman with four children was so excited they got to keep them," Anita Allen, a member of the Altrusa Club of Lebanon, said of a family she met while delivering books to a soup kitchen on Oct. 24. "The children kept trading the books back and forth; they didn't realize that they could keep them. They didn't act like they ever had their own books before." In early September, the club started thinking about collecting books after someone told them there were children who had never had books. So they got a video on how to mend and repair covers and spines, talked to a librarian and hit the flea markets and yard sales. Then they got to work mending, gluing and restoring spines and corners on more than 750 books. They selected six community locations - a few laundromats, a soup kitchen, a sheriff's substation, and a school in a low income neighborhood - made colorful bags, and, on Oct. 24, delivered their refurbished creations. $2,000 award benefits Altrusa Club of Lebanon. Salem. Long-term effort to develop a neighborhood park culminates in the planting of a wetland. More than 200 volunteers turned out to plant Salem's first wetland on Make A Difference Day, a turning point in a months-long project. Reeds, sedges, alders and other native flora of the wetland are taking root in the newly developed Cannery Park. Efforts to install the wetland actually stretch back years, and include extensive planning and fund-raising. Decades ago, the city had purchased the 7-acre Cannery Park property, at headwaters of Pringle Creek, which runs through the city. Last summer, in rolled the bulldozers, operated by the National Guard. For two weeks, they dug what would become the wetland. Then volunteers convinced nurseries to donate native plants worth $3,000. On Oct. 24, kids in boots and moms with wheelbarrows worked all day. Students from a boarding school 45 minutes away hauled mulch. $2,000 award benefits Non-Profit Charity Receiving Donation.
Albany Democrat-Herald. The Jaycees held a casino night, raising $600 for a family whose daughter is ill with congenital myasthenia gravis, a genetic disease that weakens voluntary muscles. The (Coos Bay) World. Carolyn Henriksen's third-grade class has been raising money to buy books for the mothers of newborns at Bay Area Hospital by selling a cookbook they made full of recipes from governors. On Make A Difference Day, they delivered 50 bags full of 250 books as part of their ongoing effort. (Salem) Statesman Journal. The Napoleon Pierre Carbajal Foundation, formed to help Spanish-speaking migrant workers and other needy families, collected 1,500 coats, blankets and clothing items at a Wal-Mart. Former farm worker Erasmo Carbajal, after whose late son the foundation is named, said he received a sympathy letter from a high school girl who said other kids had made fun of his son because he didn't have name-brand shoes. He vowed the foundation also would aim to provide for high school students in need.
STATE AWARDS: Phillipsburg. Two nurses, who happen to be sisters, help pregnant teens. Sisters Natalie Gormont and Bonnie Ertmer - both nurses - assembled 150 "stork" bags containing diapers, baby oil, rattles and onesies for teen moms at Family Health Services in Phillipsburg. They have five children between them and Natalie was a teen mom herself. All told, they collected and donated $689, gift certificates, 20 bags of pampers, 50 bottles, 35 sleepers, 35 onesies, 50 packs of nipples, and bigger items like smoke alarms, a baby bath set and a crib mobile. $2,000 award benefits Family Health Service, Inc. Pottsville. 7,000 Schuylkill County folks pitch in on 130 projects, helping 36 agencies. For the third straight Make A Difference Day, Nancy Clark, 57, was head "cheerleader" for some 7,000 Schuylkill County volunteers. Of an estimated 130 projects across 16 cities, Clark visited 13 sites on Oct. 24. All told, 32 county agencies and four outside the county received donations, visits or parties. Ideas ranged from "County Collectibles" - a countywide food/household goods drive that helped stock 10 food pantries and six Human Services agencies - to a Pottsville law firm's donation of time to prepare 15 living wills. Lawyers at Williamson, Friedberg and Jones also collected five large boxes of food and clothing. Cancer was one common theme for young and old. About 1,000 students from Ashland, Frackville and Ringtown elementary schools raised $9,000 in a walk-a-thon around their buildings to raise money for Mark Bell, a fifth-grade teacher at Ashland battling a brain tumor. Emil Rizzi, 68, former mayor of Minersville, organized a charity trip to Atlantic City for 40 of his best friends, and collected donations at the American Legion chapter he runs, as well as the Home Association of Miners bar, to give $75 to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, which fights childhood cancer. Another group of seniors in Gordon collected $73 toward medical expenses for a 3-month-old baby girl diagnosed with malignant tumors behind her eyes. $2,000 award benefits Schuylkill Area Community Foundation.
Gibsonia. Make A Difference Day has been growing at Pine-Richlands Middle School ever since students there first marked the day in 1995 by helping the homeless. This year, the collection included homeless pets, too, and participation from Pine Richlands High School, where former middle schoolers have taken the tradition, grew markedly. About one-fourth of the collection, which included everything from clothing to towels for the shelter, came from the high school. After a day of sorting at the middle school, a large moving van and two smaller vans were loaded for Operation Save A Life, which aids homeless people and two full vans headed for Animal Friends, a no-kill shelter. $1,000 award benefits Pine-Richland Opportunities Fund.
Altoona Mirror. Three Altoona mothers of children with special needs, ages 4-5, enlisted 100 volunteers - including high-schoolers, air traffic controllers, other mothers and more than 30 businesses- to convert a 12-by-24-foot shed into a toy lending library for special-needs kids from birth to age 8. Volunteers installed ceiling tiles, insulation and carpeting, cleaned shelves and refurbished 250 donated toys. Beaver County Times. 50 volunteers from Telephone Pioneers of America, Fort Pitt North council, raised $1,300 to design and install benches outside the Phoenix Drop-in-Center in Rochester, a facility for people dealing with mental illness who have no place to go during the day. (Bloomsburg) Press Enterprise. 15 eighth-grade cheerleaders from Central Columbia Middle School raised $1,327 to fight breast cancer by selling pink ribbons at three home football games and outside a local Wal-Mart. The money will be used to produce brochures and help about 30 county residents undergoing chemotherapy buy wigs. The Bradford Era. For the second year, 100 volunteers of the United Methodist Cluster in Bradford, including eight churches, raised $3,000 for an emergency fund for prescription drugs for the needy or uninsured, victims of fire or natural disaster, and those without insurance. A monthlong penny drive netted $300, then on Oct. 24, volunteers held a bake sale, silent auction, live auction, fun fair and luncheon. Butler Eagle. 20 members of the Saxonburg Area Lions Club raised about $200 in a white-cane collection outside Friedman's Saxonburg supermarket and the Saxonburg post office, and teamed with Carol McKinney of the Butler County Association for the Blind in Butler to provide free vision screenings to 25 adults and four kids at the supermarket. The (Carlisle) Sentinel. Members of the Mount Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church youth group, ages 7 through teens, delivered ham suppers to about 25 shut-ins on Oct. 24, as part of the annual feast created by 50 church families. Volunteers husked, blanched, cut corn off the cob and froze it in August. In early October, apples, cabbage and peppers were harvested. (Chambersburg) Public Opinion. 425 Chambersburg Area Middle School and community volunteers, including students, families and faculty, spruced up the school grounds and fitness trail, and adopted Memorial Park across from the school. They planted daffodil and tulip bulbs; spread mulch; painted benches, curbs and handicapped markings; planted trees, raked leaves and weeded. Also, 100 garbage bags full of clothes were collected for four thrift shops and 200 cans food donated to the Salvation Army soup kitchen. The (Clearfield) Progress. 65 volunteers - pooled from the Teaching About God's Glory Team, Clearfield County Volunteer Network, church youth groups, school clubs, Boy Scouts and the police department - kicked off the renovation of a gun shop into a teen center. The (Easton) Express-Times. Eight members of the Rockin Bobbins 4-H Sewing Club made four art smocks for the Youth Center of Glen Gardner, and four tote bags to carry developmental toys for a therapy program at the Medical Center Child Evaluation & Treatment Program at the county hospital Hunter. (Greensburg) Tribune-Review. 150 members of the Blue Shirts of Mount Pleasant Area Junior/Senior high schools collected 75 32-gallon trash bags full of 2,000 articles of clothing and school supplies for Red Cross Elementary School in Park City, Ky. Four members and four adult volunteers drove the 1,056-mile round trip to deliver the goods on Oct. 24 to the needy school. The (Hanover) Evening Sun. Five members of the Ladies Auxiliary to Susquehanna Post No. 2493, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and three member of the Junior Girls Unit, ages 6-16, beautified a cemetery near the VFW monument and collected about $450 worth of food for the Northeastern Food Bank in Mount Wolf. (Hazleton) Standard-Speaker. Matthew Nonnemacher, 10, galvanized the entire town of Hazleton to collect 1,819,691 pennies - $18,196.91 - for United Way-sponsored programs that feed, clothe and service an estimated 2,600 needy in this former coal-mining town of 25,000, where unemployment rate is 5.6 percent. On Oct. 22, Matthew led a parade of about 200 volunteers and supporters through the streets to deliver a flatbed truck-load of 800 jars - 5.5 tons - of pennies. It took 13 hours for First Federal Bank employees and volunteers, using machines, to count the pennies. The money was presented to the United Way on Oct. 24. The Indiana Gazette. 50-60 volunteers of the Indiana County Safe Kids Chapter, Human Services Council and Indiana County Volunteer Center held a Fall Family Festival focused on safety (water, home, fire, bike and car, poison prevention and drug and alcohol safety) for low-income families. 62 families - 300 people - attended, receiving first-aid kits or water bottles as a reward for passing a safety test after visiting all the booths. The (Lansdale) Reporter. On Oct. 24, the gym at Corpus Christi Parish School in Lansdale was converted into a depot for the needy, as 425 students and their families made 6,000 ham and cheese sandwiches - a ton of lunch meat - and other goodies to serve the homeless and supply area soup kitchens. Volunteers also prepared 3,000 breakfast bundles - cereal, tea bags, breakfast bars, instant hot drinks and notes written by the kids - for shut-ins and elderly, and they filled empty film canisters with shampoo as part of 1,000 toiletry bags for area shelters. Gwynedd Square Elementary joined in to help collect 2,428 pairs of new socks. Lebanon Daily News. Chris Faralli, 13, and mom Paula of Cornwall collected 65 household items outside of a Lebanon Wal-Mart, such as cleansers, batteries, a mop and broom, pillows, toothbrushes, trash cans and paper products, to provide a "Welcome Shower" for the next family moving into a Habitat for Humanity home. The (McKeesport) Daily News. 200 emotionally disturbed kids, rival high school students, neighbors and families - rich and poor - cleaned two large Pittsburgh-area parks: North Park, in an affluent area of McCandles Township, and Riverview, an urban wooded parkland with creeks and deer. Their take: 150 garbage bags full of trash, plus construction debris, old washers, furniture, tires and tennis rackets. The Meadville Tribune. 1,344 Crawford County volunteers, including 556 from Allegheny College, constructed ramps, fixed roofs, cheered the elderly and disable, washed windows, remodeled a Big Brothers and Sisters building and built an outdoor learning center, among 120 projects between Oct. 3 and Oct. 24. New Castle News. Six staff members of the Catholic Charities Diocese of Pittsburgh in Lawrence County visited about 130 young teen mothers, ages 13-19, bringing gifts of diapers and baby food. The (Norristown) Times Herald. The 11 members of Girl Scout Troop 319 painted 18 storm drains in Aston with the message, in bright yellow, "Don't Pollute. Drains to Creek." The (Phoenixville) Phoenix. 20 members of Soroptimist International of Phoenixville collected an estimated $48,600 worth of business apparel, including jewelry, purses and shoes for the Working Wardrobe in West Chester, which helps economically challenged women enter the workforce. The (Pottstown) Mercury. Jodie Leyfert, 6, and friend Sara Sheehan, 4, raised more than $900 in a bake sale at a local mall to buy stuffed animals for their "Hospital Hugs" program. They give the plush toys to kids being treated in the Pottstown Hospital emergency room, to soften the trauma. Pottsville Republican & Evening. 15 members of St. Mark's United Church of Christ youth groups collected 426 non-perishable food items in a door-to-door scavenger hunt across Cressona to benefit the Schuylkill Haven Food Pantry. (Primos) Delaware County Sunday Times. 150 men, women and children - including Cub Scouts, Girls Scouts and Leos (teens) of the Lions Club - beautified two areas near Interstate 95, landscaped and added a stone walkway for pedestrians. The (Sharon) Herald. Junior and senior high school students in Sharpsville raked, mulched and pulled weeds at two elementary schools and a middle school, and cleaned up the football stadium Oct. 24. 20 Student Council members cleaned up their highway route, and Middle School Student Council members collected crayons from 270 students to melt down and make new crayons for day-care or homeless shelters. 5 students painted rest rooms at the Keystone Blind Association; 10 sold pies for the "Pies for Eyes" fund-raiser; 25 cut out 700 eye test cards for preschooler screenings. Teens That Care held a money war and donated $580 to AWARE, to help domestic-abuse victims. (Somerset) Daily American. The Laurel Hill 4-H Club used a $1,000 Wal-Mart grant to fund two projects. About 10 planted trees and shrubs for two Salisbury families devastated by spring tornadoes; one recipient had lost 17 large trees, and suffered extensive damage to their dairy barn and home, while the other had to rebuild from scratch. About 18 volunteers, ages 8-17, visited a personal care home for the mentally in Confluence, where they brought sweatsuits to each of 17 residents, helped them stencil on designs and played games. (Tarentum) Valley News Dispatch. For the fifth year, eight members of Janes United Methodist Women, ages 51-84, in Creighton prepared 65 fresh flower arrangements in bud vases to deliver to residents of East Deer Personal Care Home, and 12 homebound residents in Creighton, New Kensington, Lower Burrell, West Deer Township, Oakmont and Tarentum..The nursing home residents depend so much on these visits, that many even send back the empty vases to be refilled. (Warren) Times-Observer. Eight members of the United Methodist Women senior group of Clarendon Trinity United Methodist Church baked bread - apple spice, pumpkin, banana nut, to name a few - and two members, along with a 9-year-old granddaughter, visited two nursing homes and 30 shut-ins in Clarendon, pop. 500, bearing gifts of cards, crackers, flowers and even money for one Alzheimer's to have her hair done. (Washington) Observer-Reporter. With the help of four adults, 15 seventh-graders in the Sunday School class at Immaculate Conception Parish in Washington made 47 rosaries for the Apostles of Infinite Love missions in third-world countries. (West Chester) Daily Local News. 25 Asian and Hispanic high-schoolers hosted a gang intervention/prevention workshop for 300 community members at the Houston Community Center in South Philadelphia. The (Wilkes-Barre) Citizens' Voice. With the help of a few handymen, 50 members of a youth group from three Dunmore parishes - St. Mary of Mount Carmel, St. Casimir and All Saints - built a food pantry in the basement of the Catherine McAuley Center, a Scranton shelter for homeless women and children.
"STATE" AWARD: San Juan. Hijas Catolicas de las Americas wanted to help favorite charity, the Hogar Vicky Sor in Cataño, where nuns tutor and feed poor children, some of whose parents are known to be prostitutes or drug addicts. After Hurricane Georges left 2 billion in damage the women took food, 75 presents, including toys, 100 bags of candy, children's clothes, a crib for one pregnant woman, and bunk beds and bedding for one needy family to the Hogar Vicky Sor and staged a party for the children. Then they gave clothing, food and gifts to the Hogar Divino Niño, including a stove, purchased in part with a $1,000 Wal-Mart grant. $2,000 award benefits Hogra Gar Divino Nino Jesus and Ame Center.
STATE AWARDS: Portsmouth. Group that coordinates volunteer services for elderly sponsors fall cleanup. On doctor's orders, the musty Oriental rugs and heavy draperies that hung in the elderly gentleman's house had to go. His lung disease couldn't take their years of accumulated dust. His case worker started looking for some help, and found the Make A Difference Day activities hosted by the Mount Hope Volunteer Caregivers. In came a couple of workers on Oct. 24. Out went the old rugs and draperies. Later that same day, new mini-blinds were installed. In all, 56 regular clients of the caregivers organization, a group that specializes in assisting the elderly, got help with fall cleaning. Kitchens were scoured. Yards were raked. Weeds were whacked. One elderly lady, housebound and fearful, had let the grass grow knee-high. A family of five pruned and mowed. More than 40 volunteers pitched in that day, 12 for the first time. $2,000 award benefits Philomena School. Westerly. Oct. 24, 97 sixth-graders at Babcock Middle School enthusiastically put thread to cloth in the school's cafeteria during a Make A Difference Day quilting bee. From 9 a.m to 3 p.m., many faculty, parents and students, who had previously signed up for two-hour shifts, stayed for a whole day of sewbasting, pinning and ironing. The ultimate goal: to finish 8 quilts for the Westerly Area Rest and Meals (WARM) shelter. The five sixth-grade teachers involved did not allow their lack of sewing skills to prevent them from participating in this project. As teacher became student, the group pieced together the squares to create a pattern for the quilts, which were eventually delivered during Thanksgiving break. $2,000 award benefits Babcock Middle School's Project Impact, an afternoon program for at-risk kids.
The Newport Daily News. Seventeen volunteers at the St. Joseph's Church Food Bank in Middletown staffed an outdoor drop-off site to collect food, clothing and cash. Proceeds were used to supplement the church-based food bank, lunchtime soup kitchen and clothes closet. The (Pawtucket) Times. The 33-member International Key Club of the Boys and Girls Club of Pawtucket raked the yards of the elderly. The group also committed to shoveling snow for those homeowners. The (West Warwick) Kent County Daily Times. About 300 Cranston students and adults volunteered to distribute - citywide, to 87,000 people in 29,000 households - the Community Service Book resource guides listing telephone numbers and information on government services and community organizations that seek volunteers and offer assistance. Efforts saved city taxpayers $10,000 in postage. The Westerly Sun. Twenty-five Westerly Pawcatuck Girl Scouts collected 1,200 items of toiletries, diapers and paper products to help stock Westerly's Living Supply Closet, which offers needy families everyday items that can't be purchased with food stamps. The (Woonsocket) Call. Together with their children, the eight residents of Haven of Grace - a small, long-term transitional housing program for battered women, many with substance abuse problems and prison records - designed and made large-print word-search puzzle books for 175 elderly residents of three nursing homes.
STATE AWARDS: Aiken. Sarah Weitenhagen, 17, and seven buddies created a library-on-wheels for the local detention center. The teen wanted to share with inmates the "release" she gets from reading, possibly helping direct them toward a brighter future. From scratch, the friends built a book cart (special so it couldn't be broken apart and used violently by the prisoners) and collected, screened and catalogued 1,000 books. On Make A Difference Day, when the cart made its first rounds, "I had this warm marshmallow feeling," Weitenhagen says. They have since doubled the library's inventory, opening new worlds and extending boundaries for those trapped behind bars. Today their gift continues: The detention center inmates are devouring the words on the books' pages and looking for more to read. "It takes them away from their stay ... away from their problems," says Diane Williams, who works for the detention center and delivers books to the inmates in addition to her other duties with court security. $2,000 award benefits The Dance Minestry "Arch Angels". Charleston. Technical college honor students collect books, supplies for needy second-graders Twenty members of a technical college academic honor society used Make A Difference Day to collect books and instructional materials for second-graders in St. Stephen, S.C., who are used to doing without. The college students attend Trident Technical College in Charleston, S.C., 40 miles south of St. Stephen, and are members of Phi Theta Kappa, the national academic honorary society for two-year colleges. With pledges from Trident Tech faculty, staff and students purchased items on a wish list provided by a St. Stephen second-grade teacher. The Phi Theta Kappa members also got donations from a college club, a local chiropractor, a furniture company, a rug manufacturer and a local Wal-Mart. The final haul: Almost $2,300 worth of books (165), math and science kits, phonics programs, computer software and crayons and markers. Every student at St. Stephen Elementary qualifies for the federal government's free and reduced-price lunch program, the key poverty indicator used by school systems, and parental fund-raising for the school is virtually non-existent. $2,000 award benefits St. Stephen Elementary.
The Aiken Standard. Thirty-five staff and students from the Women in Community Service program at the Bamberg Job Corps Center organized arts and crafts activities and a fitness awareness fair for 40 Bamberg senior citizens. Seniors also played bingo, got blood pressure and blood sugar level checks, did light aerobics and listened to presentations on herbal remedies and safety. Anderson Independent-Mail. Family Friends, a family mentoring project in Oconee County, inspected car seats in 19 vehicles in Seneca. Trained inspectors found that every car seat was installed improperly, and about a dozen car seats were replaced with new ones purchased with a $500 Wal-Mart grant. Members of the Seneca Women's Club distributed brochures on child safety and car-seat safety; two Girl Scout troops entertained the children with crafts and games during the inspection. The Beaufort Gazette. Forty volunteers from Beaufort County churches, schools, military bases, clubs and businesses devoted 250 hours to improvements at the Open Arms Shelter, a children's emergency shelter in Port Royal. The volunteers painted the facility's interior, repaired door frames, patched walls, removed a chain link fence, cleared brush, cleaned the playground, repaired outside benches and landscaped. Other groups donated supplies and linens. (Florence) Morning News. Phi Theta Kappa members at Williamsburg Technical College in Kingstree and the Kingstree Police Department collected 635 books, plus games, puzzles and crayons for St. Ann Catholic Outreach Center in Kingstree. The center was vandalized in the summer, and many supplies were destroyed. The Greenville News. About 55 Pendleton High School service-learning students, their parents and teachers raised $3,700 at a barbecue and auction to establish a scholarship in memory of their recently deceased principal, Irvin K. Cunningham. About $1,700 of the money was donated in Cunningham's memory to Atlanta Hospital Hospitality House, where his family had stayed during his illness. The (Hilton Head) Island Packet. About 20 Town of Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue staff and volunteers painted, patched and cleaned a dilapidated two-room facility on the southern end of the island for Programs for Exceptional People, which helps adults with developmental disabilities gain work and life skills. Another 15 Fire & Rescue workers spread mulch, trimmed bushes and mowed grass at The Children's Center, a day-care facility on the northern end of the island. The (Rock Hill) Herald. About 30 teachers and students from Trinity Christian School in Rock Hill washed cars, sold hot dogs and hosted a yard sale at the school, raising $1,500 to help a teacher's assistant facing huge medical bills after her husband's death.
STATE AWARDS: Rosholt. Gift bags for newborns are centerpiece of statewide teen effort for March of Dimes' "Healthier Babies" campaign. Of the 325,000 babies born in a month, statistically 2,500 will die before their 1st birthday. Some 13,000 babies will be born with birth defects. To combat such grim statistics, 97 Future Homemakers of America chapters in South Dakota - mostly seventh- through 10th-graders - took the cue from Amanda Renelt, 16, of Rosholt, S.D., to educate families and assemble "Happy 'Birth' Day" gift bags for newborns in needy families. In all, 111 gift bags were made each containing one receiving blanket, two baby bottles, a package of three Onesies, diapers, baby wipes and two flame-retardant sleepers. $2,000 award benefits South Dakota March of Dimes. Tabor. "Our town as well as many other towns in rural America would cease to exist if it wasn't for all the volunteer work done," said Helen Vlasak, chair the of American Legion Auxiliary Unit in Tabor, S.D. "We operate under the theory that: "I am only one, but I am one and I can make a difference.' '' That small town spirit (pop. 400) was on display during Make A Difference Day as the Legion's Ladies Auxiliary initiated several activities to reach out to neighbors. The Chamber of Commerce led 30 people in a town cleanup that included collecting items for disposal that the regular garbage collection doesn't take - like old furniture and mattresses - and carting them to the landfill, and sponsoring a sweep up of Main Street. They also made repairs at and cleaned up a memorial park. $2,000 award benefits American Legion Auxiliary.
Aberdeen American News. Three members of the General Federation of Women's Clubs in Gettysburg used disposable cameras to take photos of familiar people and places for five new local Army and Air Force recruits now stationed in California or overseas to keep homesickness at bay. (Sioux Falls) Argus Leader. In Yankton, 18 volunteers - including a podiatrist, students from Webster Elementary School, and members of Yankton Volunteer Leaders and United Way & Volunteer Services - collected 300 pairs of shoes, 200 coats and 500 sweaters for the needy. Twenty-one church members measured and nailed plasterboard for a Habitat for Humanity house. Fifteen Yankton Medical Clinic nurses and staff members gave free immunizations for 30 underprivileged residents. Fourteen Mount Marty College nursing students gave a face lift to the Visitation Center, a fledgling women's shelter (hauled trash, stripped wallpaper, scrubbed walls), and eight other students built a 3-foot planting table for the Sacred Heart Hospital Adult Day Care Program. Eight members of a Trinity Lutheran confirmation class refurbished the Women's Center/Shelter.
STATE AWARDS: Jackson. Firefighters spruce up shelter for homeless men. As the only shelter for homeless men in western Tennessee (outside of Memphis and Shelby counties), the Crossroads Shelter in Jackson gets a lot of wear and tear. For the third Make A Difference Day in a row, James Pearson, a Jackson firefighter, business owner and longtime supporter of Crossroads, assembled a fix-up crew that gave the shelter a clean, shining face over the course of nine hours. Pearson and fellow fire service members founded Friends United to do volunteer work several years ago. They adopted Crossroads because they felt homeless men were not often thought of by volunteer organizations. Joined this year by the Men of New Hope, a church group, and Volunteers in Action, an umbrella group Friends United formed to encompass community volunteers and 15 shelter residents, they plastered, painted, hung wallpaper, and cleaned tools and gardening equipment. A grounds crew cleaned up the yard and landscaped. $2,000 award benefits Crossroad Shelter. Lewisburg. Four co-workers raise $15,000 to help a neighbor in poor health. When Larry Smith's employer suggested he and his co-workers get involved in Make A Difference Day, the timing couldn't have been better. For nine years, Smith had watched his diabetic neighbor suffer a series of maladies. Surgery followed surgery until David Welch, 58, finally was left a double amputee in September 1998. Smith, the sales and service manager at AmeriGas Propane in Lewisburg, Tenn., got together with three colleagues to organize a benefit auction and barbeque supper for the Welches. The quartet fanned out across four towns in the rolling hills of their community and sold $3,500 worth of raffle tickets for a salty country ham. They scoured businesses for auction items, such as a $250 portable heater. On Oct. 24, a "Celebration of Joy" drew 400 people to a local school and raised $15,000. The Welch family of four has used the proceeds to cover a variety of expenses, such as trips to Nashville 80 miles away for Welch's treatments. A 1984 car was replaced with a more reliable 1994 model. And a wheelchair ramp has been built in their 1889 farmhouse. $2,000 award benefits Cornersville Lions Club.
The (Athens) Daily Post-Athenian. Dorothy Ewald, 75, of Crossville purchased four shampoo/haircut gift certificates from her hairdresser and gave them to a Cumberland County battered women's shelter. The (Clarksville) Leaf-Chronicle. Students from Hazelwood Elementary School in Clarksville designed cards for the 125 residents of the General Care Convalescent Center. A contingent of about 40 fifth-graders, parents and school staff delivered them and played games with the residents. Cleveland Daily Banner. Tasia Bikas and two friends organized a cleanup of the 1000 block of Poplar Street in Cleveland, then celebrated residents' successful efforts with a party. Faith Memorial Church Outreach Program provided food; neighborhood kids also received coloring books and crayons. (Dyersburg) State Gazette. Eight adult leaders of PRYDE (Promising Responsible Youth for Drug Elimination) of Dyersburg launched an anti-drug campaign by signing up 50 children who pledged to remain drug-free. The children agreed to be tested for drugs at least twice a year. The Jackson Sun. About 500 Hardin County residents participated in an effort that included everything from landscaping and litter pickup to nursing-home visits and hot meals for shut-ins. Hardin County Middle School students collected paper goods for shelters. The Savannah Police Department distributed fruit baskets to out-of-state tourists. Kingsport Times-News. Phi Theta Kappa members at Northeast State Technical Community College in Blountville collected more than 5,000 books and donated them to a Unicoi County elementary school, a Roane County high school, the Grainger County School Board and the Department of Corrections library in Jonesborough. Phi Theta Kappa is the national scholastic honorary society for two-year colleges. The (Maryville) Daily Times. Members of Heritage High School DECA, a marketing club, in Maryville, decorated the pediatric playroom at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. Seventy students put up circus-themed wallpaper, hung posters, assembled bookcases and stocked the room with toys, games and videos purchased with proceeds from an earlier fund-raiser. That night, the teens distributed Halloween treat bags to pediatric patients. The (Nashville) Tennessean. About 90 National Honor Society members at Beech High School in Hendersonville raised more than $1,500 for the Literacy Council of Sumner County at two flea markets in Hendersonville and Gallatin. Activities for children included storytelling, prizes for those who knew their multiplication tables, a miniature pony for petting and a clown. The (Oak Ridge) Oak Ridger. About 50 teens from the First Baptist Church in Jacksboro and the LaFollette United Methodist Church joined 30 developmentally disabled adults in landscaping the Bright Horizons facility and three nearby group homes. Bright Horizons provides day and residential programs for developmentally disabled adults. The (Sevierville) Mountain Press. Fifteen volunteers from the Sevier Chapter of the American Business Women's Association sorted clothes at the Caring Closet, a project the group began last year to provide former welfare clients with business or work attire. The Caring Closet now has a permanent location and also serves women from Sevierville's shelter for battered women.
STATE AWARDS: Plano. 230 J.C. Penney employees do five projects - including helping youth at a Dallas detention center build their "field of dreams." JC Penney may mean catalogs, credit cards and crowds to most people, but to the associates at its Plano, Texas, headquarters, it's something of an acronym for Just Caring People. That's the name of the corporation's 350-member volunteer club (represents 10 percent of home office) that also runs its annual Make A Difference Day project. At the North Texas Food Bank in south Dallas, 116 associates, friends and relatives - including kids ages 4 to 14 - unpacked, sorted and repacked for distribution more than 41,000 pounds of food - about 10 times what workers can normally process in a day. Twenty-five volunteers teamed up with about 75 resident boys (ages 12-18) at the Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center (Youth Village) to help build a baseball diamond there, spreading a tall mound of red clay into a regulation size field. In Lewisville, 80 volunteers painted two aging houses for low-income residents - a father and son, ages 90 and 65, both with serious health problems. Volunteers also trimmed holiday trees for the Christian Community Action's "Festival of Trees" annual fund-raiser, and tagged and shelved items at CCA's Bargain Depot thrift store. $2,000 award benefits Our Friends Place, Christian Community Action, North Texas Food Bank and Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center. Yoakum. Car dealership leads outpouring of aid for flooded neighboring town of Cuero, bridging longstanding football rivalry. Just five days before Make A Difference Day, the Guadalupe River - fed by two days of steady downpour - had crested 30 feet above flood stage and in Cuero, 26 percent of homes were destroyed, two-thirds of the town was under water, and 1,600 of its 6,700 residents suddenly were homeless. But 17 miles north in Yoakum, an auto showroom also was flooding -with volunteers, money and donations like blankets, mops, new underwear and clothes, diapers, toothpaste, bottled water, food, even furniture. David Barnes, president of Wendel Motor Co., had visited Cuero Oct. 18 and seen an 80-year-old woman's house flooded to the roof line with her possessions floating out. The next morning he impulsively phoned the local radio station, KYKM 92.5 FM, and went live on the air to offer his business as a drop-off center for relief. Within 10 minutes, the first people and donations started arriving. By Oct. 24, he and 60 volunteers from area banks, school clubs, leather factories and civic organizations had sorted and delivered 16 large loads and 8 smaller loads of emergency supplies in trailers draped with a banner "Yoakum loves Cuero." The slogan alone made news, as Yoakum and Cuero are arch rivals in high school football. $2,000 award benefits American Red Cross.
Abilene. For the past three years, Alisia Orosco (1997 national award), 12, and brother Georgie, 10, have raised money and collected stuffed animals to honor their brother David, a 3-year-old who died in 1996 of multiple neurological defects. The toys go to cheer the seriously ill children they'd seen while visiting David in the hospital. Now their mom, Lisa, has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. So Alisia expanded her 1998 effort "in honor of moms all over like my mom who are sick." A garage sale at Southwest Park Christian Church netted $53, which Alisia sent to the American Cancer Society in Temple "for helping my mom." Georgie, who has cerebral palsy, saved his change all year to buy $97 worth of craft materials to give to others. All told, they collected 300 stuffed animals, half a dozen rare Beanie Babies and four wagons for their "Project Hugs" program. New recipients include a Head Start program for Navajo children in Arizona. $1,000 award will benefit the Blue Bonnet Room, helping abused and neglected children. Houston. About 50,000 students, teachers, staffers, family members and community volunteers - up from 40,000 the year before - worked on projects helping an estimated 3,000 people. This was the sixth Make A Difference Day project for the Aldine Independent School District (1995 national award). This year they refocused on providing food and clothing - collected through competitive challenges between schools and kitschy campaign themes - to the victims of a massive flood that had just hit the area."In Aldine, we believe community service is an important part of every child's education," says the day's chairwoman, Doris Meyer. $1,000 award will benefit the Aldine College Endowment Scholarship Fund.
Odem. Hispanic student body gives Ronald McDonald House a hand with paper products. In their first-ever Make A Difference Day project, 600 Odem Elementary School students, 600 parents and 300 community volunteers took two weeks to collect an eight months' supply of paper goods (toilet paper, paper towels, facial tissue, diapers, wipes, paper plates, paper cups, napkins, trash bags), plus $120 in quarters, for the Ronald McDonald House of Corpus Christi. The "home away from home" is open to any family traveling from more than 50 miles away while a child under 18 is being treated at neighboring Driscoll's Children's Hospital. At a school where 80 percent of the student body have been patients at Driscoll's because Odem, pop. 3,000, has no hospital - or even McDonald's - of its own, the project was something the youngest of the youngsters could relate to. $1,000 award benefits Odem-Edroy Independent School District.
Abilene Reporter-News. Seven artists, four children and four others chipped in on painting and cheering the House That Kerry Built, a treatment center for medically fragile children. A new wheelchair ramp, furniture, paintings and window treatments were part of the makeover inspired by Nichole Pollock, 12, who has cerebral palsy and was looking for a painting project to express herself. Arlington Morning News. Eleven members of the Arlington Navy Mothers' Club delivered 289 "undeliverable" new magazines piling up at the downtown Arlington post office - many castaways from the area's transient college students that would otherwise be shredded - to 500 patients at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dallas. Athens Daily Review. About 515 students, faculty and volunteers from Dogan Middle School in Tyler visited three nursing homes to do oral histories; fixed meals for Meals on Wheels; did yardwork for seniors; helped at day-care centers, tutored schoolchildren and worked with disabled kids at medical centers; striped a parking lot; beautified the YMCA and a dentist's office; cleaned up Woldert Park; and volunteered at a clothes closet, a crisis center and East Texas Food Bank. The Baytown Sun. Thirty members of the Texas Southern University chapter of the Golden Key National Honor Society launched a voter-registration rally, signing up 210 voters. They staged a parade of 50 kids chanting, "Vote for me until I can vote for myself." The Bryan-College Station Eagle. About 25 Blue Bell Creameries co-workers in Brenham united with eight Washington County schools in a Texas-size food drive, collecting a whopping 35,000 pounds for two pantries. One food bank saved enough from its regular budget to buy $2,485 worth of holiday hams for 350 needy families. The (Clute) Brazosport Facts. The PTA at Gladys Polk Elementary School in Angleton raised $250 in a garage and bake sale at Richwood City Park to inaugurate the Polk Healthy Children's Fund, used to help "equalize" school expenses for disadvantaged kids. The (Conroe) Courier. Twenty-three volunteers, including former Houston Rocket Robert Reid and storyteller Dorothy McMahon, participated in a "Books and Brownies" literacy day at Fawn Ridge low-income apartments' volunteer library in the Woodlands. Corpus Christi Caller-Times. About 400 Scouts, preachers, teachers, refinery workers, law-enforcement officers, college and elementary students from 18 organizations collected 20,000 pounds of trash in three hours. They focused on the area near Solomon Coles Special Emphasis School, for at-risk kids. Corsicana Daily Sun. A soap drive by 65 volunteers netted 3,123 items - detergent, toothpaste - for the Food Pantry Ministry. Denton Record-Chronicle. Forty-one Cub Scouts from Pack 92, 41 relatives and others worked hand in hand with 60 seniors at Cross Timbers Care Center planting container gardens and potting individual plants with name tags and pictures for their rooms. El Paso Times. About 1,000 volunteers of the Abundant Living Faith Center gave an abundance of clothing (20,000 pounds), new socks (2,000 pairs) and food (200,000 pounds) to 4,000 of El Paso's poorest families during a health fair in a community center's parking lot. Inside, 30 health organizations offered free immunizations, blood-pressure testing, blood-sugar checks, eye screening and glasses, substance-abuse counseling and information on topics from family planning to after-school clubs for boys and girls. Police issued kids identification bracelets. The Galveston County Daily News. Eleven Hispanic nurses, medical students and physicians invited 11 elderly Hispanic residents to a "healthy-eating" luncheon to strengthen the bonds of culture and patient-caregiver relations. Greenville Herald Banner. About 200 volunteers from churches, civic clubs, high school groups and community-service probation details did home repairs and yardwork for the elderly, cleaned city streets and the site of a future Boys and Girls Club, and helped the Altrusa Club with a food drive. Police blocked off Park Street, and 1,200 canned donations were lined along the center of the road for 3.5 blocks leading to Make A Difference Day "headquarters." Killeen Daily Herald. When a Meals on Wheels van broke down after logging 301,000 miles, threatening to keep about 60 meals a day from being delivered to the homebound, the entire Killeen community jumped on the bandwagon to raise $21,263 for a new one through a "CARE-A-VAN" walkathon at a mall, a bowlathon, various raffles and a garage sale at the Bob Gilmore Senior Center. Laredo Morning Times. Student Council volunteers at Finley Elementary (1998 National Award honoree) paired up with 42 disadvantaged children from Kennedy-Zapata of the El Cenizo Community for "Friendship Day." Each child received five free books, gift bags, a jogging suit, a sweater and socks. Both groups attended a free screening of Simon Birch and were treated to a McDonald's breakfast, lunch at Peter Piper Pizza and an afternoon of video games. Longview News-Journal. Twenty Boy Scouts and other volunteers refurbished a play area outside the Kilgore Community Crisis Center, which annually serves 327 child victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or crime. Volunteers destroyed ant hills and painted. They also removed vines, a concrete block and a splintery picnic table. Midland Reporter-Telegram. Thirty-one members of the Midland Freshman High School posse met in Fasken Park to round up 923 pounds of food for the West Texas Food Bank and 16 large bags of clothing for the Permian Basin Center for Women and Children, a shelter for abused women. The Orange Leader. Twenty-five electricians and plasterboard workers donated time and talent to help Artie B's Bridge of Hope - a drug-counseling agency and food pantry - move into a larger facility. Plainview Daily Herald. Maudine Miller, 75, recruited a dozen volunteers to help with a porch sale that raised $1,278 for orphans in India. She also donated coats to the Hale County Crisis Center and helped three needy families in Plainview with household supplies. Plano Star Courier. Four Altrusa clubs, the Mesquite Exchange Club, the Blue Dragons Explorer Post and kids from the Letot Center, a runaway shelter, collected 1,400 T-shirts and underwear, gloves and socks for Refugee Services of North Texas, for the large refugee population in Dallas. Port Arthur News. Linda Phillips, 42, of Port Neches collected $95 and 10 20-pound bags of pet food for the Humane Society of Southeast Texas in Beaumont. San Angelo Standard-Times. After Bronte Independent School District science teacher Jerita Taylor signed on as a pilot site for the National Museum of Natural History's "Biodiversity Counts" curriculum, her seventh- and eight-graders scoped out Kickapoo Creek, which cuts across the campus and feeds into the Colorado River. But all the kids could see was litter glaring at them, so they launched a cleanup for Make A Difference Day, with 30 volunteers, including inmates from nearby Carlsbad Prison. First, a snake expert captured a 3-foot Western diamondback rattlesnake guarding the area, then kids hauled car batteries, a clothes iron, rusting metal, discarded building materials, clothes, jewelry and a mountain of household trash. (Sherman) Herald Democrat. The Ruthie Bolton Foundation's 500 volunteers - from Texas, Mississippi and Indiana - raised $2,600 and, locally, $245 to kick off their "Bosom Buddies" program, to assist breast-cancer patients with errands and toiletries. Texarkana Gazette. Nine Girl Scouts from Troop 140 collected 32 used bikes for schoolteacher Hal Ward, who repairs and prepares them for shipment to orphans in Latvia. Texas City Sun. Twenty-seven Brazoria County employees and volunteers raised $4,045 through a garage and bake sale for Melinda Norethcutt Shaw, 54, who has Huntington's disease and needs surgery. Volunteers also collected warm clothes for two nursing-home residents, donated toys and household items to the Brazoria Women's Center and gave clothing and kitchenware to St. Michael's Catholic Church for flood victims in Cuero. The Victoria Advocate. Before Cuero's devastating Oct. 19 flood, the Cuero High School Business Leaders of Tomorrow and the Anchor Club had raised $5,180 toward a landscaping project. But a quarter of the 50 members lost their homes in the disaster, which left two thirds of the town underwater. So on Make A Difference Day, volunteers shoveled mud, tore out plasterboard, separated donated clothing - whatever could be done to help their neighbors. (Wichita Falls) Times Record News. Seventeen volunteers from the David Gibbs VFW Post No. 8878 and its Ladies Auxiliary gave 144 hours to revitalizing the neglected, mostly black and Hispanic Eastlawn Cemetery by picking up trash, weeding, mowing, resetting headstones, raking and trimming brush. Two hundred graves were identified to be properly honored at a Veterans Day ceremony.
STATE AWARDS: St. George. High-schoolers provide computers and software for preschoolers with learning disabilities and rehab playground. After 75 Dixie High School students spent Make A Difference Day installing a computer bank and rebuilding the preschool's playground, special education teacher Audrey McDaniel remarked that "they've just changed this into one of the state-of-the-art schools." Mrs. McDaniel has been working at the preschool for developmentally disabled children for 14 years and said the school's children, some with speech defects, autism, Down's syndrome and cerebral palsy, have never been made a priority in the school system's budget. RASK (Random Acts of Selfless Kindness) raised the $4,400 needed to buy three computers, a scanner, a printer and educational software programs designed to best help special education preschoolers. On Oct. 24, volunteers helped assemble child-sized desk and chair sets to hold the computers, then installed the three workstations. Outside, they planted trees, refilled the sandbox, mowed the lawn, stained the fence, painted curbs and "no parking" areas for bus-loading, repaired damaged stucco, weeded, pruned and cleaned. On an old shed outside, students painted a mural of children playing and holding hands; on the inside walls, they built and painted shelves for storing playground toys. $2,000 award benefits Dixie High RASK. Vernal. Mormon group finishes new home for recent widow and family. Last Labor Day, Grant Jarman - an alfalfa hay farmer and a leader in his area's Mormon church community who was finishing construction of his family's "dream home" and had just two weeks earlier celebrated with his wife, Debbie, the birth of their fourth child - died suddenly from a blood clot. Juliann Northrop, a student at Utah State University, organized a project to finish off construction of the Jarmans' new home so they could move in as soon as possible. On Oct. 24, about 25 volunteers worked hard to finish the second bathroom, frame all the windows and put on a second coat of paint throughout the house. The following Monday the carpet and tile were installed by the donated labor. The following Saturday many of the volunteers returned to move the Jarmans in. $2,000 award benefits Utah State University.
(Ogden) Standard-Examiner. About 18 members of the Roy Junior High School National Junior Honor Society raised more than $700 at its Golf-a-Thon. The money purchased Christmas cheer for three needy families. The (Provo) Daily Herald. In a two-day project, volunteers from VFW and Miners Post 2379, the Ladies Auxiliary and friends put together bags of school supplies for Head Start students and bags of toiletries for clients at a women's shelter in Price. Twenty-seven group members painted the inside of the Head Start center and also weeded and planted bulbs. The (St. George) Daily Spectrum. In a daisy chain of goodwill, wooden toys are made in Utah, then shipped wherever needy kids might love them. Janeal Jones of St. George read about "The Happy Toy Factory" four months before Make A Difference Day and resolved to paint as many as possible. Grand total? About 500. Timberline Cabinets donated the wood, then Charles and Donna Cooley cut toys out. They are shipped from the Humanitarian Service Center in Salt Lake City.
STATE AWARDS: Bennington. Generations fuse in day of storytelling, tiling. In an effort to bring the community together, members of the Community Built Park brought children and seniors together to share their personal and community histories. After hearing about the history of Bennington and stories of seniors who served in World War II, the children painted a depiction of the story on ceramic tiles. These tiles will be used to build a History Wall in the community park which will be built this summer. $2,000 award benefits Town of Bennington Community Built Park. Essex Junction. Girl Scouts tackle food drive as a kickoff for the new food pantry. Knocking on doors and pulling red wagons, 8-year-old Eliza Blanchard and her fellow Brownies made their way through neighborhoods in Essex Junction, Vt., collecting food donations on Make A Difference Day. In turn, the Girl Scouts gave a 1-ton boost to their town's brand-new food pantry, located in the church where many a girl has attended a Scout meeting. The First Congregational United Church of Christ even has loaned the kitchen to older Scouts tossing spaghetti suppers. One in four children in Essex Junction goes to bed hungry, the impetus for the first such pantry. Planning started last summer, and, coincidentally, the pantry opened Oct. 24. $2,000 award benefits First Congregational United Church of Christ.
Brattleboro Reformer. Community Alliance surveyed households in six towns to assess the skills of the neighbors, to further the development of a multigenerational community center and to make connections between neighbors. The Burlington Free Press. Almost 30 volunteers continued work on the revitalization of a community center complex. Projects included preparing the skating rink, cleaning out the building and creating computer workstations.
NATIONAL AWARD: Charlottesville. "Anything you can do, I can do better," college brothers say. Here's how to tell the Griffiths twins apart: Jeffrey is the one who organized a "free store" where the needy could shop, a 200-strong city clean-up crew, and enough volunteers to make 1,000 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a homeless shelter. . Frank's the one who masterminded a book drive, elderly visitation, a carnival for needy children and an orchard-gleaning project that salvaged 17,000 pounds of apples for a local food bank. Their dueling Make A Difference Day extravaganzas at campuses 600 miles apart - Frank's at the University of Virginia, Jeffrey's at Miami University of Ohio - are typical of the way the 21-year-old twins "feed off of each other," says their mother, Sharon Griffiths. The brothers graduate next year, but at each school, student organizations have adopted Make A Difference Day as a long-term cause. So, who won the sibling rivalry? Jeffrey rallied a total of 1,500 volunteers; Frank, 1,000. But now the colleges' presidents are talking about adopting the two-campus rivalry. The competition continues! $10,000 award benefits the University of Virginia Fund and the Miami University Make A Difference Day Organizational Fund.
STATE AWARDS: Bowling Green. 24-hour run-a-thon by high school cross-country track team raises $3,342 for heart research after teammate undergoes treatment. Asa Bise, 15, was sidelined from his high school's cross-country track team in September when he was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat and told he'd need surgery. So his 20 teammates organized a 24-hour runathon - 24 consecutive hours when there would be some members of the team running - and raised $3,342 for the American Heart Association's research efforts. The run-a-thon started at 3 p.m. on Oct. 23, and kids ran outside during the daylight hours. After dark, the running moved indoors to the school gymnasium where team members and coaches had set up sleeping bags to maintain their vigil. They resumed running outdoors on Oct. 24. Asa underwent a sophisticated heart surgery the week before - in which electrical impulses were sent in to correct his heartbeat irregularity - and he was able to resume running immediately, including joining his teammates in taking part in the runathon. $2,000 award benefits Caroline High School PTSA. Lynchburg. 150 people erect frames for community center to serve 200 Habitat for Humanity households. Lynchburg, Va., is one of the most active areas in the nation for the Habitat for Humanity movement, with 180 homes built in the past 10 years. Currently an 88-lot subdivision of Habitat homes, Jubilee Heights, is under development and a 6,000-square-foot Family Development Center - to be staffed mostly by volunteers - is planned as its focal point, offering a place for after-school recreation and homework assistance and tutoring. On Oct. 24, the center's frame and interior walls and ceilings were erected, with professional builders giving their time and directing the effort, and semi- and non-skilled people providing the labor. Work continued to just before dark when the interior framing and flooring for the loft were finished. $2,000 award benefits Jubilee Family Development Center.
The (Alexandria) Journal. More than 700 walkers participated in the Walk to Fight Against Breast Cancer, raising $60,000 to help pay for free mammograms and early detection testing for needy women. The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress. By 3:30 a.m., the 75-gallon kettle was on the fire. Thirteen hours and many stirs later, members of the Friends Who Care Ministry, which runs a food bank, ladled the first of 57 gallons of apple butter into jars. As Make a Difference Day faded, delivery was under way to 329 shut-ins, needy people and new neighbors. Culpeper Star-Exponent. Dottie Pickerel's annual project with grandson Andrew Hicks, 14, and granddaughter Anne Elyse, 11 - along with some help from their mother and grandfather - meant gathering towels and toiletries to deliver to a battered women's shelter. Danville Register & Bee. A massive pull-tab collection and free swim lessons were the unlikely combination that garnered four gallon jugs of cash-redeemable tabs for the Ronald McDonald House in Roanoke while 70 kids tested the waters. Members of the George Washington High School swim teams assisted the kids. Canned goods also were collected for God's Storehouse in Danville. The (Fairfax) Journal. VolunteerFest Day drew more than 3,000 people who cleaned parking lots, school grounds, pruned a trail system or stocked and priced donations at a thrift shop. In all, 110 projects were completed by the Volunteer Center of Fairfax County. The (Fredericksburg) Free Lance-Star. A handy resident of a homeless shelter inspired a give-back effort for residents and board members of the Thurman Brisben Homeless Shelter Inc. "Paint the Town" was launched Oct. 24, when a handful of volunteers fixed rails and a doorway in the local United Way office, and started the facelift of an elderly woman's home by painting the trim. The (Lynchburg) News & Daily Advance. After visiting the Lynchburg domestic violence shelter in August, Bonnie Crews decided to ask businesses and organizations to adopt rooms. She and three fellow members of the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 16 pitched in to scrub and add fresh new linens on the double set of bunk beds in "their" room. Potomac News. 20 former residents of the Homeless Prevention Center in Woodbridge, a group known as AfterShare, cooked up a special treat for 30 center denizens by pooling memories and ethnicity for a special version of their monthly meals - from Jamaican curry chicken to Chinese fried rice. The (Staunton) Daily News Leader. From a bike rodeo for the kids to a luncheon for 52 nursing home patients, the Staunton-Augusta VFW Post and Ladies Auxiliary 2216 covered the generational bases. Youngsters got free hot dogs, reflectors for the bikes, while elders got a respite from their routine, enjoying dinner with VFW members and their wives. Suffolk News-Herald. Across Hampton Roads, more than 450 kids ages 12-19, all from the South Hampton Roads Alliance for Youth, cleaned cages at local humane societies, helped clean up at-risk neighborhoods, and pitched in to garden, paint and sort clothes at the Suffolk Shelter for the Homeless and the Haven Family Center. One group of 75 packaged 20,000 pounds of food at a food bank. The Winchester Star. The Shenandoah Valley Interagency Coordinating Council, based in Front Royal, hosted a recycling drive that netted more than 6,000 cans and $35 each for seven charities to spend on equipment for children in their programs.
STATE AWARDS: Yakima. 90 youth paint over graffiti in four alleys and one apartment complex. The Yakima Alley Cats were on the prowl on Make A Difference Day from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. - looking for an alley with graffiti. These Alley Cats, of diverse ages and economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds, are 90 community-minded young people who comprise a volunteer youth corps, sponsored by the City of Yakima Parks and Recreation Division, established to reclaim their neighborhoods and aid in the reduction of crime. On Oct. 24, the 25 volunteers made up of staff and youth from the OIC Quantum Opportunity Project and the Dispute Resolution Center of Yakima and Kittitias Counties (DRC) assisted the Alley Cats in a paint-out, by painting four alleyways and one apartment complex. The properties had gang graffiti and surround a community park and two elementary schools. Sears donated the paint. $2,000 award benefits Yakima Alley Cats and Parks and Recreation. Grandview. Painting, cleanup project involves children of migrant workers in community action. Eleven members of a migrant student school group spent Make A Difference Day performing a community service project aimed at making a contribution to their part-time home and fostering within themselves a sense of belonging and civic responsibility. Their project was suggested by the local police chief, who pointed out the huge concrete water stations (part of the Irrigation District infrastructure) along the sides of rural roads were blighted with graffiti and gang markings. The migrant student group received donations of gray paint and paint supplies, then spent several hours painting six different water stations (the size of small houses) and picked up trash and bottles along the side of the roads between stations. The students cheered and waved back as the people who drove by honked their car horns out of appreciation. $2,000 award benefits National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education.
Wenatchee. The Greater Wenatchee Valley has turned out en masse for seven of the eight Make A Difference Day celebrations (1992 national award), steadily growing each year. Last year's focus was neighborhoods. This year, 18,000 citizens rallied under the theme "It's the unity in community that 'makes the difference.' '' Seniors at Colonia Vista Retirement Apartments decorated Halloween trick-or-treat bags for foster kids, even as a group of Campfire Girls came for a party, and have visited every month since. Twenty-two students from the Orchard Middle School Friendship and Culture Club painted over graffiti with two police officers. In all, 100 valley-wide projects ranged from cleaning up garbage to collecting food for food banks, to the American Red Cross offering free CPR classes. The community raised $35,000 for KIDS FIRST!, a program that emphasizes kids and gives money for even such simple things as a neighborhood basketball hoop. $1,000 award benefits Community Resource Consortium.
The (Aberdeen) Daily World. Nine members of the Artic Huskies 4-H club, ages 7-12, collected food and cleaned out their closets to donate clothing to a shelter for women and children. (Bellevue) Eastside Journal. Thirteen Camp Fire Girls and Boys, most of them third-graders, gathered 449 pounds of food and baby items for the Multi Service Center of Snoqualmie Valley. The Bellingham Herald. A mock car crash woke up kids of all ages in Everson. With the help of Berks Towing and police officers, a two-car crash that involved six youths, including one who had been "drinking," was staged by the Nooksack Boys & Girls Club and United for Youth. About 70 people attended the event, and 30 helped stage the crash. The (Bremerton) Sun. In Port Orchard, the St. Vincent de Paul conference from St. Gabriel Church sponsored "Putting It All Together," sewing together about eight quilts. Some of nearly 200 new children's clothing items were earmarked for the St. Vincent de Paul store. Also donated were five truckloads of caps, coats, pants and shirts, which also benefited homeless adults in Seattle. The (Everett) Herald. The Snohomish County Center for Battered Women received everything from a $1,200 couch donated by a furniture store to 65 blankets collected by Lakewood High School during its homecoming week, thanks to a community-wide effort. Carol L. Stamey, who launched the drive, even rallied three banks to take donations - which included vacuum cleaners. By Oct. 24, four truck- or vanloads of various donations had been sorted for delivery. (Kent) South County Journal. Twelve members of the Skyway Post 9430 VFW Auxiliary made 76 receiving blankets for the Pediatric Interim Care Center in Kent, which cares for drug-addicted newborns. The blankets took six weeks to make. The (Olympia) Olympian. The book of essays and letters from 50 male juvenile offenders incarcerated at Maple Lane School can be chilling, but their effort could keep younger kids from following in their footsteps. Recreation director Kelly R. Wilson put out the call for essays, had them printed and by Oct. 24 was packaging 150 booklets for mailing to schools. (Port Angeles) Peninsula Daily News. Telephone Pioneers of America and Olympic View Combined Club members labeled 161 boxes of crayons, then delivered them to elementary schools. The (Tacoma) News Tribune. Six hundred students from Lochburn Middle School rallied to help build a park in a low-income area, pull weeds at a wildlife refuge and clean up neighborhoods. The local National Guard and high school students and parents helped, too. The (Vancouver) Columbian. A three-month book drive was kicked off that brought in 1,000 books for readers of all ages at homeless shelters, senior citizens' centers and at-risk youth programs. A festival attended by 30 to 40 people marked the day. It included a puppet show and people costumed as characters from children's literature. Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. Thirty youths from Pioneer United Methodist Church and their parents cleaned up their "adopted" neighborhood and installed plastic on the windows of the substandard homes of some residents. The Wenatchee World. Volunteers, many from the First United Methodist Church, painted walls, hung shelves, redid the sandbox and performed other maintenance on the Mustard Seed Neighborhood Center. The same day, the center celebrated its fund-raising success with a symbolic mortgage-burning.
STATE AWARDS: Harts. Isolated Appalachian community reclaims old school building as a community center. When the local school shut down in 1993, an isolated portion of a West Virginia coal mining county lost its community gathering place. "There's no gas station, no pizza places; nothing but creek roads for half-hour's circumference," said Michael Tierney, director of Step By Step, a non-profit corporation. In 1996, residents reclaimed the former school. But it's been a long road toward making the building into a community center, complete with an after-school program for kids that offers everything from karate to tutoring. On Make A Difference Day, a group of 43 parents and kids tackled several projects to help bring more folks to the Big Ugly Community Center, named after the creek that runs through the area. They fixed up the kitchen to meet state health codes, by scouring, sterilizing and organizing. Volunteers also sorted some of the 10,000 books that have been collected for a special children's library. $2,000 award benefits Big Ugly Community Center. Morgantown. Nursing school students helping hospitalized children through storybook project. Twelve West Virginia nursing students focused on a children's view of the hospital world. Armed with disposable cameras and some loving words, the students gave seven young patients cameras and said they could take pictures of anything. "They took pictures of their IV pole, the door, their nurse," says Cameo Raymond, 22, one of the students who distributed cameras. "The kids loved it. ... They never get a chance to take any picture they want." The students collected the cameras, had the photos developed and reconnected with the patients to discover the story behind the images. $2,000 award benefits West Virginia University Foundation.
The (Beckley) Register-Herald. The Southern Appalachian Labor School organized several projects. About 40 volunteers from a wide array of organizations gave an added hand to two major housing projects in the coal fields of West Virginia. Attention focused on helping to rehabilitate two homes and build a third. In addition,about 30 elementary-aged students from the housing projects were escorted on an America Reads Challenge field trip to the National Park Service Visitor's Center at the New River Gorge Bridge. Finally, about 60 boxes of food were distributed to needy families. Bluefield Daily Telegraph. With $1,000 from Wal Mart, the Bluefield State College Criminal Justice Club will pay for background checks and training for new mentors with WECAN, an anti-child abuse program of the children's Homes Society of West Virginia. Thirty kids who are part of that program visited the college on Oct. 24, where they attended a Youth Safety Fair, replete with police officers, a fire safety film, and door prizes such as a bike. The Charleston Daily Mail. With her sister and four younger cousins in tow, 25-year-old Amanda Hudnall launched a drive to collect 27 large trash bags' worth blankets, coats, toys, shoes, baby items, and even toothbrushes for the Union Mission The (Elkins) Inter-Mountain. The House of Mercy, a crisis pregnancy shelter, enjoyed a shower hosted by the local Junior Woman's Club decided to toss a shower. 24 attendees and others collected enough formula, diapers, bassinets - and even a used washer and dryer -to help 400 needy mothers. (Fairmont) Times West Virginian. About 50 Black Diamond Girl Scouts from 25 troops in the Fairmont area made "birthday kits" for 80 needy children, including books, bibs, Barbies, Matchbox cars and all the trimmings for a birthday party for eight. The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch. 52 students at the Catholic Community of Ironton, Ohio's Parish School of Religion, collected toiletries, school supplies and even an aquarium for a new shelter for sexually abused children.
NATIONAL AWARD: Racine. A skateboard park is a pretty good thing to build on Make A Difference Day: Now kids can pop an ollie without playing in traffic. And rusty junk doesn't belong in any waterway, so it's good that volunteer divers pulled old car bumpers from the river. And it's great to collect books, food and clothing for those in need. And to wire a grade school for the Internet. And it's good news that young people raised $7,000 for a future teen center. But none of that is the very best part of Make A Difference Day in his town, says Racine, Wis., Mayor Jim Smith. The best part is how attitudes change when people - 7,000 total, blacks and whites, city residents and suburbanites, young and old - pull together on things that matter to them. "That's the wonderful part," says Smith, looking back at four years of Make A Difference Day projects. "It's the pride our community has in helping one another." $10,000 award goes to Youth Action Sports to create activities for at-risk youth.
STATE AWARDS: Janesville. High-schoolers collect 200 suitcases for foster kids. The members of the Craig High School Leo's Club were considering ideas for their annual Make A Difference Day effort when one student raised his hand and said he'd heard that foster kids often have no option other than to carry their few possessions with them in plastic garbage bags. So for Make A Difference Day, the Leo's Club collected 200 suitcases. The students also brought in good-condition stuffed animals from their homes so each child would receive one. Then they appealed to dentists' offices to donate toothbrushes and toothpaste, and Wal-mart donated washcloths, soap and combs. Students in a textiles class made drawstring bags using towels and a draw cord that would hold the toiletries. Then they scrubbed the suitcases clean and placed stuffed animals and a toiletries bag inside each one. Students transported the suitcases to six city foster care group receiving homes after school on Oct. 23. On Oct. 24, the students carried out their education campaign: spreading out over town placing 25 hand-made posterboards with a plea for more families to consider taking in a foster child, a growing need in Rock County as the number of foster children increases while the number of foster homes declines. $2,000 award benefits Craig High School Leo Club. Fond du Lac. Pet therapy for 300 seniors at 21 nursing homes. In less than three years, one woman taking her dog to visit and lift people's spirits at nursing homes in Fond du Lac, Wisc., has evolved into a 66-member volunteer corps of dog and cat owners who together log 88 hours a month of pet therapy visits to 28 assisted-living homes in the area. The Pet Therapy Program grew our of Suzie Reschke's years of visiting nursing homes with her pet collie, "Snuggles." On Oct. 24, 28 volunteer pet owners brought 22 dogs, four cats and a flock of homing pigeons to visit with 300 people living at 21 health-care facilities in six communities in the Fond du Lac area. Becky Williams, an activities director at one of the nursing homes, said the pet therapy visits "provide a calming effect for most of the residents. $2,000 award benefits Fond du Lac Humane Society.
The (Appleton) Post-Crescent. Appleton West High School's homerooms collected and purchased with "penny war" proceeds more than 10,700 food items for the Salvation Army. On Make a Difference Day, students and parents packaged and delivered the bounty. (Beaver Dam) Daily Citizen. 35 fourth- through sixth-graders and parents of St. Bernard's Catholic Grade School in Watertown, trying to help St. Joseph's Catholic Retirement Home through a financial crisis, raised $900 to help pay its bills. On Oct. 24, after it was announced the facility was doomed to close, they staged a farewell party for the Sisters of Charity and 15 residents. (Eau Claire) Leader-Telegram. 90 Ameritech Pioneer volunteers distributed 979 winter coats to the needy in Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire. The (Fond du Lac) Reporter. Sean Schaefer, 15, rallied 96, including his Boy Scout troop and members of the Fond du Lac Area Apartment Association, to spread the word on fire safety. They installed 163 smoke detectors, tested 360 more and replaced 200 batteries. Green Bay Press-Gazette. 200 walkers and donors - including a high school basketball team, principals, teachers, students, retirees and businesspeople - raised $2,670 in a literacy walk to benefit the foundering Suring Area Public Library. In 1,100 square feet of rented space, the 10-year-old library is the only one serving the rural community. The Janesville Gazette. 154 volunteers from Whitewater district schools and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater showed their pioneer spirit by raising $8,348.90, through raffles and loose-change collections, to preserve a Civil War-era schoolhouse. Whitewater Middle School also made 250 birthday bags (candles, cake mix, paper plates, cups) for food pantry families. (Manitowoc) Herald Times Reporter. 88 St. Gregory School students in St. Nazianz collected 55 pairs of mittens and 18 hats to accessorize the annual coat drive by the Salvation Army in Manitowoc. Marshfield News-Herald. Eight Auburndale VFW Auxiliary 10162 took homemade soup, bread and a wooden apple ornaments to cheer 45 senior citizens in Arpin, Vesper and Auburndale. Oshkosh Northwestern. 100 members of the Oshkosh Boys and Girls Club and four members of Fox Valley Technical College's Delta Epsilon Chi distributed 255 books to the community outside a Wal-Mart to kick off a month-long literacy program. The (Rhinelander) Daily News. Barbara Estabrook, 58, a cancer survivor, and grandson Jacob Ellis, 7 - whose sister died of cancer at age 2 - scoured six miles of country roads for cans in their Cans for Cancer drive. With help from Jacob's first-grade teacher, Vicki Humann, at Zion Lutheran Elementary School, they collected 35 pounds of empty cans to recycle, giving the $92 raised and donated household supplies to a Ronald McDonald House in Marshfield. The Sheboygan Press. 100 volunteers pooled by the Sheboygan County Interfaith Organization gave 765 hours to help 28 flood victims rebuild in Sheboygan. They also set up two makeshift soup kitchens. Stevens Point Journal. 50 Amherst highs-schoolers collected more than 2,000 food items for Operation Bootstrap, a Stevens Point food pantry, and 40 National Honor Society members raked 10 yards for the elderly. The (Superior) Daily Telegram. Four members of the women's network Catalysts for Inclusive Community hosted a bingo luncheon for 30 elderly members of Concordia Lutheran Church. Watertown Daily Times. 14 members of the Watertown Kiwanis Sunrise Club's food drive netted 3,500 non-perishable items for the the Watertown Food Pantry. Waukesha Freeman. 45 volunteers from 16 schools and the community sorted and repacked more than 75 bags and boxes of clothing, shoes, coats and toys to benefit Father Gene's Help Center, Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army, and about 50 large boxes of food for three pantries, and recycled $70 in cans for an anti-drug program in West Allis. Wausau Daily Herald. 11 men, women and kids from the fraternal benefit society of the Wausau branch of Catholic Family Life Insurance power-washed and scrubbed 83 wheelchairs at the 90-bed Marywood Convalescent Center. (Wisconsin Rapids) Daily Tribune. 15 Lincoln High School basketball players ran two basketball camps for 66 boys and 64 girls - an effort organized by athlete Michelle Turbin, 18. She also ran a districtwide drive and collected 3,000 non-perishables, 200 large boxes of clothes, 160 garbage bags full of toys, 30 boxes of toiletries and 57 boxes of paper products.
STATE AWARDS: Sheridan. Volunteers raise $5,000 for cancer screenings for 250 low-income women. 75 volunteers from the Sheridan Breast and Cervical Cancer Coalition raised more than $5,000 on Make A Difference Day - enough to fund cancer detection exams for 250 low-income women in this small, rural region of Wyoming. $2,000 award benefits Sheridan Breast and Cervical Cancer Coalition. Wheatland. Sunday school makes entertainment kits for kids' waiting areas. Every month since May 1998, Catherine Hellbaum's Sunday school class has formed its assembly line on behalf of bored kids everywhere. Coloring pages, crayons, stickers, and small toys go into plastic bags. After they're sealed, Sunday school teachers deliver them around this small agricultural town to places where kids have to wait. On Oct. 24, the kids in the class came to All Saints' Episcopal Church, made their bags and the deliveries. Upward of 250 bags were delivered by 19 parents and children on behalf of the activity known as "Kids Caring for Kids." Activity bags went to doctors' and dentists' offices, the local hospital, the sheriff's office, and the police station. $2,000 award benefits All Saints' Episcopal Church.
The Laramie Daily Boomerang. Ten Junior Girl Scouts of Troop 436 collected 300 items that included used stuffed toys, mittens and hats for the children of Safehouse, a shelter for abused women and their children. Rock Springs Daily Rocket-Miner. Eleven members of the Management & Human Resources Department of Utah State University's Uintah Basin branch campus raised $5,600 in cash, materials, supplies and furniture to assist Uintah and Daggett counties' Children's Justice Center with interior remodeling and yardwork, in preparation for its opening. The center provides a comfortable, homelike atmosphere in which abused and neglected kids can be questioned and counseled by social workers, lawyers and police officers. |
Make A Difference Day, the largest national day of helping others, is sponsored by USA WEEKEND Magazine and its 600 carrier newspapers. Make A Difference Day is held in partnership with HandsOn Network and is supported by Newman's Own, which provides $10,000 donations to charities selected by of each of 10 national honorees. The 19th Make A Difference Day is Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009.
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