CMA's e-Newsletter
CMA's e-Newsletter Connections: Where We
Live, Work and Learn
- Great Story Highlights
- Save-the-Date
- Additional Resources
- Letter from the President
- Guest Columns
- Michigan Campus Compact
- Volunteer Centers of Michigan
- Michigan Promise
- Mentor Michigan
BCN employees are lunch buddies to Schoenhals students
Submitted by Michelle McCray, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network
Certain students at Schoenhals Elementary School in Southfield look forward to every other Thursday at lunch time. That's when they get to spend time with their Blue Care Network and Blue Cross "lunch buddies" who volunteer to spend one-on-one time with them during lunch.
"The program provides an opportunity for the kids to interact with adults other than their parents or teachers," said Rhonda Williams, Community Affairs representative. "They can talk through problems they may be having, or just get to know their lunch buddy and have fun."
Twenty-two Blues employees currently participate in the program, many of them return volunteers from last year. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Detroit runs the program, working with teachers and the principal to get 25 to 30 recommended students for each school year. Sometimes activities are centered around topics like math and reading, black history month or nutrition. Other times, the meetings are less structured to allow time for discussion and games.
Wynter Thomas, member grievance coordinator, BCN Special Inquires, is a second-year volunteer. "Twice a month, my lunch buddy gets out of class and talks to me about what's important to him or asks me questions," said Thomas. "I think they feel special. Someone outside of their family and teachers cares."
"I've always thought the Big Brothers Big Sisters program was a great idea. Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to tell you the same things your parents say to you," said Carla Ervin, claims adjudicator, BCBSM Auto Claims Center. "I've always had fun with my own kids, helping them learn and grow," said Clyde Hughey, trainer, BCN Care Management. "What I get out of it is a sense of giving, and that seems to be mutually beneficial. It provides an opportunity to make a little contribution."
Leslie Hebron, RN, analyst, Precertification/Acute Care, echoes Hughey's sentiments. "I like giving back some of what I learned as a parent and a child. Our children are our future."
Many times, lunch buddies help students deal with feelings they may not discuss with others. Cynthia Thomas, employee/labor relations specialist, BCN Human Resources, was there for her "little buddy" when his dad wasn't able to bring cupcakes to school for his birthday lunch as promised. "I believe that me being there at this time helped him to talk through how he was feeling," said Thomas.
Lisa Morris, underwriting specialist, Underwriting Group Data Information & Projects, stresses life choices. "I hope that I am making that child understand how your choices in life will affect your future - to do positive things and not get caught up with the wrong crowds, and to know the importance of elevating yourself with an education."
Sometimes, students are initially reluctant about the program. Paula Smith, medical information specialist, BCN Care Management, was paired with such a student. "She was quiet, withdrawn and refused to interact," said Smith. "But for the past few meetings, I am finding that she is beginning to actively participate."
Other students can't get enough of their Blues pals. "She enjoys our time together, and was rather disappointed that we cannot communicate outside of class, as she has asked me to call her mom," said Anita Wallace, customer service representative II, BCN Customer Service.
LaTanya Johns, customer service representative II, BCN Customer Service Contact Center, had a similar experience. "She told me last week that she wished that the program was every week because she has fun," said Johns.
Wallace sums up why she feels the program is important: "There are pressures and issues in society that are much worse than when we were kids, and if children feel there is no alternative or that they cannot be their own individual, they may go along with the rest of their peers. I need to do my part, to try and make a difference."
"I would recommend this program to everyone," said Anne Hood, systems analyst - advanced, BCBSM National Systems & Support. "It's such a small time commitment with a huge return on the investment."
1/27 Michigan’s Promise Red Wagon Award Nominations Due
1/31MNA Corporate Sponsorship: Tapping into New Revenue Sources
2/7 Volunteer Management Training
2/16 MCC Institute on Service-Learning
2/16 MCC/MCSC Service Learning Awards Ceremony and Dinner
2/23 MCC Day at the State Capitol
3/9 Preparing Youth to be Citizens in the 21st Century
4/8 MCC Outstanding Student Service Awards
4/21~ 4/23 VCM National Youth Service Day
4/21~4/29 VCM National Volunteer Week
5/2~5/3 Michigan Nonprofit SuperConference
2006 Michigan Mentoring Month Toolkit
Interested in becoming a mentor? Call 1-800-VOLUNTEER
Welcome to Connections!
The ConnectMichigan Alliance invites you to look into this inaugural quarterly e-newsletter and see how your organization can make connections with Michigan’s volunteers. Connections is designed to provide you with vital information on local, state and national issues facing you—the organizations that support and engage volunteers. Let us know what you think and what is important to you, cma@connectmichiganalliance.org. We will try to look into how we can be helpful and hook you up with the information you need to connect Michigan’s volunteers.
Sincerely,
Kyle Caldwell
President and CEO
ConnectMichigan Alliance
Guest Columns
Big Brother finds Little
By Jim Bright, Executive Director, Ford Volunteer Corps
All I knew was that the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization was a speaker short and needed me.
So on Wednesday, Nov. 30, I took the podium at a fundraising banquet near Detroit.
While I thought that I was a last-minute replacement, a small cadre of family, friends and co-workers knew better.
That night, I did what I've done many times before: I launched into tales of the 10-year-old boy named Steven Cooke who had become my "little brother" a quarter-century ago in Newport News. About trips to baseball games and one-on-ones on the basketball court. Meals and outings and countless moments between a fatherless boy with a "dose of mischievousness in him" and a young man with a need to be a part of a community. I had nicknamed him "Stevie Wonder."
Three and a half years later, a new job took me to Michigan, not without some regret. I felt Steven was teetering at a point in his life where he probably needed me more than ever.
A few years after that, we lost touch.
I must admit that I became emotional when I told the audience that I had been wondering for 15 years whatever became of Steven. I hoped the boy, wherever he might be, had turned out to be a good man.
I was about to find out.
When I finished, to my surprise, a copy of a Newport News Daily Press column appeared on the screen onstage. It described the agency's vain attempts to find Steve, and their appeal for help from readers. "That's great," I thought. "They're trying to find Steven."
Then they pulled up a follow-up column. "Here's the rest of the story," they said. I read the name of Steven's mother. "Wow," I thought. "They found Barbara."
Finally, I read Steven's name. "Wow," I thought, "I'll be able to see Steve."
At that point, I heard the audience behind him getting emotional. That's because Steven Cooke, now 35 and a Hampton police officer, was striding through the room, between the banquet tables, making a beeline for me.
I looked across the room -- same smile, same eyes. But he had gone from a good-looking little guy to a really handsome young man.
As we embraced, the audience applauded.
Then Steve took the podium and touched on the same stories but from a boy's-eye view.
After the dinner, we stayed up late, catching up. The next day, Steve accompanied me to Detroit's Ruddiman Middle School where I had committed to be "principal for a day," to The Henry Ford and a Ford Rouge Factory Tour, and a commemoration ceremony for Rosa Parks.
The reunion ended on Friday, when Steve flew back to Hampton Roads where he is a police officer.
Steve and I have stayed in touch almost daily ever since.
Thanks to Big Brothers Big Sisters, I got my "little brother" back. And I got to see how he had grown into a wonderful young man.
And, equally important, he got to see and hear the profound impact that he has had on my life.
An Incredible Journey
By Gregory S. Hall, Manager of Corporate Relations, General Motors Corporation Public Policy Center
I am a white guy living in Detroit. There are lots of stories there, yet the most important story is untold. It is the story of a small boy who lived across the street from me, and the journey a boy takes to become a man. Yet, this became a story of our journey together.
The 2000 census targets Detroit’s demographics at 80+% Black (or African-American if you prefer). That means my next door neighbor, Mel, doesn’t look like me. Nor does Ed, living on the other side. Or Norman, living behind me. Neither does Curtis, who lived across the street. As I remember, I got involved with Curtis because Curtis invited me into his life. We were neighbors, but we developed a relationship that has lasted 12 years.
Volunteerism has been a way of life for me, so Curtis and I were known to volunteer together, cleaning up the neighborhood. And if you own an old house in Detroit, there are all those home projects. Several of these were perfect for Curtis to work with me so as to spend some time together. Of course, these experiences gave Curtis plenty of chances to see both sides of Greg Hall (not always pretty, if you know what I mean).
Curtis does not have a father at home. In fact, he was adopted by his foster care mother, Maggie Jackson, who is now in her seventies, (Maggie shared with me that she attended 9 th grade with Martin Luther King, Jr.), and she has faithfully provided what she could. Fortunately, there has always been a supplement of helpful adults too numerous to mention who have offered their support, directly and indirectly, to Curtis along the way. For this I am grateful.
Like all relationships, there have been high points and low points. I enjoyed sponsoring Curtis in baseball, karate, and soccer, taking him to a few rodeos or Tiger games, and I am proud of the fact that Curtis was the captain of his championship baseball team in the North Rosedale Park league. There were sad moments too, of his family moving away to Southfield, the death of his baseball coach and Boy Scout sponsor, Roger Halfacre, and subsequent difficulties in school that almost unraveled Curtis.
Last year, when the hardship Curtis was going through began to cause our own relationship to deteriorate, I thought it best to seek another man to step into Curtis’ life, to take him the next mile of his journey to manhood. But in an age of declining civic engagement, opportunities for older boys to be selected by a mentor all but disappear, based on data provided by Big Brothers Big Sisters. It was up to me, whether to stay or walk away.
What made this decision personal is that I come from a broken home. I know the impact of abandonment, and as Curtis was going through his painful travail, I was reliving some of my own. In the end, I think we both did some growing up, and found a new path.
As I look back on that fateful day Curtis moved into the neighborhood twelve years ago, I never dreamed where that event would lead me today. On that day, I became a mentor.
I believe Curtis will succeed. I believe this because I have invested in his life, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Curtis couldn’t let me pass up, to change the world. And as a businessman, Curtis knows that I am expecting a return on my investment, for Curtis to become the man he is intended to be. It has been an incredible journey, for both of us.
Connecting is Key
By Anne Rosewarne, Chair of the ConnectMichigan Alliance and President of the Michigan Health Council
Have you ever looked at how human interactions—how we connect—are at the very core of what defines our quality of life at the community level? How often do we think about what we devote to ensuring the quality our mutual involvement? We see the consequences of not paying attention to these questions throughout our society every day.
Many say that the Columbine shooting in April 1999 and the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, both stemmed from someone feeling profoundly disengaged and isolated from his school community and peers.
Author Eric Klienberg wrote a gripping book on the 1995 heat wave that struck Chicago and took 739 lives. In “Heat Wave,” Klienberg posits that the heat wave that hit that city and the subsequent deaths were more the fault of neighbor not caring for neighbor than an act of nature (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html).
“Hundreds of Chicago residents died alone, behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, and neighbors, unassisted by public agencies or community groups. There's nothing natural about that,” said Klienberg in an interview for his book (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html).
Even closer to home, the nation’s single most deadly mass murder happened on May 18, 1927 in our own community of Bath, Michigan in the Bath School Bombing where 45 people were killed when a local resident blew up the school (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_Disaster).
There is, of course, the event that defines the start of the 21st Century, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that took the lives of more than 3,000 in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Here, men who were living in communities deliberately isolated from others, acted out in ways that ensured our nation would reexamine how we look at ourselves and others.
In these cases, the cause of the tragedies can be patricianly blamed on the isolation of individuals living in our community. They are not engaged and involved in productive ways that serve to the benefit of our communities. Whether through choice or through political circumstances these individuals or groups felt that the best way to respond to others was through violence.
So what do we do to begin to stem the negative consequences of disengagement? We believe that connecting is one key strategy. We at the ConnectMichigan Alliance believe part of that strategy lies in getting more people involved in their communities through service, volunteerism and civic engagement.
Connections is designed to give you key examples and meaningful opportunities to become engaged in service and volunteerism in your community and throughout Michigan. This inaugural issue focuses on how adults can make a difference in the lives of youth through mentoring. January is National Mentoring Month and the ConnectMichigan Alliance is helping to make Michigan’s volunteers and the nonprofit organizations they serve aware of how mentoring can make the difference in the lives of two people—the mentor and the mentee.
In future issues, we will examine other themes and issues facing organizations that promote and support service and volunteering where we live, work and learn. I hope you gain new understanding and appreciation for this great work we are all engaged in to strengthen our communities.
E-Mentoring: A modern twist on an old tradition
Alma College Michigan Campus Compact AmeriCorps*VISTA, Juliann Schaffer, has been on the forefront of new advances in mentoring during her second year of service. Schaffer, working closely with her supervisor Anne Ritz, Alma College Service Learning Coordinator, has worked to established an email to email mentoring program between faculty and staff at Alma College and local middle school students in the Alma Public Schools After School Program. Creating training manuals and preparing orientations for both mentors and mentees to properly inform them of this new and exciting endeavor has been one of Schaffer's duties over the past year.
"Many people have the desire to become mentors, but busy schedules often do not allow time for traditional mentoring," claims Schaffer, who is excited about implementing such a cutting edge mentoring tool. E-mentoring technology allows mentoring to occur any time or place and opens the door for both mentors and mentees to be engaged in a unique way.
As a second year AmeriCorps*VISTA, Schaffer has had the opportunity to work closely with the Alma Public Schools and their After School Program, providing them quality programming such as this email to email mentoring program along with support from Service Learning classes.
Since this is a first year pilot project, "recruiting men and getting the actual technology piece up and running have been two of the most challenging aspects," Schaffer states, "however, it will be exciting to see how the year progresses and how we can make this program even better in the future."
E-mentoring is a modern twist on mentoring which shares the same goals as traditional face-to-face mentoring through establishing a trusting, nurturing, positive relationship between the mentor and a young person with the added dimension of e-mail technology. E-mentoring allows mentors to communicate with mentees via email, through a web-based program from the National Mentoring Partnership. This is a secure environment that provides an archive of all exchanges. This allows for quality volunteers to mentor without constraints such as time, geographical distance or irregular schedules.
Volunteer Centers of Michigan
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service: "A Day On, Not a Day Off."
Flint-area volunteers in an outreach project honoring Dr. King's legacy on January 16, 2006 went door to door to visit neighborhood residents near the Sylvester Broome Center to inform them about free tax preparation services for low-income wage earners, the Earned Income Tax Credit and other community resources. This project was initiated by the Flint Resource Center's two VISTAs Athena McKay and Adia Wheeler.
Michigan Promise
Michigan’s Promise is happy to announce the 2006 Red Wagon Awards. This award program is open to all of the Communities of Promises, Sites of Promises and the six United Way communities under the special Women’s Initiative Grant. The winning programs will receive state and national recognition and a $500 grant award.
The awards are designed to recognize and thank special local programs for their tremendous contributions toward making Michigan communities the best places to raise children.
The Red Wagon Award winners will be honored during the 2006 Michigan Nonprofit SuperConference being held at the Sheraton Detroit Novi, in Novi, Michigan.
If you are interested in learning more about the Red Wagon Awards, please contact Mary Estrada at (517)492-2443 or email her at mestrada@connectmichiganalliance.org
Mentor Michigan
Mentor Michigan Providers Council
The 2006 Mentor Michigan Providers Council is made up of 20 professionals from across the State of Michigan who are dedicated to improving the state of mentoring in Michigan. These professionals come from community based and academic settings; are currently working directly with mentoring programs, developing research and information or work within the political hierarchy of a community; and collectively have deep and broad foundation on which to develop the future of mentoring in Michigan. The council serves as an advisory body to the Michigan Community Service Commission (MCSC), the host agency for Mentor Michigan.
The Mentor Michigan Providers Council advises the Mentor Michigan initiative about activities and the needs of mentoring programs around the state. The Providers Council seeks to:
. Assess the need for mentors and document the capacity of existing programs expand.
. Develop a statewide recruitment and referral systems for mentoring.
. Design a statewide training and technical assistance plan for mentoring programs to develop organizational capacity to meet the Michigan Mentoring Program Standards.
. Develop a tracking system to monitor mentoring on an ongoing basis.
. Advise Mentor Michigan on overall research/evaluation agenda.
. Develop and promotes statewide mentoring activities such as trainings and National Mentoring Month activities, etc.
. Serve as a liaison to local/regional mentoring programs.
. Educate key local, state, and national leaders about mentoring and issues important to mentoring.
The Providers Council accomplished many important tasks during its first year in existence. Chief among these accomplishments includes the development and implementation of Quality Program Standards for Youth Mentoring. These Quality Program Standards place the State of Michigan in the forefront in terms of providing a planning and assessment framework that raises the bar for mentoring programs. The Standards provide a basis for each program (board, staff, and other constituents) to make a strategic comparison and determination of how the Standards will best meet the needs of youth and families.
The Mentor Michigan Providers Council drafted the standards from best practices developed by national, state and local organizations. First Gentleman Daniel G. Mulhern presented the standards through a series of professional workshops held throughout the state. First Gentleman Mulhern is currently the Chairperson of the Michigan Community Service Commission and has an unwavering dedication to improving the state of mentoring on behalf of Michigan's children and families. The Quality Program Standards can be found on the following website: http://www.michigan.gov/mentormichigan
If you have any questions or would like additional information about the Mentor Michigan Providers Council and its work, please contact Amber Reiss at the Michigan Community Service Commission at 517.241.3493 or reissA@michigan.gov. Or contact Dr. Carole Touchinski, President and CEO of Strategic Soluntions and Chairperson of the Mentor Michigan Providers Countil at 906.869.1577 or doctouchinski@aol.com.
Editor:
Allison Treppa, Michigan Campus Compact
Contributing Writers:
Jim Bright, Ford Volunteer Corps
Greg Hall, General Motors Public Policy Center
Anne Rosewarne, Michigan Health Council
Michelle McCray, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network
Juliann Schaffer, Alma College
Sara Ballard, Volunteer Centers of Michigan
Mary Estrada, Michigan's Promise
Carole L. Touchinski, Strategic Solutions
What do you think of our inagural e-newsletter? Send us your feedback and let us know what is important to you at cma@connectmichiganalliance.org.
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