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Worth Recognizing: Janet Saunders

Community Members Who Go Above & Beyond: Literacy Delaware volunteer improves lives of language-challenged adults

For the past nine years, Janet Saunders has taught adults who do not know how to speak, read, and write English how to communicate. “I come from England,” says Saunders. “I know how difficult it is to move and live in another country, but it’s difficult enough not knowing the language.”

As a volunteer for Literacy Delaware, Saunders, who lives in Wilmington, meets one-on-one with English language learners from Korea, China, the Caribbean or Latin America at local libraries throughout the week. And for two hours on Monday and Wednesday mornings, she leads a class at West End Head Start on Wilmington’s West Side.

Besides English learners, and as part of LD’s mission, Saunders has also tutored adults who read at or below fifth grade level. Low communication and reading skills limit a person’s economic, health, and social benefits, says Saunders. “The intent is to give the learners enough basic skills to handle their most essential needs. It helps the community as a whole to have competent people who can hold jobs and thus improve the lives of their children. It’s a benefit for everyone.”

According to the international non-profit ProLiteracy, one in six U.S. adults lacks basic literacy skills. Cindy Shermeyer, LD executive director, says it’s about the same in Delaware.

Studies also show that children of parents with low literacy skills have a 72 percent chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves.

Currently LD has 80 volunteer tutors and 150 students. Thirty percent are basic learners while 70 percent are English language learners. Over 2,900 students have received free assistance since the non-profit’s inception in 1983. The statewide organization trains volunteers who are mostly retirees from careers such as marketing, banking, information technology, law and nursing. They teach basic English skills and/or basic reading, writing and math skills. The organization relies on fundraisers, grants and private donations.

Saunders, a former chemist, moved to the United States in 1959. She retired as a computer programmer in 1999 while living in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. When she moved to the First State in 2009, a friend told her about Literacy Delaware, and she has been a volunteer ever since.

“I get a great deal of satisfaction from feeling that I have helped people improve their lives,” Saunders says. When she’s not busy tutoring, she is registering learners, helping with tutor orientation, or with social and fundraising events.

“She (Saunders) is amazing in her compassion, commitment, and dedication to this entire adult literacy endeavor,” says Shermeyer. “Her learners love her.”

An English learner, Esneyder Lopez, 52, says he’s taking full advantage of the free program and its volunteers. The Wilmington resident started taking classes five months ago to improve his job prospects. A successful business owner in Colombia, Lopez left everything behind eight years ago because of unsafe conditions in the South American country.

He says the classes have helped him increase his confidence and he’s no longer afraid to leave his home. “I can communicate. I no longer fear making mistakes, life is a lot simpler.”

He’s also a diabetic, and he says he can now understand his doctor’s diet recommendations. “If not for the program, my life would be very difficult,” Lopez says.

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Worth Recognizing

Shawn Moran: Delivering meals and smiles for nearly three decades

During his 29 years as a volunteer for Meals On Wheels Delaware, Shawn Moran has not only delivered nutritious lunch-time meals to homebound seniors, he’s also made life a bit more pleasant for them.

“My smile may be the only one they see all day or all week,” says the 63-year-old Wilmington resident.

The people who rely on volunteers like Moran are seniors who want to remain in their own homes but are alone or disabled without anyone to prepare food for them or are unable to prepare a meal for themselves.

He is one of 800 on a rotation schedule who cover 65 delivery routes each weekday for City Fare, one of five meal delivery programs run by Meals On Wheels Delaware (MOWD). Last year, City Fare, which is based at St. Anthony’s Center in Wilmington, delivered about 300,000 meals throughout Wilmington and New Castle County. Statewide, the five programs delivered a total of 727,418 meals to 4,093 seniors ages 60 and over in 2016.

Moran’s employer, Patterson Schwartz Real Estate in Claymont, is part of a group of businesses that assist MOWD by allowing employees extra time during lunch breaks to deliver meals. Fourteen employees at his office participate in the program, although Moran has delivered meals longer than any of them.

One week a month he and his coworkers take turns delivering the meals. Moran usually goes on Mondays and takes any other day available during that week. He normally delivers to 12-22 seniors. “I love doing it,” he says. “I have no intention of stopping. It makes me feel good to be able to help.”

Moran first stops at the Claymont Senior Center to pick up coolers containing hot meals of fish or beef, fruit, veggies, milk and dessert. Then he heads to the communities of Bellefonte and Claymont, where he’s delivered meals since 1988.

Sometimes a visit turns out to be more than dropping off a meal. Moran has called 911 on two occasions, once when he found a woman at the bottom of the stairs with a broken leg, and another time when he discovered a woman with a compound fracture of her foot. He also checks simple things such as the heat or air conditioning. On a cold winter day, he bought a bag of salt and sprinkled it on a walkway at the home of a senior he delivered to. She thanked him with cookies.

“Volunteers are the heart of each (meal delivery) program,” says Anne Love, executive director of MOWD. “The nutritious meal, friendly volunteer visit and safety checks help our seniors cope with three of the biggest threats of aging: hunger, isolation, and loss of independence.”

More volunteers are desperately needed to deliver meals, especially in the Claymont and New Castle area, says Erica Porter Brown, project director for City Fare. “We are short each day about 15 routes.”

For Moran, volunteering is part of his life and something he looks forward to. “It’s an immediate impact that I don’t want to miss.”

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Worth Recognizing: Community Members Who Go Above & Beyond

Gertrude and Tommy Abel: Every Christmas is a shopping spree—for others

Since 1992, Christmas for the Abel family of Greenville has not been the same. That year they refused to get consumed by the commercialism, the buying and taking, the accumulation of things.
Instead, on Christmas morning they delivered furniture, linens, toiletries, pots and pans, clothes, food and toys to a mother and her child who had moved into an apartment from a homeless shelter in Wilmington. The Ministry of Caring, which provides support services for those living in poverty, brought the two families together.

“It became a Christmas tradition,” says Gertrude Abel. “We wanted to give moms committed to getting out of poverty a boost, a little bit of help by saving them the expense of purchasing these items themselves. It made us happy to make someone else happy.”

Friends and family wanted to help too, so in 1994 they also began to donate.

Twenty-five years later, more than 250 mothers have received help through some 250 volunteers who take them on shopping sprees for the best deals at Kohl’s, Walmart or Target. About $700 is spent on each mother.

“Gert” Abel and her son, Tommy, made the Christmas tradition official in 2006 by creating the Clif Abel Children’s Fund in honor of their late husband and father, who died that year. Its purpose is to buy household items for mothers, under the guidance of the Ministry of Caring, who move out of shelters into rented apartments, and who typically hold jobs or are in job training programs.

The Abel family became acquainted with the Ministry of Caring because Clif Abel oversaw the building of the ministry’s first homeless shelter for women with children. The shelter opened in 1983 on North Jackson Street in Wilmington. Clif ran the construction department at MBNA, the bank formerly headquartered in Delaware.

Last year, the Abels changed the focus of the fund from a holiday shopping program to an all-year support effort. Says Tommy Abel, an entrepreneur and business owner: “Christmas tends to highlight an awareness of those who are less fortunate, but poverty is not a seasonal problem, it’s a year-round problem.”

In Delaware, 35,000 children live in poverty, according to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count project. And a single mother heads about one in three families with young children.

Jennifer Treen, a 41-year-old with an 18-month-old son, says shopping with Gert Abel five months ago turned out to be more than a buying experience. “She’s the kind of person who will give you the shirt off her back,” says the Wilmington resident. “My mom passed away 17 years ago. It felt good to be with Gert; she reminded me how it is to be with family. I’m so grateful for what she did for me.”

Year round, the Abels buy sheets and towels for the Ministry of Caring women’s shelters, toys for the birthdays of children in the Ministry’s daycare centers, and bus passes to help the mothers get to job training programs. They also sponsor two scholarships a year to elementary students, one for St. Peter Cathedral School in Wilmington and another for Serviam Girls Academy in New Castle.

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Worth Recognizing: Community Members Who Go Above & Beyond

Margaret Rivera: Helping Latino youths to aspire

When she was 17, Margaret Rivera volunteered to help a homebound child who was paralyzed from the neck down. Rivera massaged her hands, her feet, told her about school and read to her. More than five decades later, Rivera is still volunteering.

“It’s in my DNA,” says the Wilmington resident. “When growing up, I saw the challenges people have and I thought about how I can turn it around to help them solve it.”

Rivera, who retired last year from AstraZeneca as manager of Affirmative Action and EEO Compliance, received the 2013 Governor’s Outstanding Volunteer Award for Education, the 2010 AstraZeneca Jefferson Award for Public Services and the 2007 Governor’s Outstanding Volunteer Award for social/justice/advocacy.

The native of New Jersey is a founding member of ASPIRA of Delaware, a non-profit organization that helps Latino students move beyond a high school education to college. She also helped start Las Americas ASPIRA Academy Charter School, the first dual language school in Delaware. The K-8 school in Newark opened in 2011 with more than 300 students. (In Spanish, aspira means to aspire.) The national organization originated in New York in 1961.

Without ASPIRA, many students would not know what educational and financial options are available to them, Rivera says. She joined ASPIRA in 2003 when the Delaware organization was known as Friends of ASPIRA. Many Latino youths in the state were not pursuing college at all at that time, she says.

Due in part to ASPIRA, the dropout rate of Latino students is declining. According to the Delaware Department of Education, it went from 3.2 percent in the 2014-2015 school year to 2.2 percent in 2015-2016.

“I would not be where I am if it were not for Margaret Rivera,” says Maria Velasquez. Before meeting Rivera, the 27-year-old, who now lives in Philadelphia, never imagined attending an Ivy League university. Today she is a first-year MBA student at the University of Pennsylvania. “Margie encouraged me to apply,” she says.

To maximize its efforts, ASPIRA’s collaborators include community volunteers and institutions such as the Latin American Community Center, Girls Inc., Del Tech Community College and United Way.

Rivera remains on the ASPIRA board and volunteers as chair of the Development and Communications Committee. And she is still an advisor to students in the Saturday Academy program.

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Worth Recognizing: Community Members Who Go Above & Beyond

Deb Buenaga: Helping children with special needs through Preston’s March for Energy

In August 2011 Deb Buenaga’s son, Preston, who suffers from Mitochondrial Disease, received a specially-adaptive bike from a family friend’s fundraiser. The bicycle cost a hefty $2,200.

“When Preston rode his bike for the first time, for an hour and a half, his dad Steve and I knew that other children deserved the same opportunity,” says Buenaga. “We knew that we needed to ‘pay it forward.’” 

This motivated her to launch Preston’s March for Energy just two months later, while still juggling fulltime caretaking responsibilities for Preston. She quit her job as a preschool teacher and now dedicates upwards of 50 hours a week to the cause, and while she qualified for a Longwood Foundation grant for an administrative assistant, Buenaga herself makes approximately $5 an hour. She is backed up by 30-35 active volunteers.

The nonprofit provides adaptive bikes to children and young adults ages 6 to 21 with special needs who can’t ride a typical bike. Each adaptive bicycle is built and customized for the individual who will ride it. Preston’s March works with various bike vendors, raising money for families through events like Corks and Cookies, a yearly 5K, and corporate and individual sponsors, since insurance does not cover the cost of an adaptive bike. A family will apply through the website—prestonsmarch.org—and Preston’s March will collaborate with that child’s medical team to create the perfect bike, down to painting the bicycle the child’s favorite color.

“Today I was incredibly blessed to be able to make a child smile who has thyroid and lung cancer,” says Buenaga. “But he also has a dream to ride a bike like his brother and sister and friends. He cannot ride a typical bike because sitting up and balancing makes him tired and with a tracheotomy he has troubles breathing. I presented him with a bike that he can lie down with and pedal with his feet. He told his mom to Velcro him in his bike so nobody can take him off it.”

Buenaga and her family spend their weekends or vacation time presenting bikes all over the country. Last month she and Preston road-tripped to Green Bay, Wis., to surprise a family with two bicycles. She and Preston have put 28,000 miles on a donated van in less than a year. 

“We all open our eyes in the morning the same way—some of us not as easy as others,” she says. “Some may be suffering with a disease, some may be a caregiver and first thing they do is care for a loved one who needs them. But the one thing we have in common is to make it to the end of the day the best that we can. My choice is to go to bed every night and know I made someone smile.”