Power of One Community Service Award Recipients
2010 Power of One Community Service Award Recipients:
St. Vincent DePaul & the Amazing Grace Food Pantry
For the past 30 years, St. Vincent DePaul and the Amazing Grace Food Pantry have been providing hope and dignity to needy families in Middlesex County by offering 3 days worth of food, clothing, shelter and other basic human services free of charge. After suffering through the worst period of economic turmoil since the Great Depression the demand for their heroic efforts has never been greater:
--Over the course of 2009, the Soup Kitchen served over 88K meals which is 244 meals per day. A 6% increase over 2008.
--Amazing Grace Food Pantry distributed over 200K meal which is 788 households per month. A 15% increase over 2008.
--Approximately 33% of all the 307K total meal distributed in 2009 were to children.
--Operation Fuel: Approximately $70,000 in heat and non-heat utility assistance was provided which represents 196 households from Middletown & Portland.
--Community Assistance: Over $20,000 in emergency assistance was provided which represents 109 households served.
It is our Foundation’s proud honor to present its 2010 Power of One Community Service Award to St Vincent DePaul and the Amazing Grace Pantry for their lasting commitment to positive social change through their actions and initiatives to help the least among us in the greater Connecticut community.
Creative Arts for the Developing Mind
Creative Arts for the Developing Mind, feeds the mind and soul. We live in an integrated global economy where education is the critical foundation for individual success. Over the past decade, educational reform has come in the form of unfunded mandates requiring more testing and resulting in less funding for the arts, music and physical education. Over the past 24 months, states have been under incredible budgetary pressures resulting in more cuts in education. Our elected leaders have had the difficult job of prioritizing initiatives and services. Many believe, as does our Foundation, the critical role of arts, music and physical education in educating children and helping them find personal expression has been overlooked.
In 2009, Creative Arts stepped into this void with an integrated curriculum focused on music, arts and physical education, targeting at-risk children, specifically foster and adoptive children. Nan Arnstein, formerly a foster and then adopted child, launched this program with the objective to build children’s self-esteem, enhance their ability to work with others and inspire a lifelong passion for learning. She learned at an early age how critical the creative arts, especially music, were for her well-being and personal development. She began playing the piano at the age of five and then earned bachelors and masters degrees in music. She converted her passion and experience into an arts and music program to enhance children’s:
--Personal and social development
--Physical Development
--Cognitive Development
--And Creative Expression and Aesthetic Development
It is our Foundation's honor to award Creative Arts for Developing Minds with it's 2010 Power of One’s Community Service Award.
BRIDGET ALLISON
HARTFORD PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL
Dean, Law & Government Academy
As a lawyer at one of the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms in Washington, DC, Bridget Allison enjoyed every comfort that life has to offer.
In 2004, she left that life behind, as well as its and its many comforts, because she could not stand idly by while our nation seemed to be falling short of its promise to so many young people in our school system.
Bridget Allison's idealism--and determination to make a difference in the lives of young people--brought her to Hartford Public High School in Connecticut.
Teaching in large urban centers--like Hartford--poses a wide range of unique challenges ranging from poverty, violence, cultural diversity and a multitude of languages. The students in these institutions crave dedicated teachers who respect children and youth; believe students can and will learn if properly taught; and who understand the types of homes and cultures from which the children come.
A graduate of the University of Connecticut, Summa Cum Laude, and the Georgetown University Law Center, Cum Laude, Bridget Allison has meet these difficult challenges but perhaps more importantly, she dedicates herself each day to inspiring her students.
As Dean of Hartford Public's Law & Government Academy she provides life lessons and the nuturing and support that is tragically missing from the lives of most of her students. An educator with a both a good heart and rich mind, each day she plants a seed (one that may sprout years after the last school bell has sounded) our Foundation salutes her with the presentation of its 2010 Power of One Community Service Award.
Prior Power of One Community Service Award Recipients:
Vouise Fonville
Vouise Fonville is a social worker. His profession is one that calls on him to work long hours--for little pay--while meeting the awesome responsibility of caring for hundreds of children as if they were his own. He has dedicated his life to trying to help those who have largely been forgotten by the rest of society because he refuses to sit idly by when so many are so needy.
Vouise' commitment to his community does not end with his efforts on behalf of the Department of Children and Family Services. For the past 16 years, Vouise Fonville has lead the Historical Black College Association's college tour. To date, he has enabled 540 students to gain a glimpse of college life (and forever opening a world of possibilities to each of them). Perhaps most remarkably, Vouise Fonville uses his vacation and personal time to conduct the tour and pays for many of the students to attend out of his own pocket.
Margie Powell
Margie Powell wakes each day on a mission to make a difference in some of the most underserved areas of Bridgeport. In her capacity as Director of Early Head Start and Health at The Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition (http://www.bcacct.org/about) Margie Powell brings together family service agencies, parents, and other concerned individuals committed to improving the well-being of Bridgeport’s children through research, advocacy, community education and mobilization.
Her hard work, dedication and mother's touch have helped make the BCAC a well respected organization in Fairfield County and across Connecticut. It is often held up as a model for others to emulate.
Carolyn Hebsgaard
Carolyn Hebsgaard has long been an advocate for equality and diversity in the workplace. She formed The Lawyers Collaborative for Diversity (http://www.lawyerscollaborativefordiversity.org/home.html)
to increase the recruitment, retention and promotion of lawyers of color, not only as good social policy, but also as good business practice.
Under her leadership, the Lawyers Collaborative for Diversity has successfully united the resources, energy and commitment of the State’s leading law firms, corporations, public sector entities, law schools and state bar associations to make Connecticut a more attractive place for attorneys of color and women to practice law and find satisfying professional opportunities.
