Sunday, March 22, 2009
News, In this Issue...

Unsung heroes

SP honors everyday people who are making a difference

Two months ago, in the face of disheartening stories about our spiraling economy, we here at The Sunday Paper announced our inaugural Unsung Hero Awards. With all the unpleasantness in the news, we thought it was a good time to hunt for stories of regular Atlantans who are making a difference in other people’s lives. We opened the floor to nominations from you, our readers, and, now, we're extremely proud to shine a spotlight on the six deserving folks who make up our first class. Enjoy, and drop us a line to tell us about other heroes you admire. --Kevin Forest Moreau

Kyle Keyser

Atlantans Together Against Crime

In 2008, three very bad things happened to Kyle Keyser.

He was laid off. Twice.

Then, in December, he was mugged at gunpoint.

“The combination of my mugging and then the murder of John Henderson really moved me to start ATAC,” says Keyser, who launched Atlantans Together Against Crime within days of Henderson’s Jan. 7 slaying at the Standard Food & Spirits. “The two crimes went down similarly: The perpetrators were a group of four or five men; there was a weapon involved; they took money.
   
“I was heartbroken by what happened to John Henderson, even though I didn’t know him,” he says. “A third factor was that I had so many friends who were affected by violent crime—almost weekly, it seemed.”
   
These days Keyser, an out-of-work video producer, greets daybreak in front of his laptop, reading and answering e-mails from concerned neighborhood groups and individual citizens.
   
“I remember two or three days after the vigil for John Henderson, sitting in Inman Perk and checking ATAC’s Facebook page,” he says. “We had 1,600 members. Now, we have over 6,400.”
  
Keyser attends neighborhood meetings to help citizens keep up with crime trends and let neighbors know what they can do to help each other prevent and report crime. ATAC also connects neighborhoods with training for things like self defense, home crime-proofing and CourtWatch—a program that alerts residents when offenders arrested in their neighborhoods go to court. The idea is to encourage accountability on the part of judges.
   
Keyser advocates a wide array of community actions to fight crime, of which the courts are a part. Another is police protection.
   
“I’ve heard from the spouses of police officers who are really grateful for what we do,” he says. “Police officers aren’t overly emotional people—they’re not going to hug you—but just their presence at a neighborhood meeting says a lot. My impression is that they are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.”
   
Keyser says he is proudest of the group’s dissemination of information through community meetings—forewarned is fore-armed.
   
“Take 911 calls, for example,” he says. “People now know how they are dispatched and how to get someone out to the scene quickly.”
   
Meanwhile, Keyser has his own emergency.
   
”I haven't been able to pay my mortgage since January," he says, settling down for a photo in front of an Inman Park property bearing a Neighborhood Watch emblem along with a For Sale sign. “It’s kind of ironic. But I’ll be OK.” —Stephanie Ramage
   
To learn more about ATAC, please visit http://atlantanstogether.org/

DR. ADRIENNE MIMS

SAFETY NET CLINIC, CENTER FOR BLACK WOMEN’S WELLNESS

Courtesy of Dr. Adrienne Mims

"I thought this was something I could lend a hand to as a physician."—Dr. Adrienne Mims

When Adrienne Mims first heard about Atlanta’s non-profit Center for Black Women’s Wellness, she jumped at the chance to put her considerable background—more than 15 years of experience in providing quality health care with Kaiser Permanente—to use for a worthy cause.

 “I found out they’re a community-based organization that provides resources to African-American women, and I thought this was something I could lend a hand to as a physician,” she says.

By the time she joined the Center’s volunteer board in 2006, however, she saw an opportunity to expand its services.

“I was thrilled that they’re able to provide well-women health care—pap smears, breast exams, screening and lab work—on a sliding scale for low-income women,” she says. “But as women age, especially into middle age, they develop chronic diseases, like diabetes and hypertension."

On top of that, “Dr. Mims had been talking to us for a while about the need for providing more health care services for the uninsured,” says Jemea Dorsey, the Center’s CEO. But funding proved an issue until Dorsey met with the Georgia Free Clinic Network about the possibility of using volunteer doctors.

“I brought it to [Mims’] attention and she jumped all over it,” Dorsey says. “She said, ‘Jemea, this is what I’ve been wanting to do for the last two years!’”

And so the Center opened its Safety Net Clinic last July. Mims, who was already helping to spread word about the Center throughout the community in addition to her current role as Medical Director for APS Healthcare’s Georgia Medicaid Management Program, volunteered her services as a physician. Four times a month, Mims, a nurse and a receptionist provide free screening and monitoring for uninsured patients, as well as those with chronic conditions like diabetes.

And in addition to its core constituency of black women, the Clinic has thrown open its doors to a new demographic.

“Dr. Mims came up with the idea of serving not just women, but men,” says Dorsey. “That was never our focus, but she suggested we open it up to men to deal with issues like prostate cancer prevention, because often men never go to the doctor unless there’s a problem.”

The clinic is already at capacity, and Mims’ next priority is enlisting more physicians to volunteer their time. Meanwhile, she’s helping patients who might otherwise have fallen through the cracks, like one woman whose illness was affecting not only herself but the young grandson in her care.

“When she first came in, she was having trouble dealing with diabetes on her own,” Mims says. “She was on a large quantity of insulin every day, plus pills. She was very sick. She was vomiting a lot, and her blood sugar was very far out of control.”

Now, “she’s off insulin, her blood sugar is excellent, and her blood pressure is excellent. And she’s started taking a class in accounting.”

People like these, Mims says, “can’t afford a doctor visit, lab care, prescriptions—so they do without.” And making a difference in their lives has touched her own.

“It’s been a joy,” she says.—Kevin Forest Moreau

The Safety Net Clinic at the Center for Black Women’s Wellness is open the second and fourth Thursday and Saturday of each month; 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays. To make an appointment, call 404-688-9202, ext. 10. For more information, visit www.cbww.org.

Josh Rifkind

Songs for Kids Foundation

Stephanie Ramage

“I didn’t know how to go about [doing] something that could really make a difference until I did this.”—Josh Rifkind

For a few minutes last year, in a hospital room in Macon, the small movement of a young girl’s thumb across the tip of her middle finger made Josh Rifkind catch his breath.

“Her mom was shouting ‘C’mon, baby, c’mon, snap your fingers! Snap your fingers! Open your eyes!’” he says. “She was shouting like she was at a boxing match, and this girl, who had been completely unresponsive, when her mom started singing with us, she started sort of snapping her fingers and she opened her eyes.”

When Rifkind’s Songs for Kids Foundation sent a band to the Medical Center of Central Georgia to perform for pediatric patients, the musicians, including Rifkind on lead vocals, had happened upon the girl’s room. She appeared unconscious, her arms drawn into gnarled curves.

“We asked her mom if there was something we could play, and she said she liked ‘Purple Rain,’” he says. “So we started playing it, and the mom started singing with us and then—I swear, I know this sounds like something that would only happen in an after-school special, but it actually happened, and I couldn’t believe that it was happening—this girl started trying to snap her fingers. She started smiling and she opened her eyes.”

This is only one of dozens of stories Rifkind, 36, has collected since founding Songs for Kids in 2007. The first year, he says, all the money from the organization’s annual fundraiser, 500 Songs for Kids, which features 500 bands and solo artists performing at Smith’s Olde Bar on Piedmont Road, was given away.

“We gave it to hospitals and special camps for sick kids,” he says. “But that was somewhat of a mistake, because we needed the money to send musicians to visit these kids. This year all proceeds from the event are going to our foundation, so we can continue to grow our program at hospitals and camps.”

So far, Songs For Kids has sent artists to visit children in hospitals all over Georgia, and in Los Angeles, Calif., where the foundation has just landed a local grant. They play in pediatric wards, camps for children facing serious illnesses, and emergency room waiting areas—places that remind Rifkind of his inspiration for doing all this.

“The person I admire most in the world is my dad,” he says. “He’s a trauma surgeon. It seemed like, growing up, he was always getting home from work at 3 a.m. and being called back in at 5:30 a.m. He really cares about people, and I admire him so much for that.”

Rifkind himself is far more musical than medical. He’s been a mainstay at Smith’s as a solo artist, and he manages Athens-based band the Whigs. But he wanted to find a way to use his talent to help people like those his dad helped.

“I knew I was a loving person,” he says, “but I didn’t know how to go about turning that into something that could really make a difference until I did this.”—Stephanie Ramage


To learn more about Songs for Kids, visit www.songsforkidsfoundation.org.
 

STEPHANIE JOLLUCK

DIALOGUE, START ONE

Courtesy of Stephanie Jolluck

“My heart, my soul and my conscience know this is happening, and I have to do something to fight it.”—Stephanie Jolluck

Trekking around the globe during and after college fostered Stephanie Jolluck’s deep desire to use her knowledge and her talents to help others for a living.

Jolluck, co-founder of Dialogue, Start One, which brings important issues to the public through unique fundraisers and fashion, found her interest in bettering the world spurred by her studies in anthropology and Latin American literature at Georgia State. After graduating, she flew to Guatemala for a month-long program to live among women who’d just survived a civil war.

“It was a co-op to help them get back into their villages where a lot of men were murdered,” she says. “We did organic farming, herbal medicine and basic life technology. Right then, I knew that whatever it was that I did, I wanted to feel like I was making a difference in the world.”

Backpacking across Guatemala, Jolluck fell in love with the textiles there. Born to two entrepreneurs and raised with an eye for buying and a knack for negotiating, she launched Coleccion Luna 12 years ago. The importer sells eco-friendly textiles made in Guatemala from reclaimed Mayan women’s clothing using fair trade practices.

“I already had the passion within me to be an activist—I just didn’t realize it,” she says. “It’s like you turn a corner, and you already know too much. You can’t really pretend you don’t know of the poverty, discrimination, racism … my heart, my soul and my conscience know this is happening, and I have to do something to fight it.”

Jolluck has seen much pain and turmoil. She lived through Hurricane Stan and its aftermath in 2005, which wiped out entire villages right in front of her.

“Thousands of people were buried alive, and hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans lost their homes,” she says.

Trapped in a village by mudslides and flooding, she began to blog about the experience. Before she returned home, Jolluck had unwittingly raised $10,000 to help her Guatemalan friends.
 
Realizing she could make a difference, she launched World in Need Now. That group evolved into Dialogue, which plans a multitude of events to raise both awareness and funds for causes—around the world and in Atlanta.

Most recently, Jolluck and her partner, Jackie Patterson, who lives in Oklahoma, held a series of events focused on the genocide in the Congo. Dialogue partners with several larger organizations, including the Atlanta-based CARE and the Enough Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group co-founded by John Prendergast, whom Jolluck was able to woo down to Atlanta to assist in a recent Darfur fundraiser luncheon at Dogwood Restaurant.

“We have a unique and fun way to get people into activism and get them engaged,” she says of “Cookies for the Congo,” a friendly bake-off between Atlanta pastry chefs she’s currently planning. Jolluck also hosts bi-monthly yoga workshops at Yoga Samahdi in Inman Park. Next on the agenda are local charities, including Kate’s Club, Georgia Organics, Trees Atlanta and the Atlanta Food Bank.

Jolluck and Patterson also design and print T-shirts with important messages like “End the Silence” and “End Poverty.” The global graphics are printed on shirts from Alternative Apparel, an Atlanta-based company with a socially aware consciousness. Jolluck’s interest in fashion helping the world also led her to become Atlanta’s chapter president of Nest, an organization that provides interest-free micro-credit loans to entrepreneurial women in developing countries by selling their wares in the States.

“It’s about starting a dialogue, but also about engaging a wide variety of people,” Jolluck says of her various projects. “And then, if they want to become a serious activist, we have outlets for that, too.—Kirsten Ott
For more information, visit www.dialoguestartone.org.


CORINNE FREESEMANN AND JULIE TROTTER

Courtesy of Corinne Freeseman

“There are plenty of children out there who need parents and a home. I can do that.”—Corinne Freesemann

For Corinne Freesemann, helping a poor child in Africa doesn’t mean making a donation or collecting used clothing. This Alpharetta mom got on a plane, plucked two children from an Ethiopian orphanage and made them her own.

But she didn't stop there. Freesemann is actively involved in a support group for parents of Ethiopian adoptees; has rallied support for a new orphanage in that country; and inspires her friends and extended family to follow her lead.

One friend who met the challenge to change a child's life is Duluth’s Julie Trotter, Freesemann’s business partner. For five years, the two have owned Happy Baby Solutions, a company that matches parents with caregivers and teaches coping skills to new parents. Trotter took some time off from work last week to fly to Ethiopia and adopt two children of her own.

“Seeing a friend do it really opened my eyes to how easy the process was,” says Trotter.

Trotter and her husband, Travis, are adding Samarah, a 4-year-old girl, and Addisu, a 13-year-old boy, to a clan that already includes their 20-month-old son. Freesemann’s family is even more diverse: Her first child, Katy, a 9-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, was adopted here; her Ethiopian children, Ashlyn and Jaxson, are now 5 and 2, respectively. Six years ago, she and her husband Ryan had a biological daughter, Brooklyn.

Freesemann first heard about the plight of Ethiopian orphans through the agency that arranged her first child’s adoption.

“We learned that most children there die before they’re 5 years old, and from simple things that wouldn’t make us sick here,” she says. “There are plenty of children out there who need parents and a home. I can do that.”

In between running a company and parenting four kids, Freesemann devotes a good deal of energy to helping the Ethiopian orphans she can’t adopt. “I tell other families about them and get sponsors to do fundraisers,” she says. “I get people going over there to take suitcases of clothes and formula. I’m all about educating people that there are kids out there who don’t have a home.”

Trotter's passion for foreign adoption grew from a lifelong love of kids and having her eyes opened to the trauma Ethiopian children endure.

“Ethiopia is such a poor country, and we saw such a need there,” she says. “Adopting means we can change the life of a child in a magical way. We’re not rich, but we can give them a better chance than they’d have in an orphanage.”

Both families share another, similar goal: They want to keep the heritage and culture of Ethiopia alive in their children’s hearts. They’ve joined a Georgia network of adopting parents who meet monthly to introduce their kids and talk about their homeland.

“We eat in Ethiopian restaurants and meet with people from there who live here now,” says Freesemann. "We don’t want these children to lose their backgrounds. We tell them about their country and want them to remember it.”—H.M. Cauley