:■ a
August 1995"
BRIEFLY
State games seeks
helpers
The North Carolina Senior
Games, to be held Sept. 26
to Oct. 1 in Raleigh, is
seeking volunteers to help
score events, present
awards, assist with publicity,
souvenir sales, registration
and other activities. Call
Lynn Alender at (919) 851 -
5456.
Philanthropy Journal of North Caroliiia
Students help county
A group of graduate stu
dents at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel
Hill have been working on a
unique public service pro
ject involving a bid to bring
Bristol Compressors to
Sparta in Alleghany County.
Students helped county
leaders in their successful
effort to attract the company
to North Carolina.
First night needs
artists
Organizers of First Night
Raleigh, the annual New
Year's Eve celebration of the
arts, are looking for artists
and volunteers to help plan
projects for the event.
Volunteers are needed for
The Children's Celebration
and The People's
Procession. Call (919) 832-
8699.
Volunters sought for
support group
SAFEchild, a Raleigh-based
nonprofit providing family
services, is seeking volun
teers to work with parents
and children as support
group facilitators. Groups
meet weekly for 10 weeks
for 90 minutes in the
evening. The next training is
Sept. 9 from 9 a.m. to 4
p.m. Call Joanna Hobler,
(919) 231-5800.
Wonted: chili cooks
for March of Dimes
Chili cooks are needed for
the 13th annual March of
Dimes North Carolina Chili
Championship and Rubber
Duck Regatta to be held on
Sept. 16 at Tanglewood
Park in Clemmons. Cooking
categories are Texas-style
and Freestyle. Cooks may
enter either competition. To
register, call (910) 723-
4386 or (800) 443-4093.
New award to honor
literacy volunteers
The Center for Literacy and
Disability Studies at the
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill and Don
Johnston Inc. Software
developer have created a
new award to honor literacy
volunteers. Recipients of the
Don Johnston Incorporated
Literacy Lectureship Award
will receive $1,000 and an
invitation to a symposium.
Maxwell
Continued from page 8
center staff publicly honor their most
active youth and adult volunteers
throughout the year.
Maxwell says her experience in
Washington confirmed the value of
these events, which “affirm what
you’re doing even when you didn’t
think you needed affirmation.”
Keepingvolunteers’ needs in mind
in other ways is also key to effective
nonprofit leadership, Maxwell says. If
volunteering
makes sense, it
also makes sense
for the nonprofit
sector to adapt to
societal changes,
by creating oppor
tunities for volun
teering that suit
modern hfestyles.
Increased
mobihty and hectic
lifestyles present
nonprofit leaders
who rely on volun
teers with new challenges. Maxwell
says.
“People get moved in their jobs so
fast that we don’t have that long-term
commitment of a community,” she
says.
In addition, with time an increas
ingly scarce commodity many people,
including single parents and dual
career couples, are less willing or
able to take time from their family
hves to devote to community service.
Maxwell says the Volunteer
Center concentrates on finding ways
to make it easy for people in such sit
uations to contribute. The center, for
example, focuses more and more on
shorter-term commitments, including
“one-shot” volunteer opportunities,
such as Centerfest and the Festival
for the Eno, two annual arts festivals
■ t was just a logical
action that emanated
from seeing the need.
Volunteering makes
sense.
Beth Maxwell
in Durham.
There also are many ways for par
ents to resolve the apparent conflict
between family time and community
service by volunteering with their
children, Maxwell says. For example,
chOdren and their parents can partic
ipate in library programs in which
they deliver books and visit with peo
ple who are homebound. And Meals
on Wheels is a good opportunity for
mothers with small children. Maxwell
says.
Involving one’s children in volun
teer work, she says, is an excellent
way of encouraging
voluntarism in the
next generation.
“They see the
rewards of volun
teering,” she says,
“and they see it as a
way of life.”
Maxwell’s famOy life
attests to this princi
ple.
“My husband and I
both feel strongly
about commitment
to the community,”
she says, and their
three children have absorbed this
sense of responsibility.
Jim Maxwell, a Durham lawyer,
has been a volunteer swim coach in
Durham since the second year of
their marriage, when he was studying
for the bar exam.
“He started the age-group swim
ming program in Durham,” she says
proudly, “and he’s been volunteering
ever since.”
Their oldest son, Jonathan, an
engineer in Silver Springs, Md., also
has been a volunteer swim coach.
Maxwell says, and daughter Tracey, a
rising senior in public policy at Duke
University, is an intern at the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Scott Maxwell, a 1994 graduate of
the University of North Carohna at
Chapel Hill, is a reporter in Winston-
Salem. Scott recently told his mother
that he has overcome some journalis
tic skepticism by remembering that
board members of community agen
cies he reports on are ‘“people just
like you.’”
Smiling, she says, “You never real
ize what influence you’re having on
children.”
One of Maxwell’s earliest and
most enduring volunteer commit
ments has been to the Durham public
schools.
“From preschool parties
...through [my children’s] senior
years in high school, I helped in any
way I could,” she says, “and never felt
I was doing quite enough.”
She cites her role in establishing
Jordan High School’s Choral Music
Council - a parent-student group that
raises money to support choral tours
- as one of her most rewarding expe
riences. The group gave parents and
students a rare chance to work
together and get to know one another,
she says.
Moreover, it is still doing that,
more than five years later.
“The reward is seeing that it still
works, seeing people build on the
foundation that we created.”
Other causes to which Maxwell
has given her time and talent span all
aspects of public life and include
domestic violence, health care, the
arts, literacy and scouting. She has
served as president or board chair of
numerous organizations, including
the Junior League of Durham, United
Way of Greater Durham, the
Orange/Durham Coalition for
Battered Women and the Durham
YWCA.
This exhaustive record of commu
nity service may be inspirational to
you and me, but to Beth Maxwell, it’s
only logical.
Marrow
Continued from page 8
on the marrow registry said Rhonda
Bellamy a Wilmington spokesman for
the campaign.
Getting on the registry requires
only a blood test.
If a patient with compatible mar
row is found, the donor will be asked
to donate a small amount for trans
plant. A small amount of marrow is
removed from the lower part of the
back in a surgical procedure using
general anesthesia. Although the
surgery might leave the donor a little
sore, there are no long-term health
effects.
The tissue testing to get on the
registry is expensive, usually
between $35 and $60. But African
Americans can get on the list for free
as part of the effort to increase the
odds for minority patients seeking
matching marrow donors.
But for no\y the odds still are not
so good for Juan Wilson. Although
he’s feeling okay most of the time,
some days are better than others.
“I’m healthy physically. I can
move around and fraternize with my
friends, but if I try to work or any
thing, I get sick,” he says. ‘And men
tally it’s just breaking me down...that
I might die.”
For information about the
National Marrow Donor Program’s
registry, cail 1-800-MARROW-2.
Schools
Continued from page 8
that’s known as experiential learn
ing.”
Among the colleges that have
returned surveys, three reported that
they require some amount of commu
nity service for graduation. One of
them, Warren Wilson College, a small,
four-year school in Western North
Carolina, requires every student to
complete 20 hours of service for each
year they spend in school.
Community service is Included in
the school’s mission, says Joanna
Bender, director of communications
for Warren Wilson. Students are
encouraged to develop projects on
their own or work in groups, she
says, but either way the students
learn through service.
“We have a range of students from
different backgrounds. We sometimes
will have a student whose parents
make $20 zillion and they say ‘I don’t
have to work or anything - I’ll just pay
[to get out of the volunteer require
ment.]’ But that doesn’t work.’
Everybody here has to do the service
before they graduate.”
'The students go out into the com
munity to do their volunteer work,
and that helps keep good relations
between the college and the town.
Bender says.
Students also incorporate their
classwork into their service at col
leges. It might be hard to imagine how
a student could incorporate commu
nity service into an art major, but stu
dents in all majors are benefiting
from volunteer work.
Sarah Walker, a 19-year-old fresh
man at Warren Wilson, designed a 40-
toot wall mural in an art class. When
she finished the course, Sarah coordi
nated a group of students to paint the
mural at a local children’s hospital.
Serow said students in all majors
are using service projects to enhance
their classroom education around the
state.
“Look at social studies, for exam
ple, or sociology Instead of just talk
ing about poverty as an abstract, they
get to see it,” Serow says. “People are
starting to look at seivice learning as
a living laboratory’
New resource for housing assistance
The state Housing Finance Agency
has just published a manual of
900 public and nonprofit organiza
tions that provide affordable hous
ing or housing-related services. The
manual includes 300 more listings
than the previous edition and has
new sections describing the state's
housing delivery system and federal
and state funding sources.
To obtain a copy of the new manu
al, send $15 to: Housing Resource
Manual, North Carolina Housing
Finance Agency, RO. Box 28066,
Raleigh, NC 27611-8066; tel.
(919) 781-6115.
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0i
'The
I ORTH CAROLINA
PLANNED GIVING COUNCIL
presents
Good Gifts, Bad Gifts:
How Do You Tell the Difference?
Better Living Through
Charitable Giving:
Gifts 'That Solve Problems for Donors
Both sessions delivered by Marc Carmichael, J.D.,
President of R&R Newkirk Charitable Giving Tax Service
Mr. Carmichael is an expert and frequent presenter on
charitable giving tax matters. He is a board member of
the National Planned Giving Council.
Thursday, September 14 M :00 am - 2:00 pm
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Cone University Center Room 210
Cost $20 NC Planned Giving Council members
$50 non-members
For reservations or more info call: Sandra Shell, Wachovia Bank, (910) 770-5289