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2008 Family Advocate Awards
Three People Making a Difference for Massachusetts Families
Wherever you may be in life, it’s easy to wonder how you can help others in need and give something back to your community. Since 1989, the Boston Parents Paper has honored local heroes who asked, and then answered this question by stepping out and doing something positive for others. We look for notable volunteers, community organizers, role models and young people who are making a difference in their communities, often behind the scenes. This year, we’ve selected Three individuals whom we’re very proud to tell you about – advocates in the categories of youth, volunteer and role model who each give tirelessly of themselves to help others.
Please join us in thanking this year’s winners for making the world a better place for kids and parents!
And if you know of an advocate who deserves similar recognition, please let us know. Write to Family Advocates, Boston Parents Paper, 670 Centre St., Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 or send an email to boston.parentspaper@ parenthood.com.
• Hannah Malenfant
Hildebrand Family Self-Help Center
More than 1,500 families in Massachusetts are homeless, including at least 3,000 preschool and school-age children. As fewer affordable housing options come along, the length of time these families typically spend in shelters is rising – from six months to 18 months.
It’s a problem that has prompted Cambridge high school student Hannah Malenfant, 17, to do what she can to help.
Not long after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, Malenfant was Watching a news report on the avalanche of donations pouring in to the Red Cross to help the victims of 9-11. Because of this, the report said, donations to small, local nonprofits had essentially dried up, leaving those agencies scrambling to keep their own charitable services going.
The news struck a nerve with Malenfant, who was only 11 at the time.
With the holidays approaching, she came up with a plan to gather friends together, sing Christmas carols in her neighborhood and ask residents for donations of money, clothing and toys for needy children. Her Target charity: the Hildebrand Family Self-Help Center in Cambridge, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, support and guidance to low-income families who have lost their homes.
That first year, after leaving flyers at her neighbors’ doors, Malenfant collected $500 in cash, 10 bags of clothes and many new toys for the children at the center.
Since then, she’s organized the caroling event every year, and has donated more than $8,000, plus 70 large bags of clothes and many new toys to the center. She joins the staff in wrapping the holiday gifts for the children, and makes sure there is something appropriate for teenagers as well as little kids. In fact, the lack of enough gifts for teens led Malenfant to specifically request gift cards for adolescents in her appeal letter to potential donors.
“Hannah’s Fundraiser, as we now call this annual event, is just awesome,” wrote Joyce Trotman, executive director of the Hildebrand Center in one of the center’s fundraising letters. “Several years ago, when I first met Hannah, I marveled at this very young girl who wanted to do something to help those less fortunate. I continue to marvel at the beautiful young lady she has become and that her commitment to make a difference has continued to the present.”
Malenfant, who also volunteers at Cambridge Youth Soccer, recently won a Cambridge Club Award for Community Service. And she has come to realize that helping needy children and their families is something she wants to explore in her studies at college.
Family Advocate/Volunteer
• Arthur Teepe
Natick Head Start Classroom
After retiring as a computer systems analyst at Boston Gas, Arthur Teepe of Natick started looking around for some volunteer work. What he found was a nonprofit group that recruits volunteers to help tutor kids and lend a hand in school classrooms.
“I was nervous about what I could do, and wasn’t sure if I was up for tutoring high school kids,” Teepe says of the different tasks available through the Newton-based group Service Opportunities After Retirement (SOAR). “But when I heard there was a need to work with 4-yearolds, I thought, ‘I can do that!’”
And he’s been doing it for four years at the Natick Head Start program run by the South Middlesex Opportunity Council (SMOC). The program provides early education and support for kids from low-income families.
“Arthur is wonderful in the classroom,” says Head Start teacher Dorothy Powers, who oversees 18 children ages 3 and 4. “The kids respect Arthur and respond very positively to him.”
For his part, Arthur enjoys not having to play the role Of teacher or to discipline the kids. Rather, he reads stories to them in groups or individually, helps them with crafts or just gets down on the floor and plays with them.
“I can tell by what they share with me that sometimes they truly struggle with things and need a listening ear,” Teepe says of the kids he works with. He also makes it a point to get to know their parents at drop-off, pick-up and special family breakfasts. “How well he does this job!” says Powers.
Teepe hopes to inspire other retirees to lend a hand in local classrooms or to find ways to work with children. “I’m not some kind of a saint,” he explains. “I get more from these kids than I’ll ever be able to give them. It’s a lot of fun!”
Family Advocate/Role Model
• Rosie Hanlon
Brighton Main Streets
Rosie Hanlon has lived in Brighton her entire life. She has always felt deeply committed to her community, and has worked tirelessly to make it a better place for families. For her, the idea of “giving back” is a lifelong mission. A single mother of five children, ages 12 to 22, Hanlon has spent her entire career advocating on behalf of her neighbors, her friends and her family.
For many years, as director of the Community Learning Center at the Jackson Mann school, Hanlon worked with school administrators, teachers and local groups on continuing education programs; she created nutrition, exercise and safety programs for students. These days, as executive director of Brighton Main Streets, a private, nonprofit community organization, she has secured more than $10 million in public and private funding to support efforts to revitalize Brighton. “Since I came on board with this program, we have seen our business district go from 50 percent vacancy to 98 percent leased store fronts,” she explains. “We were once considered a ‘drive-through’ district. Now we are a destination!”
In this role, Hanlon has gotten to know local business owners, and she’s adept at finding ways to use these relationships to help local kids. When she heard that a walking program to combat obesity might fold because local students couldn’t afford the sneakers they needed to participate, she contacted New Balance and got shoes for the kids.
To keep kids safe on Halloween, Hanlon worked with community leaders to start a Halloween parade for costumed kids and their parents that ended with trick-ortreating at Brighton businesses. She initiated a bike safety program for the local police to provide kids with bike helmets, and she has organized outdoor summer concerts for families.
But that’s not all. For more than a decade, Hanlon has been a member of the Boston College Task Force, securing 10 full, four-year scholarships annually for Allston and Brighton families. She has also created a local substance abuse parent support group.
Hanlon is modest when asked about her accomplishments, preferring to talk about the community she grew up in rather than the ways she has given back to it. But for the residents of Brighton, when something needs to be done, they know to “Go ask Rosie.”
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