White House Honors AIDS Educator and 14 Other Volunteers

Following are the people and organizations that have most recently been named to receive President Clinton’s Daily Points of Light Award.

The Points of Light Foundation, a Washington charity, assists the President in making the choices and carrying out the award program. More information about the award winners and the program is available at the foundation’s World-Wide Web site, http://pointsoflight.org, or by contacting the foundation at 1400 I Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington 20005; (202) 729-8184.

The recipients:

1378. Brigitte Van Marcke, Houston, who volunteers roughly 45 hours per week at Ben Taub General Hospital, feeding and nurturing newborn babies, organizing other volunteers for the nursery, and sewing hats for babies born at the hospital.

1379. Christiane Saunders, Tacoma, Wash., who contributes to many projects in the Fort Lewis community, including collecting donated toys, teaching Army families how to shop economically for food, and translating documents for foreign-born spouses.

1380. Summerbridge Cambridge, Cambridge, Mass., a program through which high-school and college students who are interested in education-related careers tutor and mentor junior-high students who want to enroll in college-preparatory courses in high school, with an emphasis on black and Hispanic students.

1381. Glenn Stein, Washington, who founded and directs Byte Back, an organization that provides computer classes to low-income Washington-area residents, using computer-literate volunteers; the program has trained more than 700 individuals in the past two years.

1382. Keren Aviad, Los Angeles, who volunteers with the Sacramento Community Clinic Consortium to keep health-care services available for people on Medicaid and who has conducted research and analysis to help counter the detrimental effects of recent California legislation on low-income people.

1383. Fairview Elementary School, Logansport, Ind., which has implemented “Fairview Fathers First,” “Grandparents’ Day,” and other activities designed to involve family members in community service and in improving their children’s education.

1384. Joe Dean, Opelika, Ala., a businessman who founded a Reading Is Fundamental chapter named after his late wife, and who has helped it grow to serve more than 120,000 children throughout Alabama over the past eight years.

1385. Thor Andersen, White Plains, N.Y., a retired engineer who volunteers at Sheltering the Homeless is Our Responsibility, collecting furniture and renovating homes for homeless families. He also helped design and propose a project for several low-cost townhouse units that the local government approved.

1386. Karen Zimmer, Sacramento, Cal., who works with the “Linking Neighbors” program, which trains residents in four low-income Sacramento-area communities to use demographic and social data in their neighborhood-revitalization efforts.

1387. Hooked on Books, Erie, Pa., a 10-year-old program that pairs inner-city children with volunteers who read aloud to them to instill a love of reading.

1388. Ross Nash Farnsworth, Mesa, Ariz., who has helped La Mesita, A Family Shelter provide emergency housing for more than 700 homeless families since 1991 through food drives, the “Holiday Adopt-A-Family” program, and Chrissy’s Breakfast, an annual fund-raising event.

1389. Rosemary K. Mauk, Fort Worth, an active volunteer in AIDS education and prevention efforts and in the local Y.W.C.A.’s capital campaign; she forged a collaboration between five agencies to provide a full range of drug-treatment services to uninsured and disadvantaged adolescents.

1390. Louise Reed, Lancaster, S.C., an elderly woman who learned to read in her 60’s and now uses her newfound literacy in her church activities and as a motivational speaker for United Way.

1391. Wayne J. Bentley, Walker, Mich., a high-school teacher who has created many community-service opportunities for his students, including studying the underrepresentation of minority individuals on Kent County juries. His study led the Governor of Michigan to appoint him to a task force on improving minority representation on state juries.

1392. Meals of Marin, San Rafael, Cal., whose all-volunteer staff prepares and delivers two meals daily to homebound people with terminal illnesses who don’t qualify for similar government programs because of their age, income, or type of illness.