National Awards Homeless showers, Rebuilding a home, Uninsured dental care Portraits of caring: Aiding a wounded soldier's family 10 years of volunteering in Conn., UAW/GM lend a hand, Bread for the needy Upgrading from a shanty In this article: Urban river cleanup Realtors help homeless Students reopen school Also: Local projects honored

Make A Difference Day Awards Portraits of caring

Make A Difference Day Awards

Extreme volunteering: Daring urban river cleanup
Milwaukee

Derek Dunn, far left, Laura Maker, Barbara Brown and Ben Gramling helped clean up a challenging river.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go to top

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

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

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

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

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

Go to top

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Andy Goodwin for USA WEEKEND