Leave the gun take the cannoli (9)

Changing the culture of poverty takes persistence,  the willingness to listen and the desire to spoil children with the two things they want most; time and attention.   

Operating under the assumption  that  it’s the inalienable right of every child to experience undivided attention from the adult of their choice, my NYCares crew, Casey, Estela, Gaelen, Katie,  Lisa and Melissa spent Saturday morning reading and playing word games with   the kids at Children of the City.

It had been a while since the NYCares volunteers had been at the Children of the City headquarters.  So the kids were   eagar to tell us everything that’s happened in the last month.     

When I went into the kitchen to get some juice,  7 year old Vanessa decided to take a break with me.  She sipped her orange juice  and told me about all the things she was looking forward to doing at Super Saturday.   “My favorite games are hot potato and tag” she said.  Vanessa, learned these classic childhood games from the Children of the City staff.  The daughter of recent immigrants, Vanessa spends all of her free time here, at the Create Succuss after school program and Super Saturday.  Her mom is always busy looking  for odd jobs.  I think  I’ve seen her father  standing in the line for  day  laborers.    Her family’s holiday meals and all the presents under their Christmas tree  last year were  courtesy of Children of the City.  

 “And my most favorite toy is the one I got  at Christmas” Vanessa continued.  ” Don’t get jealous.  Its Hannah Montana.  She’s like a Barbie.  I brush her hair  two times a day.  And I keep her in a safe place when I’m at school  I could show her to you if you promise not to get jealous.”        

We were interrupted by Brian who was holding a book.  “Here it is” he said,  “that’s the kind of lizard I have” he points to a picture.  “That one.   I have two.  Aa big one and a little one.”

“Don’t get jealous,” Vanessa interjected, “you have nice things too!” 

  “They change color from brown to green”,  Brian continued.  “And you can’t find the little one when he climbs on the wall.  How many lizards have you got?” he asked as he began drawing reptiles  in my notebook. “I’m going to be an author and I’m going to write a book about chameleons for you.” 

I walked back to  the reading room checking on my NYCares crew.  Each volunteer had a group of 4 or 5 students engaged in a book or word game.  Galen helped the older boys increase their comprehension skills.   Estela  had her Kindergarten group mesmerized by her story telling skills.     Melissa’s group was playing a game with sight words.   Casey and Lisa were showing the kids strategies for sounding out new words. 

 Giovanni, called me over to look at the  table where he was playing  Sight Word Bingo.   He’s only five but he has already mastered the sounds of the alphabet and can reads simple sentences.   “Look,  that one starts with the same sound as off,” he puts his tiny finger over  the word other.   “But’s it not the right word.   Melissa said ‘off. ‘ Count my squares.   I have 13 and when when I get one more I’ll 14.  And if I put it there,” he points to the word other again, “I’ll say BINGO!”

The Children of the City staff came around to remind the kids that it was almost noon and the Super Saturday activities were starting upstairs.       As my volunteers began putting on their coats, one little boy, Lenny,  began to cry.   He put his hands over his ears and refused to say goodbye to any of us.  When the NYCares crew left, I stayed behind to clean up  and make sure that Lenny was alright.     His Children of the City tutor and mentor sat with him for a while.  Then Lenny’s mentor smiled and told  me that the tears were  a compliment.     Lenny  enjoyed reading with Estela   so much that he didn’t want her to  leave.    I ‘m jealous. 

The weekend after Valentine’s Day is even more melancholy for those isolated by illness or advanced age.    Sunday’s movie night at Rivington House started off rather low key.    My  NYCares crew,  Jeff, Marissa and Stephanie arrived at 6:20 to help me serve chocolate cake and snacks as we watched a documentary on John Coltrane with the residents.    

At 7 the movie started.  It  featured  Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” at every milestone in his career.  The tranquility of the music  was wasted on me as the caffine from my  afternoon cappachino started to kick in.   When  I’d heard the first few notes of “My Favorite Things” for the third time my mind flipped to the  Blues Brothers movie and  the song “Rawhide.”     

I sat next to Baby Girl, one the youngest residents.  She had a million questions   ranging from who did the research for this documentary to where I bought  my boots.     “My Favorite Things” started up again and I took it as a cue to launch into one of my favorite things.   I signaled to Jeff, pointing to the chair on the other side of Baby Girl, made a brief introduction and circulated around the room.    A few seconds later the rest of us were whispering and giggling with several  of the residents. 

The energy level in the room spiked.  My buddies were smiling and so were my volunteers.     

 A little flirting does wonders for the immune system.          

January is a cold, cruel month.  The philanthropic spirit of the holidays vaporises around the time that Christmas trees become mulch.  The midnight oil burns in board rooms of non-profits as exec’s brainstorm ways to find donors and fill seats at their spring fundraisers.   This is the month when the dilettantes sleep in on Saturdays,  leaving   preeminent volunteers from Caring Community and New York Cares  to brave the weather and visit the shut-ins of Manhattan.

This week my NYCares crew and  a dozen members  from  Kingston  Church in Michigan joined my fantastic five,   Lauren and Marciano Estigarriba, Tom Vilar,  Ginger (Wild Hearts) and Joel Mejia (Things Are Changing),  as they helped alleviate hunger and loneliness in Greenwich Village.             

 The fantastic five  use their time  and talents to spread compassion, social  justice and benevolence around the city.   Like any true super hero, their cool, yet mild mannered exteriors  offers no clue to their powerful  commitment to  making the world better for the next generation.

Lauren  and Marciano assist an organizations that serves teenagers.  Tom is devoted to helping  disabled and autistic youth.  Joel empowers kids by teaching with technology.  He teaches them the photography and video skills they need to create multi-media projects.  Ginger is  the creative consultant of my inner circle,  offering marketing tips and   brilliant strategies for promoting  worthy causes.                         

The best gift you can give anyone is your undivided attention.  Five minutes of your time is  precious  to someone isolated by illness, dementia or loneliness.     On Christmas Day, 86 exceptionally generous New Yorkers, my favorite couple from the U.K.  and my three new Australian friends gave their time and energy to the  clients of Caring Community.

 Co-ordinating volunteers for Christmas Day was  like assembling an all white jigsaw puzzle.  Tom Marrone organized the delivery routes  to accommodate my penchant for overbooking volunteers.   A normal delivery route has 7 to 10 clients.  But for Christmas he divided each route so that the volunteers could  spend a few minutes engaging every  client in a conversation. 

Tom had asked for 40 people and was expecting a mere 31, but I  can’t say “no” to someone  who wants to do a good deed.  So, by 10 a.m. we had  a crowd of   smiling faces  eager to cheer up the   shut-ins of Greenwich Village with a hot meal and a small, brightly wrapped gift.

My best regulars, Lauren and Marciano Estigarribia, Charity Diaz and Fredrick helped me organize my New York Cares team and  the City Meal On Wheels crew.   New recruits, Joel Mejia from Things Are Changing , Dara Shinler and  Amanda, Anita and Barney  were quickly teamed up with someone who could show them the ropes and sent out to spread good cheer.            

 By noon all of our jovial  volunteers had returned.  Many of them had anecdotes about our colorful clients. 

 Amanda, Anita, Barney and   I  went over  to Our Lady of Pompeii Church on  Carmine Street to serve at Caring Community’s Christmas Diner.   Every year the basement of the church is transformed to look like a restaurant with large round tables  that seat eight.           

We joined  Ginger, from the Wildhearts, and Jane Graley  who were already  hard at work waiting on tables.      I made my way around the room talking to each guest as I served the salad.    The faces were familiar and I was happy to spend yet another holiday with my extended Caring Community family.

As a New York Cares team leader, I got to take the bow for the 300+ clients we fed and greeted on Christmas.  But my friends, and fellow volunteers from City Meals On Wheels and New York Cares deserve a standing ovation for helping to allievate lonliness in NYC.       

 Organizing all of my holiday projects this year would not have been possible without the help of my good friend Barbara Genco and her daughter Bea.  They worked behind the scenes, entertaining my home-bound mother so I could wrap gifts, collect coats and run food drives.   Bea Genco  stops by after school every week to have tea with my mom.  The entire Genco family, Barbara’s  husband Mike,  son Micheal and even her brother Greg Johnson rallied together to help get my mom out to a party at their home on Christmas Eve.     

The kids at Team Green, an environmental project sponsored by New York Cares, are a savvy bunch of 5 th graders.  They’vs decided to  write and illustrate a book on ways to save the earth for their peers in a Sunset Park after school program.   Inevitably,  they’ve decided to devote a few chapters to global warming and the state of the world’s water supply.   Yesterday, they were researching the Arctic Ocean.  

“Is it true that their is no land on the North Pole? asked Jennifer,  as she flipped open several reference books and dropped a soft globe in my lap.    There was a black ink stain on the globe obscuring the North Pole.   Before I had the chance to respond,   Lourdes grabbed a book and read aloud a passage explaining that the North Pole was made up of ice and not land.   

“What does that mean for Santa Claus?’  Lourdes asked.   Jennifer looked dumbfounded.  The girls stared at each other for a second.   Then the girls got back to work.   Five minutes later they handed me the following letter and asked me if I could take care of this for them. 

Dear Santa,

Make sure you encourage people to stop global warming.  Because there is no land on the North Pole and you  are on ice and if it melts you will sink. 

 Santa, you really need to get the word out.

Yours truly,  

Jennifer and Lourdes

As the days grow shorter and darker, its wise to  live by Murphy’s Law.  Children of the City’s annual toy drive made a wrong turn onto an obstacle course last Monday when   scheduling problems caused a benefactor to  push back the delivery date on  a pledge for 300 toys.

Daniel Ramos had expended a considerable amount of energy   orchestrating every aspect of the drive from securing donations to  organizing a series of  gift sorting and wrapping events  starting on Wednesday.      The bulk of the toys were expected on Thursday.  Friday was set aside for a dozen  volunteers from NYCares  and Board Members who were also contributing toys.     Calculating the correct ratio of toys to volunteers, Daniel had everything planned  so that every volunteer would remain busy and engaged for each event.                

Grey skies and storm clouds caused further delays on Thursday, as a stormy mix of  snow, sleet and rain hit the tri-state area.  Less than half  of the projected deliveries made it to our headquaters that night.   Surprisingly, only a few volunteers bailed out of this project.   Since most of them lived just a few subway stops away, 60 willing wrappers from  Volunteer NYC,  Old Navy, and assorted high school students patiently waited  alongside  NYCares members Chris Peterson and Victoria Levin as the toys trickled in at a snails pace.  Suddenly, it dawned on Daniel and I that we had more wrappers  than presents to wrap. 

   We tried to stall by feeding the troops a buffet of buffalo wings, salad and chips.  We told our favorite anecdotes about making home visits.   Things were looking bleak until Board Member Rocco Basile   opened the door and asked “can I get a little help taking something out my car?”     When I started for the door, Rocco smiled and said “guys, I think she’s gonna need a little help here.”  

  The Baisle family car out classed Santa’s sleigh with a dozen  Razor scooters and popular toys  purchased by Rocco’s extremely  generous friends, relatives and business associates.       The volunteers marveled as they  wrapped  Hannah Montana, Barbie  and Bratz dolls.                 

 Rocco’s  impeccable timing and dedication to Children of the City  never cease to amaze me.  

The congregation of Village Temple is made up of wonderful people eager to preform a mitzvah when needed.   Twice a year they clean out their closets  so the clients at the soup kitchen can “shop” for a new wardrobe.  The clothes are given away free to anyone who needs them, but the foyer of the temple is transformed to look like a store.

  On Saturday, my NY-Cares crew,  Linda, Mary Beth, Lindsay and  Neil  sorted through mountains of clothes,  matching up sizes and colors like professional stylists out to please the most discerning customer.      Determined that no one would go away empty handed,  they exhausted themselves combing the racks to find exactly  the right coats, jackets. suits,  and scarves to make our  clients   feel pampered and special.

At the end of the day we had helped dress 250   homeless and fixed income seniors.              

In the shadows of the fast food restaurants and construction scaffolding on Fourth Avenue, several  families share a single  two bedroom  apartment.   The effort it takes to keep a low profile exceeds the energy expended at coveted factory jobs or  the hours of hawking bootlegs on the corner.    South Brooklyn is like a jigsaw puzzle of sub cultures that tessellate into a   familiar image.   Transplanted mid-westerners are changing the landscape of the area formerly known as the premiere stop after Ellis Island.  Illegal immigrants are camouflaged by first generation Americans who retain the culture of their forefathers.  Luxury condos overlooking the cemetry add to the quirky charm  of a neighborhood where far too many of the neighbors are in need.   

On Monday afternoon I leaned against the traffic light and passed out flyers for yet another food drive.  Feeling frustrated by  the steady decline in donations to the local food pantry,  I wondered if I was wasting my time.  

 Then along came Jayson, a wide eyed five year old who tried to snatch a flyer from my hand.  He is only in Kindergarten, but already Jayson has expressed an interest in feeding the homeless.   His father  asked me for some information.  “My son wants to do this” he said, “just tell me where he can bring the food.”

On Friday,  Jayson returned with his father and a box full of groceries.  He had collected twenty pounds of rice,  a few boxes of cereal, as well as,  an assortment of canned soup and beans.     “I hope you get 100 pounds of food” he  said as he shook my hand.    We decided to weigh the food he’d brought.  Jayson had donated  38 lbs . Then we weighed the other donations.   Altogether Jayson and I had collect 115 lbs and 14 oz.   Not bad for week’s work.                             

You can never be too rich or have too many volunteers. 

 I’ve rewritten the old cliche to make it politically correct, considering the dwindling donations to food banks in the area and the spike in the number of households relying on emergency food for survival. 

The Thanksgiving holiday is the  one day out of the year that soup kitchens get such an overabundance of volunteers that they actually turn some away.  At Caring Community, Tom Marrone and I decided that we would find a way to put every volunteer who walked through the door on Thanksgiving morning to work.      New York Cares and  City Meals on Wheels each sent us a team of 40 volunteers to help us deliver  350  meals on  Thanksgiving to the home-bound in Greenwich Village.    Another six eager volunteers just followed the traffic to the Caring Community headquarters and offered their services.       

At first, I was slightly overwhelmed by the sight of so many people, but my regular volunteers, Tim Gibbons, Cindy Slater and Ginger from the band “The Wildhearts” helped me with crowd control , organization and clean up.       Together we set a record for rapid delivery as the troops hit the streets within 45 minutes and delivered the  hot feast to everyone on our list before noon.

Now, if there is someone out there who thinks that you can be too rich, please call me.  I’ve  got a charity for you.  

For those  who run in charity circles, the weekend before Thanksgiving  is the start of a marathon.  The race is on to mobilize  volunteers,  solicit donations and confrim the pledges of coats, canned foods, toys and turkeys. This year’s obstacle course comes courtesy of  the recent  recalls on toys made in China.         

Last weekend,  I pulled a double shift at Children of the City, arriving early on Saturday morning to oversee the Reading Partners Program and help out with he paperwork for our annual  “boxes of love” Thanksgiving dinner distribution.    My New York Cares crew,  ( Charity, Evelyn, Estella, Han,  Jennifer and Lauren) where having a great time with the kids while I struggled to help an Asian parent fill out a registration form.   I’d spent four years at NYU learning Mandarin so  I assumed that I could elicit some basic information from the guy.   The poor man was bewildered and frustrated as I rattled on in rusty Chinese until his daughter finally said “My father can’t hear or speak.”  As the weekend progressed. I realized that this guy was the least of my challenges.   Confusion and frustration ensued when a group of volunteers bailed on Saturday and a record number of  teenagers  showed up to help on Sunday.      

My fellow New York Care team leader,  Reine, was the model of composure as she led her team through the paces of greeting clients, taking tickets, translating and handing out “boxes of love” alongside  board member Rocco Basile and his family.     Over 100 families  received a holiday dinner on Sunday.  

Reine was kind enough to let me make a pitch for our annual toy drive and the  Winter Wishes Program at New York Cares.   Winter Wishes  is a project where children’s letters  are given to people  willing to buy a gift for a specific child.   My personal experience with  these letters has been heart wrenching.   Children in need rarely ask for things for themselves.   They usually want a coat for their mother or a toy for a younger  sibling.     It means a great deal  to these kids to get a gift that is wrapped and embellished with   ribbons or stickers.   Sometimes its the only present they get all year.