A successful year made possible by countless volunteers
I will start with the conclusion in case some of you don’t have time to read the whole article. Thank you to every volunteer, donor and especially BonaResponds’ leader for coming together to make the world a little better this past year. Without you all, BonaResponds is just another good idea. You allow us to actually go and make the world a better place.
Next, I want to congratulate all the graduates as they prepare to leave the St. Bonaventure campus and embark on their careers. There is no doubt that you will be greatly missed on campus and that you have an open invitation to return. You came here to learn and to grow in order to be able to make a positive impact on the world. In addition to being the leader of BR, I teach finance. One of my favorite classes is Students in Money Management (SIMM). Each year, we ask the SIMM leaders to leave the program better than they found it and to add value in all that they do. I think we should all adopt the same ideas and aim to make the world a little better in everything we do. We all need you to carry what you have learned here out into a world that is in need your technical competence, as well as your love and compassion. Good luck and please make us all proud.
Within the United States, this was a very good school year for BonaResponds. We had many great local workdays, we established a solid relationship with Outside the Walls, which is a group working with the homeless in Kentucky and we shipped several pallets of school supplies and clothing to the St. Bonaventure Mission School in New Mexico. The school works in one of the poorest parts of the United States where over 50 percent of the people on the Eastern Navajo Reservation do not have clean running water in their homes. The cost of the collection and packing days for these events was the cancellation of a WarmSnugglyBlanket making event, and thus we gave out slightly fewer blankets than in past years. We will work to rectify that next school year, so if you want to be a leader of what is probably our easiest project, please step up.
We made two trips to the Wilmington, North Carolina area in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. The first trip was over fall break when the homes were still wet from the catastrophic flooding that resulted from over three feet of rain. The work was hard, smelly and dirty. The volunteers were simply wonderful. They gave their all to strangers-turned-friends. They worked from early in the morning until sunset and, in doing so, gutted five homes, rebuilt a fence and cleaned down tree debris in the relatively short time that we were there. Most importantly, they delivered hope to people in need of resupply.
We returned to the area over spring break with a larger crew, more hope and hard work. While the work had changed over the months between the trips, the attitudes and work ethic of the volunteers had not. Most were as energetic as if the storm had happened only days before. It was a trip that not only got hurricane survivors back on their feet and into their homes with new drywall, insulation, new floors, doors, a wheelchair ramp, a shed and more, but it also changed volunteers’ perspective on the world.
Our international efforts were mostly under the radar this year. That is, in part, because much of what we do internationally is done through our sister groups: PositiveRipples, HaitiScholarships, CAMSL and Tout Moun Se Moun and because U.S. VISA issues again prevented us from hosting a Bona’s and Beyond Program on campus.
Working with the above-mentioned groups, which are separate from BonaResponds and SBU, we are consistently short of funds, but we leverage donations with groups in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Bahamas to improve the lives of thousands of people. We helped with fundraising and the collection of school and medical supplies. As a result, two dental clinics opened in Haiti because of donated dental chairs that we shipped. These clinics also play an important role in checking blood pressure and doing other health screens for their local communities.
Additionally, we had garden programs thrive in Sierra Leone, The Bahamas and in Haiti. And, we had many thousands of people benefit from water wells we financed in Haiti (one is coming to Liberia). These wells were particularly important during the weeks of protests in Haiti when stores and schools were largely closed and safe drinking water was in extremely short supply.
On the education front, this past year we had 53 students in Liberia and 42 in Haiti attend school as a result of our scholarships. We shipped school supplies to several schools in Haiti, and with Enactus, we hosted and funded Teachers’ STEAM conferences in Haiti and Liberia. All in all, it was a very successful, although quiet, year internationally.
While past results do not guarantee future performance, we are optimistic that the best is yet to come after a busy and successful year. Thanks to a grant from the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation, we have a new vehicle in our future for local ramp jobs. But we need you. Whether you live on campus or are an alum that lives on the other side of the world, you are always welcome to join us in our efforts to make the world a better place. Our trips are open to you, our local work days can always use more volunteers and we are constantly in need of more leaders. While much of this work is offline, we also have much that can be done online. Your time at Bona’s may be coming to a temporary close, but your time with BonaResponds can just be starting.
“Just show up. It doesn’t matter if they know anything or not. They will learn. It will work out. We always can use more people. You are never too old, too unskilled, nor too inexperienced to make the world better,” said Nate O’Lay, one of our favorite volunteers.
By Jim Mahar, Professor Columnist
jmahar@sbu.edu
