Austin family with Masai statue

The couple selected that organization because the founder, Kendee Dixon, had been one of Jonathan Austin’s students when he taught at Southern Virginia University, and Jonathan knew she had made frequent trips to Kenya.
Jonathan, coordinator of religious education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said he wanted the children to have more of a connection with other children of the world.
Volunteers are required to raise money for the trip and for their stay there, about $3,700 a person. They also are asked to collect school supplies.
The Austins raised nearly $19,000 by forgoing Christmas gifts in 2007 and by selling handmade items to friends and classmates, donating Jonathan’s bonuses, and wrapping Christmas packages at ­Amazon.com.
The trip was scheduled for 2008, but unrest in Nairobi delayed the trip until this year, giving the family more time to save.
They carried 12 suitcases of school supplies donated by Rosa Parks Elementary School and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, or collected by the Austin children. Amazon.com donated 75 cents to World of Difference for each package Jonathan and Cynthia wrapped.
Other members of the group brought 46 more suitcases of school supplies.
The Nairobi schools are in Kibera, the second-largest urban slum in Africa, home to more than a million people. The region has some of the most extreme poverty on this planet, and the children are often orphans because their parents died of AIDS-related illnesses or they are children of struggling single parents.
“It was the most amazing experience,” Cynthia Austin said. “There was such a sense of gratitude and love of God and gratitude for God. There was no sense of anger for their situation.”
Some of the schools her family worked on would have been condemned in the United States, she said.
All the schools are private, charging as little as $5 a month. Even that amount is out of reach for some families. The school day starts at 7 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. Some students live an hour’s walk away.
“They get home at 6 at night and then they had homework,” Austin said. “But it is their way out of their poverty situation.”
The volunteers would leave their work areas before dark to return to their living quarters at a Catholic conference center that tried to provide them with familiar foods, including noodles and rice. A frequent side item was ugali, a starch made from corn flour and water.
They also ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day. Their treat was getting back to the conference center in time to buy mangos and fresh pineapples from a peddler.
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment, at least as far Jonathan and Cynthia are concerned, was that their children developed relationships with people of another culture, people whose names they know and remember and who know the Austin siblings.
“There is far more happiness to be gained from working hard to serve others than in working hard to serve oneself,” Jonathan Austin said. “I was most pleased when the children began talking about going back in the future, when all they had done for the first week in Africa was work hard. I think they learned that there is joy in the service of others.”
After that week of hard work, the family was able to travel the region, visiting schools in other cities.
“We would love to go back as soon as possible,” Cynthia Austin said. But that might be a couple of years from now, after they’ve had a chance to raise enough money and school supplies for the trip.
The family was surprised to learn hakuna matata  — or “no worries” — was not just a phrase created for the Disney film The Lion King.
“It is a very common phrase there and very descriptive of their lives,” Austin said. “They don’t worry about the unimportant things.”

Members of the Suburban Woman

Come to find out, a group of the women had traveled to a member’s home in Richmond to make tote bags and bracelets for the 17 women veterans at the Thomson-Hood Veterans Center in Wilmore.
Typical.
In the half century since it became a charter member of the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Suburban club has won national recognition for its initiatives.
Each president has selected a major community project to push for.
One such project was Ask Us, Inc., an informational referral service club members started in Lexington in 1974. That project won national recognition for the club.
Another was Milk Maid, which featured club members volunteering to pick up pumped breast milk and deliver it to the University of Kentucky and Central Baptist hospitals.
And currently, in addition to the handmade gifts for the women veterans, members of the group visit local schools to teach students about the Great Seal of the United States.
The latter is a favorite project of former council woman Ann Ross, who is one of the founding members of the Suburban Woman’s Club. “We talk about how it was designed and why it was created,” she said. “It requires a lot of study.”
Ross joined the group when it was a few women who met once a month to play cards and eat dessert, she said. Once a year the women would hold a fund-raiser and give the money to charity.
But Ross said she and other members wanted more. They wanted to be affiliated with the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and with the National Federation of Women’s Clubs.
With help from members of the Metropolitan Women’s Club, they were chartered with the state, Ross said. Only the Lexington Women’s Club, Metropolitan and Suburban have that distinction in Lexington, she said. In 1966, they achieved a national charter.
When Virginia Baldwin joined and became president in 1971, the annual tour of horse farms began as a huge undertaking but great fund-raiser for the group, Ross said. All told, the club has probably given back nearly a million dollars to the community, she said.
The money raised has funded projects that affect the lives of women and families, Walsh said.
Some of the beneficiaries of that help, former members, and past presidents have been invited to attend a celebration of the club’s 50 years of community involvement on Nov. 4.
I may have been a beneficiary of the club’s $1,000 scholarship for non-traditional female students at the University of Kentucky. I received one for that amount in 1980 when I returned to UK at age 29.
The club’s scholarship was aimed at helping women age 25 and older who were full-time undergraduate students. I fit that description, but I don’t recall the name of the scholarship I received.
Clubs that continue to be viable in an era in which women are returning to school and holding down full-time jobs while maintaining a family are getting scarce, Ross said, especially in these trying economic times.
“A lot of women don’t join clubs any more,” she said. “They are abandoning community organizations like this.”
Walsh joined a couple of years ago after taking a horse farm tour and sitting in on a few meetings, she said.
“I was struck by the quality of the tours,” Walsh said, “and also by the women who were doing all this work in their free time and that they were so knowledgeable.”
She said she also liked that the meetings were set with agendas, parliamentary procedures and reports. The women got things done.
The 50-year celebration was suggested right when the women already had full plates, but they nonetheless have wholeheartedly helped out, Walsh said.
Helping is what they are all about.
If you would like more information about the Suburban Woman’s Club, call Walsh at (859) 296-4299.

Jeanette DiBella with a student

“I loved my job in Lexington, and I loved the educators,” DiBella said. “Some of the greatest educators I’ve ever worked with came out of Kentucky.”
DiBella taught a self-contained emotional behavior disorders class at Bryan Station Middle School in which the students had a variety of issues that prevented their being mainstreamed.
She said she recalls the efforts then by the Equity Council to reduce the number of black males in special education. “It was something like 99 percent,” she said. “That wasn’t right.”
Former Fayette County Schools educator Jane Harris was one of DiBella’s mentors in Lexington. Harris has also trained DiBella’s Chicago staff about behavior.
“Her approach to instruction is that good instruction is good instruction regardless,” Harris said. “She had a tremendous academic program here, and the kids respected that. All the kids were tough to teach.”
In Chicago, Harris said, DiBella’s staff “is on fire to make this happen.”
Tom Jones, then principal of Bryan Station Middle, hired DiBella in the middle of the year. “It was a no-brainer to hire Jeanette,” he said. “The difference was Jeanette had the training and the personal skills to do the work. She was a spiritually centered person and confident in who she was.”
DiBella, who was named Kentucky Special Education Teacher of the Year in 1995, often repeated the well-known quote, “Think you can or think you can’t. Either way you are right,” Jones said.

Jeanette DiBella

Her positive attitude shined through no matter what the situation, he said. “It was like a virus,” he said. “She infected other faculty with that attitude.”
DiBella moved with her husband to Chicago in 1996 and accepted a job at Providence.
“I chose to be here because of Paul Adams,” DiBella said. “I loved how he was able to make it simple in black education. It is simple and hard work. So many people blame the families, but you take the child and educate them and make them know they can succeed.”
With what she had learned about classroom management and behavioral problems, DiBella soon won the job of principal.
Nearly all the students at Providence are black; 75 percent are on free or reduced lunch and need financial assistance to attend the private school. The results have captivated so many people the school became the subject of a documentary, The Providence Effect, which was released in September and is showing in various cities.
Parents weren’t welcoming of a white woman running Providence at first, DiBella said. But Adams assured them she was the right choice, she said. “I told them I know you are nervous, but I’ve had 30 years in urban education, and it’s always been with black students,” DiBella said. “I will always be in African-American education.”
DiBella said she’s surprised at the attention the school has garnered because what they do can be replicated easily.
The students wear collared shirts, undershirts and pants that fit. No tattoos are allowed. Discipline rules as do high expectations.
The school system asked DiBella and Adams to start Providence Englewood Charter School in another depressed area three years ago. It is having equal success.
Parents or guardians must attend some Saturday sessions to learn of school expectations, gain parenting techniques and get information about the curriculum so they can help with homework.
DiBella said she walks the hallways and visits classrooms just to keep students and teachers on task.
“Our real goal is to provide a first-class education to a child who would never be able to afford this kind of education,” DiBella said. “We have a breadth of curriculum that we have to teach. (The students) don’t have a daddy that will pay their way into college, so they need scores.”
Despite the hard work, 60 percent of the teachers have been at the school for at least five years. If teachers are not ready to work, they need to move on, she said.
“If you don’t have the passion, then don’t come in to sign the letter of agreement,” DiBella said. “I will drive you crazy.
“I try to be a human being, but my main focus is getting these students into the best colleges.”

Jeanette DiBella quieting students

DiBella is a central figure in the award-winning documentary, which some of her friends are trying to bring to Lexington. The trailer can be seen at www.theprovidenceeffect.com.
“You have to have passion to do this work,” DiBella said. “I love my job.”

Bill Farmer - photo by Charles Bertram

One big reason for the move, he said, is because donors want those areas fixed or at least targeted. And because the local agency has laid off employees, raised 4 percent less in 2008 than in the previous year, and cut the amount it gives agencies, donors carry a lot of weight.
“The reason donors donate is because they want to influence change,” Farmer said. “And what the donors are saying, what investors are saying … is we want to address the support on a long-term basis so as to ensure people don’t get into the situations that they are in today.
“Our response is to the donors,” he continued, “because they are the ones who are investing the money. They can make the determination on how they want their monies invested.”
Richart said the three major areas this United Way is concentrating on are “better education for all citizens, better health care and health habits, and financial independence. They impact us all and make us better. But he (Farmer) can’t do that by himself. It will take the whole community along with him.
“And one of his attributes is that there is nobody out there that Bill won’t interact with.”
That’s why Farmer hasn’t slowed down much. He said he has met with donors and agencies in Madison, Scott and Montgomery counties, as well as in Lexington, talking about the direction the organization is taking and asking several questions including, “What keeps you up at night?” and “If you were me, what would you work on?”
He wants to focus on programs in each of the United Way’s partner agencies that work to diminish systemic problems that hold Kentuckians back.
And he’s working hard, “meeting with as many people as is humanly possible,” because his family is still in Charlotte, N.C.
Farmer and his wife, Kehaulani, have an 11-year-old daughter, Alexis. His family will move here in November from Charlotte, where Farmer had been vice president of corporate development for Time Warner Cable in the Carolinas, before starting his own consulting firm. That firm, The Farmer Group, aimed to assist businesses and non-profits with public and social policy.
He worked for Time Warner for 28 years. When he started, cable consisted of 12 channels and HBO, he said.
Farmer said he grew up in Rocky Mount, N.C., in the northeastern part of the state. His father, the late William Farmer Sr., worked in the textile mills, and his mother, Retha Farmer, operated a pre-school and later became a kindergarten teacher’s assistant for 30 years.
Retha Farmer said her son became seriously involved in civic activities when he lived in Jackson, Miss., before moving to Charlotte. “I told him when he was in Jackson, God was grooming him for this job,” she said.
At Time Warner and through civic and governmental agencies, Farmer has been working with the same problems that this United Way is targeting.
With the “advancing common good” vision of the local agency and committed volunteers such as Richart, Farmer said, all the pieces are in place for the transition to a new day.
“It’s philanthropic capitalism,” Farmer said. “Some people still make decisions based on tugging of the heart strings. That is still important, but the overwhelming majority of them are making decisions based on ‘Why is this good?’ and ‘What is it going to do to improve the community?’
“I believe we can be one of the most effective philanthropic organizations in the country,” Farmer said.

“I thought (the program) would build character,” Owen said, “but that ended up being only about 5 percent. It is instilling pride and self-esteem.”

Instead of presenting more rules, the program establishes principles, he said. “You can bend rules, but you can’t bend principles.”
America is experiencing a general lack of civility, Owen told the Rotarians, and that is evident in calling the president a liar, cursing a tennis line judge, and stealing someone’s thunder at an awards show.
Add that to the increasing greed we see permeating businesses. “When there is money on the table, the temptations are huge,” he said.
It is obvious some Americans are yearning for a simpler life, and we can get that by returning to core beliefs, regardless of what we call them.
Although cowboys are his heroes, Owen said, a hero can also be a single mother of two who finds time to do homework with her children. Or a hero can be the adult child who gives up his or her career to care for ailing parents. Or even the businessman who cuts his own salary to avoid laying off workers.
In other words, Owen wants us all to grow up to be cowboys. This society won’t survive unless we do.