Project
Ideas 
Issue Date: April 17, 2005
Help from on high for kids with heart disease
Long Beach, Calif. -- Before launching her kite on the breeze last Oct. 23, Lisa Knight wrote on it the names of 14 children. Each had attended Camp del Corazon, the summer camp Knight co-founded a decade ago for youngsters with heart ailments. All 14 had lost their lives. Michael Rivard flew a kite, too -- one of 540 floating above a shoreline park in a fundraiser he organized. The take: $40,000, enough to send nearly three dozen kids to camp this summer. There was nothing like Camp del Corazon 48 years ago, when Rivard, at age 11, became Long Beach's first open-heart surgery patient. Back then, the procedure had a 1-in-4 chance of survival and left an armpit-to-armpit scar. Medical outcomes are better for today's heart-sick youngsters. But in ways, Rivard says, they're still just like he was: embarrassed about their surgical scars and struggling to keep pace at play, living lives so sheltered that many have never gone swimming or stayed away from home overnight -- except in a hospital. Knight, a registered nurse, and cardiologist Kevin Shannon launched Camp del Corazon for young hearts that can't take a rough-and-tumble camp. Staffed by volunteer medical pros, the camp is a safe place for kids to try kayaking, rock-climbing and volleyball. Yasmeen Emamian's rare heart disorder bars her from most sports -- but not kite-flying. The Pasadena 9-year-old decorated her kite with the sunny logo of the camp, where she loves "to be with other kids who are like me and not be treated differently. There, I'm allowed to run." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit the California Community Foundation. Bank's first volunteering day helps 20,000
Nationwide -- Sitting atop a horse named Babe, 28-year-old Dyan Thornley couldn't stop smiling. And who could blame her, when you consider how much encouragement she had on hand -- 10 volunteers to lead the horses, helping the handicapped and disabled like Thornley experience something new. "They saw how the eyes of somebody who has never ridden before can change from apprehension to wonder," says volunteer coordinator Schoena Linder. "That makes it all worth it." The volunteers -- from Popular Leasing USA in St. Charles, Mo., a subsidiary of Banco Popular -- found the experience so rewarding that many have become regulars at Therapeutic Horsemanship, one of the 200 community projects employees from the "people's bank" participated in during Make A Difference Day. Banco Popular was founded in 1893 and has grown into a $44 billion company whose motto is "Make Dreams Happen." On Oct. 23, its employees put such words into action in its first company-wide volunteer effort. In Chicago, headquarters employees took children to the Museum of Science and Industry and gave paintbrushes a workout on the walls of Clearbrook, a home for the disabled. In New York, they packed 2,544 pounds of green beans at the Food Bank for New York City. In Texas, they cleaned a beach. In New Jersey, they worked with the State Police to steer kids away from gangs. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit New Moms in Chicago and La Fondita de Jesús in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A thread of caring weaves volunteers with the needy
Nationwide -- To best see the difference made by Crowley Maritime Corp., focus not on the company blanket that workers in 23 port cities spread over 1,800 needy people, but rather on the single thread that linked two men in very different places. Holding one end of that thread: none other than CEO Tom Crowley Jr., 38. Holding the other end: a man who wishes to remain unidentified, though we can say he's in his mid-30s, a gunshot victim, paralyzed and living among seniors at an assisted living center in southern California. The thread connecting the two men couldn't be seen or touched, but it was spun by Make A Difference Day's simple formula: Lend a hand to someone in need. The CEO had asked his workers to pick a cause; they'd voted to brighten the days of seniors. And so the weaving of the threads began. In Jacksonville, the East Coast headquarters, 150 Talleyrand Terminal workers made and delivered 97 essentials-filled gift baskets for low-income and foster grandparents. In Seattle, 45 workers aided a food bank. Across the country, the threads spread and stretched, including the one that led to the gunshot victim. That thread formed when Deanne Dillenbeck, a 28-year Crowley employee, was delivering crafts to seniors. She came across someone who wasn't a senior at all -- just a young victim of a random act of violence who now breathed through a respirator. She asked the man if he had any special requests. "I'd like either The Godfather or Scarface," he told her. About a week later -- thanks to Crowley employees in Jacksonville and Alaska -- he had both. According to a living-center employee, the man still enjoys watching the videos and "feels so blessed that people who didn't know him have taken an interest." Dillenbeck continues to visit him. "It's so wonderful that something like this could come out of Mr. Crowley's idea. Now we have to try and top it next year." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit the Northeast Florida Area Agency on Aging, Jacksonville, and the XYZ Senior Center, Nome, Alaska. Kids soak up responsibility from a hurricane
Pensacola -- Students and neighbors know him as the art teacher with unbending optimism that breeds hope in a place that has little else. But when James Coley carefully weaved his car around the fallen trees and downed power lines on his way to work soon after Hurricane Ivan ravaged his city, he wanted to cry. His neighborhood was largely demolished; the needy school where he taught was badly damaged. But the tears never came, his optimism never waned, and Coley made a difference once again. Coley and the Village Hope youth mentoring group -- which he founded nine years ago to steer youth toward hopeful pursuits -- led a community-wide effort to clear C.A. Weis Elementary, where Coley has taught for 15 years, of the debris left by Ivan. As a ton of nail-laced and glass-strewn trash was removed, Difference Day turned into four Difference Days. "It wasn't so much that we wanted to clean up a schoolyard," Coley says. "It was the whole idea of developing a social attitude of being a part of something big and responding to a need." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit Village Hope. "Band of brothers" -- and sisters -- embraces children in Afghanistan
Nationwide -- Ask Army Command Sgt. Maj. Tim Green where he's posted and he'll tell you "a country that looks like a page ripped from the Old Testament." But even in such uncompromising surroundings -- Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan -- Green discovered that "kids are still kids." That's why he decided to teach the children hanging around the base some Boy Scout values: the importance of being prepared, trustworthy and loyal. He began with 20 kids, including a pair of 12-year-old girls. He soon realized that, to have lasting impact, he needed plenty of help. That's when Green, a life member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 812 in El Paso, contacted VFW headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. The VFW and its Ladies Auxiliary are decade-long partners in Make A Difference Day, and this year, members from 2,600 posts worldwide volunteered in diverse projects. The 150 HQ employees adopted Green's cause for Make A Difference Day, collecting 37 boxes of children's clothes, shoes, soap, book bags and 1,000 stuffed animals. The collection was mailed to Green in Afghanistan. In an e-mail from Bagram, Green says that the kids there are like those anywhere in the world: "They play, they tease, they fight, they love. They love being doted on and getting new clothes, and book bags make them feel special." Green's posting in Afghanistan began in October 2003, but he isn't due to be rotated back home until this fall; then he'll retire. He found time for volunteering even though he has a big job in Bagram. Green's role is like a city manager's: He oversees all aspects of operations for the 10,000-person base, right down to making sure the streets are paved and the sidewalks are built. "Tim's project was very special, no doubt about that," says Michael Gormalley, the VFW's assistant adjutant general, "but I believe it's a reflection of what our members do every day to support our troops and their efforts overseas." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit the Military Assistance Program of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. Carpet One piles it on at 85 school libraries Nationwide -- Like many other school libraries, the one at Egg Harbor
Township (N.J.) Middle School was tattered. Its frayed, black-flecked carpet was older than the students, and held together with silver duct tape. Enter Carpet One, headquartered in Manchester, N.H., with a national Make A Difference Day campaign: a contest among schools to win library "makeovers." Result: At 85 schools in 33 states and three Canadian provinces, 1,000 volunteers performed the makeovers, laying 80,000 square feet of flooring. In Egg Harbor Township? The duct tape is gone, replaced by 9,000 square feet of gorgeous gray tweed. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit Central High, Manchester, N.H.; Jackson Elementary, Sheboygan, Wis.; and Loranger Elementary, Loranger, La. This teen was in trouble -- now his head is in the clouds
Ringwood, N.J. -- Visiting hours at the juvenile justice facility here are from 1 to 3 p.m. each Sunday, and Jean Jennings arrived ready to give her 16-year-old son, Domonic, his usual hug. Sunday visits were routine. But Jennings' sudden remembrance of a simple dream she once had for Domonic was not. The dream was revived when a worker at the Green Residential Community Home, which houses and educates juveniles who've committed minor crimes, told Jennings about the Make A Difference Day event coming up the following weekend -- free airplane rides offered by a dozen volunteer pilots from the Experimental Aircraft Association's Lincoln Park Chapter 501, based at nearby Greenwood Airport. Jennings' mind immediately turned to planes ... and Mickey Mouse. "I asked Domonic, and he says, 'Oh, I don't want to go,' " she remembers. "I said, 'Ah, you've never been on a plane, your brother's never been on a plane, I've never been on a plane. I always wanted to take you on a plane to Disney World in Florida." Domonic continued to play it cool, but Mom's persistence won the argument. Six days later, Domonic was glad he had lost. In fact, you might even say he felt pretty sky-high about it. "A lot of our kids are thrill seekers, and lots of times that's what gets them into trouble," says Jim Doone, the Green Home superintendent. "But [flying] is definitely a thrill, and it doesn't bring them any closer to getting involved with the law." Pilots have provided thrills for the Green Home for three years. "They've never had a break," EAA Chapter 501 vice president Allen Dunn says of Green Home kids, 16 of whom were flying high on Make A Difference Day. "When we take them up, we say, 'You can do this. You can make yourself a better person.' " Consider Domonic's eyes now opened: Today, back home in Paterson, he's considering a career in aviation. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit EAA's Young Eagles program and New Jersey's Juvenile Justice Commission. 2,200 diverse volunteers unite a city to do good work
Albuquerque -- For Make A Difference Day, good works on a grand scale spilled into a second day. Imagine 2,200 volunteers -- Native American and Hispanic, black and white; office workers, high schoolers, Air Force personnel. They completed 68 projects, benefiting dozens of non-profit groups and scores of needy residents, their homes and their neighborhoods. Along with the big turnout were subtler achievements: the bond forged between volunteers who carved a community park out of a weed-choked lot and neighbors who promised to water it; the gift of fresh-baked pueblo bread presented by a grateful homeowner to volunteers who winterized her drafty house. By sunset that Sunday, it was hard to say who felt more gratified: the givers or the receivers. Tina Vigil, whose Habitat for Humanity-built community got a new park, says, "It helped not only the way the neighborhood looks but also the way we feel about the neighborhood." When volunteer Stan Hall's team finished painting an elderly couple's trailer, "they were grinning from ear to ear," he recalls. "It's fun to bring a smile to people's faces." The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit the Albuquerque Community Foundation. Goodie Two Shoes warms kids' soles Las Vegas -- Even in this sunny, high-rolling city, one out of eight residents lives in poverty.
On Make A Difference Day, Oct. 23, when desert temperatures read 45 degrees Fahrenheit, 500 kids, some wearing only flip-flops, each got to pick out a new pair of shoes in the Las Vegas Goodie Two Shoes Giveaway. This second annual event was coordinated by residents Nikki Berti and her husband, Tony, a former National Football League offensive tackle. They got the idea from a similar program held in San Diego by the Chargers, Tony's old team. On Make A Difference Day, the youngsters, ages 4 to 17, from 12 Boys & Girls Clubs, selected shoes at Payless ShoeSource stores; $11,000 in donations paid for the shoes, plus school supplies and backpacks for all. The spree warmed more than feet -- it also warmed the hearts of volunteers like Teri Valenzano: "In Las Vegas, you think everyone is fairly well-off or headed that way. It was a real eye-opener." Nikki first read about Make A Difference Day in the Las Vegas Journal Review, and "I knew what I wanted to do," she says. Tony, a real estate agent, tapped business contacts; Nikki approached Coach USA for help busing youngsters to the stores. Corporations, individuals and the local NFL Players Association chapter made donations. That day, teens from a work-release program chose work boots. One young lady got her first pair of high heels. "We tried to steer them toward something practical," says volunteer Bobbie Pope, "but this was something her parents would never be able to buy her." And one shopper, about age 3, "had her eyes on a pair of fuzzy Hello Kitty slippers," says volunteer Tom Ernsperger. The girl's mom persuaded her to choose sensible sneakers -- but Ernsperger bought the slippers and slipped them to the mother. A half-hour later, the two were back: The girl insisted on returning to hug her benefactor. Says Ernsperger: "It was absolutely a moment I can't forget." After the giveaway, Shayla Jones sent a thank-you note. "I'm wearing my new shoes almost every day," she wrote. "It was the best ever!" The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas. One woman's quest: Small repairs, big impact
McAlester, Okla. -- As a single working mother, Maureen Harrison knows how hard it is to keep a home in shape without know-how or cash. But reading about Make A Difference Day in her hometown paper, the McAlester News-Capital, inspired her to rally that "know-how" for needy homeowners. Now in its third year, Harrison's volunteer home-repair crew has helped more than 150 people. On Oct. 23 in McAlester, 40 tool-packing volunteers, loaded with supplies from 31 businesses and individuals, were welcomed into 45 homes to clean, paint, install smoke detectors, do minor plumbing and electrical repairs, and more. One elderly woman -- who had used cardboard to cover a window broken during a burglary months before -- beamed at her new window and locks. "Bless their hearts, they just don't know who to ask to help them, much less have the money," says volunteer Bill Derichsweiler, 70, who rallied fellow Knights of Columbus members to help. "There's no way I could do anything this big by myself," Harrison says. She won't have to try: Helpers already are on board for Make A Difference Day 2005. The $10,000 Make A Difference Day Award from Paul Newman will benefit Knights of Columbus Council 775, McAlester, Okla. Reporting this issue: Terry Byrne, Patricia Edmonds, Josh Gajewski, Laura Greenspan, Patricia Kime, Peggy J. Noonan, Tim Wendel |
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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