Honorees
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2002 National Awards
National Honorees for projects done Oct. 27, 2001
Spread the Inspiration "Inspiring and wonderful" is how singer Martina McBride sees the 10 new Make A Difference Day honorees. We think you'll agree. USA WEEKEND Magazine asked the volunteer, mom and multiplatinum country star to introduce you to this extraordinary group of everyday Americans:
As you read these stories, you may see yourself in them. Or the person you can choose to be. These stories are about ordinary people, like you and me, and the extraordinary power of the human spirit. Take Nicholas Marriam, 9, a cancer survivor who spent one Saturday last fall easing the worries of parents with sick children. Nick is one of the incredible people being honored today with National Make A Difference Day Awards. Some folks fed the hungry. Others made a safe place for homeless teens to sleep or a quiet place for struggling students to read. After learning about the millions of wonderful deeds that took place around the nation on Make A Difference Day, I'm touched most by the many children involved. I hope their efforts inspire generations behind them. Certainly, they have inspired me. After discovering what a single person -- a single child! -- can accomplish, I realize my own daughter, Delaney, who is 7, is old enough to take action. I'm going to sit down with Delaney, tell her about Make A Difference Day and help her start a school project so she can participate in the next Make A Difference Day, on Oct. 26. Volunteering isn't a new concept. Like a lot of people, I try to help out at home in Nashville, whether by donating old clothes or taking part in special projects. I'm really proud to have helped the YWCA of Middle Tennessee raise nearly $300,000 for family programs at my annual Fan Fair celebrity auctions; in May, I'll perform and speak at a Tulsa fund-raiser as spokeswoman for the National Network to End Domestic Violence. I know how rewarding helping others can be, and I want to encourage you to take the time to lend a hand. Even if you're really busy -- and who isn't? -- you can contribute something positive to another human being. That's the special thing about Make A Difference Day: Anyone can join in for a while. Sometimes it doesn't take long to get dramatic results. You're about to read plenty of stories that illustrate nothing is impossible if you have the desire to make a difference in someone else's life. My wish: to see your amazing deed described in next year's Make A Difference Day Awards issue. Helping Others First
Last summer, a church friend gave her a clipping from USA WEEKEND about Make A Difference Day, taking place Oct. 27, 2001, a year to the day after her near-death. Then she read an article in the local "Daily Herald" online describing Alexis Ehrhart, whose rare form of cancer was racking up big bills for her dad, a firefighter, and mom, who works part time, in Naperville, Ill., an hour away. Suddenly, Giannini knew why she had a second chance: to help others, starting with little Alexis on Make A Difference Day. Immediately, the executive assistant rallied businesses, family, friends and 1,200 co-workers at Pepper Construction. The plan: Help pay Alexis' bills with a raffle. Giannini, who still owed $4,000 on her own medical bills, bought two of the 30 raffle prizes: a TV and a printer. She donated a treasured Disney animation cell. And she nudged others to give. While imploring a restaurant manager to contribute, Giannini saw a collection can for another child with cancer. She dropped in $25, which sparked the manager to hand her $50 -- and a gift certificate in the same amount. Many raffle winners turned over their prizes to the Ehrharts, who on Make A Difference Day received nearly $7,000 in cash and gifts -- including a cuddly doll to soothe Alexis during chemotherapy. Later, when Giannini and co-workers saw that other children at Alexis' hospital needed toys, they collected a truckload, plus 50 gift bags with Beanie Babies, coloring books and crayons.
Alexis is now 3, having endured a stem cell harvest and 12 courses of radiation. Her latest scans are clear, but 18 more months of treatment awaits. "It's obvious what a special person Lisa is," says Alexis' dad, Larry. "She didn't know us and got nothing in return. As a firefighter, I know what it feels like to know you're helping someone. But that's my job. She just did this out of the kindness of her heart." Alexis' spirit is good therapy, says Giannini, who continues to recover from her own medical catastrophe. "You wouldn't believe this little girl -- her spirit and her spunk," Giannini says. "I was so selfish with my time before. Now I'm just glad to be alive. Now I know I'm here for a reason." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, will help other families via Hope Children's Hospital Pediatric Oncology Fund in Oak Lawn, Ill. Giving Parents Strength
It was a mother's good luck charm: Don't pack an overnight bag for a hospital appointment, and your sick child won't be admitted. Far too often, the charm failed. In 2000, cancer patient Nicholas Marriam of Edgewater, Md., and his parents endured 172 exhausting days at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C. One small moment from that ordeal made a big impression on Nick. "He remembered," says his mom, Angel, "that when a friend of mine brought me a gift basket containing soap and shampoo, I cried." Then happier times came. Nick went to a camp for children with cancer. And he returned with a mission. "He came home and said, 'Mom, we have to do Make A Difference Day.' "I said, 'What's that?' "And he said, 'You know, it's that day when you do nice things for other people.' "So we did." Nick's "nice thing" was easy to pick: gift bags for exhausted parents and ill children at his old hospital. Nick -- with the help of his mother, his third-grade class, employees at Coca-Cola, TGIFriday's and the Washington Capitals hockey team, to name a few -- gathered $7,500 in supplies, enough for 166 gift bags with toiletries, gift certificates, disposable cameras, movie passes, hockey tickets and pizza coupons.
It made a great mess. "On the way to the hospital," Nick says, "the whole entire back of the van and the middle of the van were stacked full of stuff. It was like there was a tornado of Make A Difference Day bags!" Soon, Nick whirled through the hospital in a doctor's costume, excitedly delivering the bags to eager boys and girls and their weary, worried parents. "The emotions all started flooding back to my husband and me," Angel says. "We watched the parents' faces as the kids' eyes lit up at the sight of visitors bearing gifts. The looks of hope that this will be their child someday, full of strength, with a head of hair. We all cried -- we all smiled." Nick can't wait to do something big for Make A Difference Day this fall. It's fun to give help, he says. "It's like Christmas." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, will benefit Children's Hospital Foundation and Carol Jean Cancer Foundation/Camp Friendship. Steering Children Well You'd have to be a magician to make reading fun in a poor county where only about a quarter of residents have finished high school and all students qualify for free lunches. But magic is what was conjured up at A.W. Watson Elementary in Port Gibson, Miss. Just a week and a half before Make A Difference Day, volunteers with America Reads-Mississippi AmeriCorps got the idea to create a "Magical School Bus" for a reading/tutoring center. It was quite a reclamation project: An abandoned bus pulled from an adjacent junkyard had no tires. Windows were missing, paint was peeling and seats were badly mildewed. For four days and nights, 36 volunteers toiled. They peeled off every bit of paint and repainted the bus inside and out, complete with a smiling face on the front. They scrubbed the seats and removed rear seats to install tables and shelves big enough to hold 100 donated books.
The wacky wonder created a stir. "Folks driving by on their way to work would be ecstatic, saying, 'What is this bus doing here in the middle of the school?' " volunteer Janie Harris says. "If they didn't have time to help work on it, they said, 'Here's $5 or $10 to help with whatever you need.' " By Make A Difference Day, the bus was a bright work of art, and 600 students lined up to visit in an all-day open house. Since then, the bus has been a hot spot on school days and two Saturdays a month. In fact, kids are making up excuses to spend time inside. Teachers tell Harris: "Whatever you all are doing on that bus, it's helping." The bus is a magnet for big kids, too. "Believe it or not, we have students from the high school come over to just get away to a quiet place and do homework," Harris says. Now, that's magic. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, will support JumpStart Tutorial program for the children of Claiborne County, Miss. Opening Prisoners' Hearts The collapse of the World Trade Center reverberated deep inside New York state prisons, where 77% of inmates have roots in the New York City area. The prison system reaches out every Make A Difference Day, but this year was different: Fifteen thousand inmates (25% of the population) and 5,000 staffers mobilized. Together, $162,761 and tons of goods were donated to 9/11 relief. They also did traditional volunteering, such as stocking pantries, feeding the homeless, collecting school supplies for needy children, upholstering pews at a church, making dollhouses for abused kids in a shelter, building a park gazebo, and raising $31,000 to fight breast cancer and other diseases. This day was about rebuilding community. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, goes to New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund. Finding Solutions in Ohio Question: If 37,753 volunteers in 139 communities and 73 counties helped 413,166 other people in 396 projects on one day, what state are you in? The amazing state of Ohio.
For the second year, the Ohio Community Service Council, the office of first lady Hope Taft and a 40-person steering committee led a statewide Make A Difference Day effort. Taft and the steering committee fanned out to Cleveland, where they worked on three Habitat for Humanity sites. Gov. Bob Taft joined do-gooder go-getter Gennifer Davis, 18, in her third high-impact effort. This year, she sold $5 yellow bows to symbolize hope for children affected by the attacks of Sept. 11. As she and Taft grilled burgers and chatted up the public outside a Portsmouth store, they raised $1,000 -- half went to Red Cross children's funds and half to President Bush's fund for Afghan children. "It was a simple thing," Davis says, "but it worked well." Exactly like Make A Difference Day. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, will help more people via VOLUNTEER OHIO. Welcoming Couch Surfers Any given night in Hailey, Idaho, between six and 10 teens "couch-surf" -- sleep at friends' houses or in cars -- because their parents have kicked them out. And few foster families in the county are willing to take in teens. A proposed solution -- turning an old house into a teen shelter -- just wasn't getting done. Enter Emmanuel Episcopal Church, with its 72 worshipers, including Jean Girvan, a British immigrant who saw Make A Difference Day in three of the newspapers she reads: Boise's "Idaho Statesman", London's weekly "Express" and Scotland's "Sunday Post" (thousands in the United Kingdom pitch in on Make A Difference Day each year).
On Make A Difference Day, 25 parishioners scrubbed and painted each room of the old house. They tiled the bathroom and installed a new tub. In the kitchen, they filled cupboards with donated dishes and hooked up a donated refrigerator. Around the house, they arranged donated furnishings, including rugs, bunk beds and armoires. In one day, it was transformed. This month, the lovingly decorated house, called Our Place, is expected to get its final permits and open its doors as a tangible sign to teens that they are valued. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, will benefit Our Place shelter. Sharing Luck When help flooded to 9/11 recovery efforts, vital donations dried up for local charities across the nation. But in Loma Linda, Calif., Ronald McDonald House leaders felt lucky. "Many charities were struggling, and we weren't," says executive director Susan Patane. So for Make A Difference Day, the House organized multiple drives to help needy charities help needy people. In all, 10,048 volunteers -- including Boy Scouts and Brownies, sororities and Soroptimists, and employees of Harley-Davidson, Verizon Wireless, Avon and the Good Sam Club -- simultaneously collected and sorted 2,000 toys; assembled 150 hygiene packets and gave them to a homeless shelter along with 15 cases of toys and more than 100 T-shirts; gave books and bears to 200 children at 11 area hospitals; raised $17,617 for families struggling with illness; and redistributed food donations. Feeling lucky paid off. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, benefits Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California. Uniting a Vast City Marisa Torres, 22, was new in town. On Make A Difference Day, she made herself at home. She and two dozen co-workers who recently transferred to Phoenix for USAA, an insurance and financial services company, spent that Saturday at the YWCA senior center, peeling off cracked paint and brushing on a new coat. "I was so surprised to see so many people who came out to help," Torres says. "It was our first chance to get to know other people who lived here. I certainly feel like it made an impact." Changes popped up all over Phoenix as 4,200 volunteers tackled 76 projects that benefited 50,000 people in a first-time-ever citywide effort engineered by the Volunteer Center of Maricopa County and the Valley of the Sun United Way. More than half of the registered projects were bricks-and-mortar, nuts-and-bolts activities -- painting, landscaping and repairing. Collections of books, clothing, food and pet supplies piled up. All of it for Marisa's new neighbors. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, fuels good work via the Volunteer Center of Maricopa County. Turning Grief Into a Miracle Fabiola Scholnick read about Make A Difference Day in her local newspaper, "The Northwest Herald", and immediately thought of her two teenage sons, who had a habit of helping the homeless. But the memory was bittersweet: Her boys had died in an October car accident two years before. The still-grieving mother decided to honor Jeremy, 17, and Jonathan, 14, by spending her October helping the people they once helped. On Make A Difference Day, the McHenry, Ill., woman rallied 22 volunteers, including 14 teens, to raise $1,400 and collect more than 40 boxes of food and toiletries. All the help went to an agency serving McHenry County's estimated 1,000 homeless. "We were just about empty when those bags came in," recalls Anna MacMeekin. "It was a miracle." At the time, unemployment was increasing, demand for services was rising, and donations were at an all-time low. Scholnick found what many Make A Difference Day volunteers discover: Helping others is a powerful way to help yourself. "I never thought I could smile on this day." But, as action overcame grief, she was able to do just that. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, will go to Main Stay Therapeutic Riding Program and McHenry County PADS. Growing Teen Spirit For seven years, students at Florida's Pensacola Catholic High School have embraced Make A Difference Day, with 80% participation. Their annual mission: to help the elderly maintain their homes and to pitch in around the community. On Oct. 27, 450 students fanned out and painted four houses and an elementary school; built nine picnic tables; cleaned two neglected cemeteries; weeded a community rose garden; spruced up a homeless shelter's playground; and made $1,300 at a car wash for the school's Make A Difference Day scholarship fund. The good example of Pensacola Catholic High has been copied. Two other schools have adopted the challenge, and the dire needs of Pensacola's elderly are slowly being met as the kids find, year after year, that fewer homes need to be painted. One happy recipient: Ray Creamer, 60, disabled by diabetes and caring for his terminally ill wife, was so grateful to the teens for fixing rotten siding and renewing his home that he took out a classified ad in the Pensacola News Journal: "A big thanks for painting and repairing our house. You guys were incredible. God bless you all!" The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award, funded by Newman's Own, goes to Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida.
All photos were shot exclusively for the magazine. Photos by Marc Hauser (Giannini/Ehrhart); Steve Jones (Magical bus); Rhoda Baer (Nicholas Marriam with Paul GIanfrancesco; Nicholas Marriam with toys); David Zickl (Paint crew) |
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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