Betsy Byrne

Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center volunteer

Betsy Byrne helps Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center in so, so many ways. The horses are what initially brought her to us in 2006, but she has said that the riders are what keep her coming back – several times each week! And she is wonderful with both our horses and our riders! Betsy helps with bringing our horses in from pasture to their stalls once a week, volunteers in multiple hippotherapy and therapeutic riding classes as a horse leader every week, rides for us on the Schooling Team, serves on the equine committee, cleans our tack, helps with saddle fitting, and assesses volunteers’ horse handling skills in the Horse Handling Clinics. When working with new volunteers during New Volunteer Trainings, her patience and knowledge in explain everything about volunteering at a therapeutic riding center is immense. She is quite the teacher! In our New Volunteer Trainings, Betsy gently explains all the many, many new things that volunteers must learn on their first day of volunteering and makes new volunteers feel at ease. Since 2006, Betsy has volunteered over 1100 hours with us to help us serve our mission. The thing that is so inspiring about Betsy is her humility; she has so much knowledge about what we do, but she is never boastful. She is so respectful to other volunteers, staff, horses, and riders. She has so much patience; she could teach someone who has never been around horses just about anything having to do with horses. She is the ideal volunteer for our center and a quiet and calm leader, setting a great example for those around her. We love Betsy!

Though Betsy has horses of her own, she makes the time to come out here to help us by riding our horses and greatly appreciates the hard work that our horses do. Betsy will never submit a specific request; she always does whatever is the most needed that day. The mission of our center: promoting the physical, psychological and social well-being of persons with disabilities through their interaction with a therapeutic team is always her motivation, never her own personal gains. Betsy exemplifies humility. Betsy does some less glamorous tasks here including cleaning girths, but never complains. Though you can tell from talking with her that Betsy is extremely intelligent and has great knowledge of horses and therapeutic riding, she is so humble that she may never even share with you that she is veterinarian who owns her own horses OR that has given over 1100 hours in service to CTRC. We trust Betsy's opinion and think of her so highly that we have asked for her to join us as the sole volunteer on our Equine Committee and she is the only volunteer who assesses new volunteers' horse handling skills during our Horse Handling Clinics; that is how great we think of her ethical integrity.

Betsy Byrne is our 2011 Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center Volunteer of the Year. Each year, our staff picks a particularly outstanding volunteer to recognize as our volunteer of the year, so this year, we have picked Betsy out of the 358 volunteers who volunteered with us in 2011.

Mark Biggers

Volunteer Crew Leader/Keys Community Coach/ReStore Consultant and Volunteer for Flatirons Habitat for Humanity plus many other volunteer positions with other deserving nonprofits

When Mark Biggers retired in 2010, he did not go home and kick up his feet, he became a professional volunteer. He has dedicated his days to serving those members of the Boulder community who are homeless or living in poverty housing.

Everyone Mark works with agrees that he is reliable, hard-working, generous and passionate in all the volunteer roles that he fulfills year-round. Mark is always a joy to be around and is great at taking other volunteers under his wing; he encourages them to ask questions and try new things.

In 2010 Mark became a Flatirons Habitat for Humanity Volunteer Crew Leader, putting him in charge of various groups of other construction volunteers for the day. Mark teaches them the skills they need for specific tasks, looks after their safety, and ensures that all volunteers in his group are being included and having fun. In the past two years, Mark has dedicated over 540 hours of service just to construction with Flatirons Habitat. Mark also took part in our co-active coaching program, the Keys Community, including nine hours of training and a yearlong coaching commitment to empower a low-income coachee to gain stability in their life.

Since early 2011 Mark has volunteered at the Flatirons ReStore serving in many capacities to assist in the store leadership transition and restructuring.

In addition to being a star volunteer for Flatirons Habitat, Mark serves as the Junior Warden at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder, is the co-chair for their soup kitchen and serves as the church’s liaison with Boulder Outreach for Homeless Overflow (BOHO), an organization which organizes and staffs warming centers for the homeless on cold nights. Much of what Mark does is hands on.

In the soup kitchen, Mark takes on the tasks of organizing, recruiting volunteers, shopping for food, helping to cook meals, assisting with clean up, and whatever else needs to be done. In addition to being a church liaison with BOHO, Mark also participates in BOHO meetings, bringing forward new ideas to support those in need, and helps them with blanket drives and serving meals.

He also volunteers at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless and at the food bank with Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFAA). At the shelter Mark has fulfilled over 550 hours of volunteering by serving as a Kitchen Lead Volunteer, Breakfast Volunteer, and a Boulder County Cares Volunteer. Mark volunteers for two meals every week at the Shelter. During the cold months he serves as a Breakfast Volunteer on Thursday mornings serving up to 180 clients, and during the warm months he serves the Saturday morning meal. Mark also serves as the Kitchen Lead for the Monday evening meal all year, supervising 5-8 volunteers in the making and serving of food. He creates the weekly menu, obtains donations for each of the meals and trains new Kitchen Lead volunteers.

As a Boulder County Cares Volunteer, Mark travels the streets of Boulder with a partner to contact chronically homeless individuals and provide them transportation to warming centers and distribute food, warm clothing, and toiletries. While he has only been an EFAA volunteer for two years so far, Mark has put in over 700 hours of service to them by driving to Community Food Share every week to shop for food, serving as a lead volunteer once a week, and doing whatever else has been asked of him.

Mark also put his Habitat construction skills to use by building a beautiful storage cabinet for the EFAA conference room. At EFAA he is usually there before most of the staff, a routine he started while still in the business world where he would arrive first and leave last, and when the weather calls for it, can be found outside with a shovel and ice melt. Mark also serves as President of the Board of Directors for the St. Benedict Heath and Healing Ministry in Lafayette, which provides health care services for the uninsured and underinsured in Boulder County. He is also an instrumental part in the planning of their annual fundraising event, Heart Art.

Mark won the 2011 Mighty Golden Hammer Award – Flatirons Habitat for Humanity Volunteer of the Year for Outstanding Service. Flatirons Habitat is not aware of any recognition for his work with any of the other nonprofits he volunteers with.

Joan Raderman

Founder & Director, Circle of Care Project

www.circleofcareproject.org

How long in the community? 8 years

 Nominators' Testimonials:

Joan Raderman created Circle of Care in 2004 as a result of her experiences in senior living administration. Even with entertainment and activities within these facilities, there was not enough to keep people from slowly shutting down. She has a passion for changing how we age in our country, so she designed a community model that brought people of all ages together to experience cultural performances and intergenerational contact outside seniors' residences. She noted empty seats at several venues and envisioned seniors in those seats regardless of income, ability, and mobility. She mobilized existing resources in arts, culture, sports, outdoor education, academic classes, exercise, and community meals to ensure that there would be access for our elders to be engaged, vital, and active in participating in the community. Connecting volunteers of all ages as drivers and performance companions, she designed a model for intergenerational cooperation that gave meaning and purpose to numerous lives. We have been volunteers for over four years and have observed first hand how this program impacts seniors in senior housing and assisted living facilities. Helping people eager for contact with their community maintain their skills and lift their spirits is a vital services. Their friends and families tell us how much they anticipate the events they attend and how they express their joy afterwards. Joan envisioned this project and made it happen with her perseverance and hard work and sustains it with her sense of humor and the joy that she creates. We know others outside Boulder County would be delighted to have even a small part of a program as unique as Circle of Care.

Joan's relentless commitment to this project has resulted in maintaining and expanding this program on a limited budget by seeking grants and contributions and creating new avenues for needed resources. There is a Board of community members to help. She has recruited college interns as administrative assistants that interact with senior clients to the benefit of all. Some 50 community arts organization and resources provide opportunities, tickets, and venues for service to over 500 seniors each month. This means coordinating volunteer drivers and companions, buses, and perfomances for several events each month including concerts, theaters, and community events. The Boulder Philharmonic, the University of Colorado, The Colorado Music Festival, the Boulder International Film Festival, Naropa, The Boulder Chamber Orchestra and the Boedecker Theater are just a few of those involved. When people at events see the the nametags of Circle of Care participants they ask about the project and express their joy in knowing that there is such a group in the community. They ask how they can help or become involved. They comment on the happiness of those participating in the events.

Joan's efforts in creating the unique Circle of Care Project has been recognized often in hopes of replicating the program and expanding throughout the United States:

- MetLife National Foundation -Best Practice for Livable Communities

- Ashoka Global Fellowship for Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation

- Boulder Chamber of Commerce - Women Who Light Up the Community Award.

- Boulder County Aging Services "Create Our Future" Elderberry Award for Program

- Channel 7 Everyday Hero

- Zonta Foothills -Women's Leadership

- Boulder Community Foundation - Nova Award for Program Innovation.

Joan Raderman, without funds but with her own inspiration and vision, created Circle of Care Project to help get the elderly out of their homes to public events and educational opportunities, all over Boulder and beyond. In doing this Joan brings elders into contact with multi-generational Boulder folks who transport elders to these venues. Most of these venues offer seats free to elders at Joan's urging. This is a very successful and scaleable project. I also nominate Joan under the category of non-profit (health & human services).

This is clearly a sustainable and scaleable community service project, because it is free and everyone who participates benefits. Joan demonstrates the highest ethical integrity and compassion for effectively mitigating against the isolation of elders with this creative project. Joan is actively involved in this project with a day-to-day, hands-on approach. Joan receives very little or no compensation for her substantial efforts.

Judy Volc

Volunteer Reader

Judy Volc had been reading to children in the Boulder Public Library for almost fifty years when she was told in January of this year that her services were no longer needed there.  It was the decision is the library’s new director to cut Judy’s position as a volunteer reader and provide the staff librarians with the opportunity.

Judy read as a volunteer at the library after her position as children's librarian was cut in 2003.

This decision was and will continue to be a huge disappointment to local parents and children alike. Many of the parents who brought their children to Judy at the public library also went to hear her read as children, making Judy a sort of legacy. She was a wonderful asset to the library as far as many many patrons and their children were concerned. She took her job very seriously and put much thought into each and every story that she read to children who varied in age. She also used to teach children's literature at the University of Colorado.

Since her termination from the public library, Judy has taken her services to Barnes & Noble on Pearl Street. While she enjoys reading to children regardless of where, she loves the idea of a public library as a place of free books to everyone and a place of community gatherings.