V is for volunteer of the year

SUN CITY – “I want to give back,” Maureen Berg of Neighborhood 7 says. “I never dreamt I would get an opportunity like that.” Maureen, who has been blind since 1996, after she was severely injured in an auto accident in Woodstock, IL, has, for the last eight years, volunteered her time at school District 158 with CSO, Community Student Outreach, a program started by Sun City residents Bob Hurrie and Dick Evans to provide volunteers to D-158 for whatever support the school District, students, or teachers need.

“I started volunteering in 2002, when … they [Hurrie and Evans] approached me one Friday night and asked, ‘Would you consider coming to the middle school?’” Berg says. “They said Principal Lee was doing a program on bullying, and they wondered if I’d come talk to the kids about tolerance and what it’s like to be different, and would I allow them to do questions and answers at the end?”

Hurrie and Evans had recognized the inspiration that Berg could offer the children. “They felt the fact I’d just moved here and was trying all sorts of new things, they felt that maybe I could inspire the kids who maybe were hesitant or afraid to branch out to try something new,” explains Berg.

But Maureen had never volunteered before, nor had she ever spoken in front of a group of people. She was also apprehensive about talking about her blindness, which she was still adjusting to.

“But with a little bit of coercion on their [Hurrie and Evans’] part, I agreed to do it. So that first year, I talked to just middle school kids, 6th, 7th, and 8th. I went almost every day for several weeks to different advisory classes and talked to the kids and had questions and answers.”

From that experience, Maureen was approached by a teacher named Jenny Wall, who at the time taught 8th grade. Ms. Wall asked Maureen if she’d come sit in on reading classes and provide encouragement.

“And four years later, I was there when they [the students] all graduated from Huntley High, still doing my volunteering, which I’m still doing now,” says Berg.

Maureen currently volunteers at Huntley High School’s vocational skills class, where she meets with the children at least one day per week.

“My services are varied from week to week; it’s whatever they need me to do. For instance … I might do something with reading and comprehension, writing skills, composition, maybe they have a project they have to do.”

But it is not just Maureen’s time that makes a difference in the children’s lives, it is Maureen herself and the message she sends and embodies: “To be different or have to face things is not insurmountable,” says Berg. “If you set your mind to it and have the desire to accomplish it, you can do it. And they wanted me to get that across to the kids.”

It is this message and the difference it makes in the children’s lives that prompted the students and faculty of school District 158 to nominate Maureen for the Volunteer of the Year for the state of Illinois for an Award of Excellence.

“We were on vacation in Marco Island, Florida last April, and I got a phone call from the coordinator of the volunteers of school District 158, Eileen Delahanty, and she said, ‘Maureen, I’m sorry to bother you down there, but I have a request.’ … What they asked me was would I allow them to submit my name for Volunteer of the Year for the state of Illinois for school District 158 for an Award of Excellence? And she said, You don’t have to do anything … But I’d also like your permission to ask your teachers and your students that you’ve always been dealing with to submit their letters, why they think you should be Volunteer of the Year and what you mean to them personally.’ So I was flattered. I was overwhelmed by this whole thing, and I said, ‘Of course, I’d be honored to submit my name.’”

It was a long wait before the news of the award came, but Berg says that she was “overwhelmingly rewarded just for the sake that I had read the kids letters and it was a wonderful experience. I felt I’d already won the award.” And then on the 10th of October, Maureen got a phone call from the Superintendant’s office.

“And she [the superintendant’s secretary] said, ‘Allow me to be the first one to tell you that you are going to receive the award that we nominated you for, and it will be given out at a banquet in Peoria, Illinois at the Pere Marquette hotel on Saturday, October 16.”

News of the award overjoyed Berg and also the school district, who for the first time ever had submitted the nominations. “And four [people from D-158] were receiving awards, and they were just besides themselves,” says Berg. “There were a lot of people involved, and I know they spent a great deal of time on this,” says a grateful Berg.

“Moving to Sun City opened all kinds of doors and encouraged me to grow as a person and the rewards have been unlimited,” Berg says. “Eileen Delahanty has a list that goes on and on and on of people [from Sun City] who give of themselves simply because they know they can help the next generation in some small way and show that we live here, but we really care about them too.”

Berg sums up the joys of volunteering by saying, “I think I make a difference for the kids, but they make an even bigger difference for me.”

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