Mayerson Foundation
Cincinnati Students Learn About Volunteerism In Summer Program
“What I learned about myself this week was that I love people and care about people. It’s a great feeling from helping people and that I’m not too small of a person to make a big difference.”
“What I learned about myself this week was to not judge others and to look deeper than what is on the surface. Everyone has their own stories and is going through various things, so even things like smiling can change someone’s day.”
“What I learned about myself this week was that conversations can serve a larger purpose in breaking down cultural barriers. I can be someone who initiates that conversation in the future.”
These are just some of the many reflections Cincinnati area students have expressed after a week this summer immersed in helping others through the Mayerson High School Service Learning Program. Seventy teens from Mt. Dotre Dame, Moeller, Aiken, Withrow, Reading, Dater and Finneytown High Schools, as well as Starfire University participated.
Through my work with area nonprofits I get to see so many generous acts of young people, and so many incredible programs aimed at instilling in them these powerful character values. I don’t remember having those opportunities when I was a teen and I think it is a beautiful gift. The lessons these students are learning will impact the rest of their lives, and will 
no doubt lead them on a path of lifelong philanthropy.
The Mayerson Foundation’s program is year round and includes high schools from throughout Northern Kentucky and Greater Cincinnati. In the summer urban immersion learning week, students volunteered at 30 area nonprofits and invested $1000 in one of those organizations each week through a grant review process.
Clare Blankemeyer, coordinator for the program, told me there was a strong emphasis on story telling because ‘stories make us human.’ One group interviewed students at the Drop Inn Center. “What the students learned is that many people experiencing homelessness have jobs, are hard working and came upon difficult times,” she said.
Mayerson particpants painted a symbol representing the life and stories of each guest. Those symbols were shared with the Drop Inn guests, and will be incorporated into a greeting card collage that will be sold to offset costs of the Center’s meal program.
Other participants worked alongside Homeless Coalition Streetvibes Distributors and City Gospel Mission’s Exodus Program members to explore their community through photography in the New Voices Program. Some of those pictures will be chosen for a calendar benefitting the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.
Great work by great people making a great impact. That’s what I call a Good Thing!
Community Spotlight: The Mayerson Student Philanthropy Project
The Mayerson Student Philanthropy Project of Northern Kentucky University provides an opportunity for students to participate in experiential philanthropy through a wide variety of courses each year.
Residents of the Cincinnati Ronald McDonald House, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter in Cincinnati for families such as Leah and her mother who are living hundreds of miles away from their home for Leah’s treatment. The Cincinnati Ronald McDonald House was recently selected as one nonprofit organization to benefit from a $2,000 grant by Northern Kentucky University students as a part of the NKU Mayerson Student Philanthropy Project.
The Mayerson project is designed to use a “learn by giving” approach in the college classroom. Every semester select university courses are named Mayerson courses, are given a sum of money, and are asked to evaluate nonprofits and then invest in those they think will make the most effective use of the funds (typically, $1,000 per nonprofit).
Cincinnati Teens Raised Money For Tanzanian Students
With support from the Mayerson Foundation High School Service-Learning Program, students from nine area Cincinnati high schools helped raise awareness about a child’s walk to school in Tanzania by walking through our downtown.
Teens from Aiken High School, Arlington Heights Academy, Finneytown High School, Gamble Montessori, Lockland High School, McAuley High School, Mt. Healthy High School, Ursuline Academy, and Wyoming High School/Wyoming Youth Services researched the needs in Tanzania through Village Life Outreach Project – a Cincinnati-based non-profit organization that partners with Tanzanian villages to design and implement sustainable projects to fight poverty, provide access to clean water and health care, and improve educational outcomes.
In rural Tanzania, East Africa, students walk nearly six miles to school, which can take up to three hours one way.
It was in 2010, when Wyoming and Finneytown High School students and staff supported the children in Tanzania by creating the “Walk in My Shoes” Challenge – a 5.5 mile walk in Cincinnati from Salway Park to Fountain Square. It was an effort that quickly spread.
Proceeds from the Walk help fund the Village Life Outreach Project Ugi Nutrition Program in Tanzanian schools. Ugi is a nutritious meal that feeds 1,200 Tanzanian students who walk to school per day and would otherwise go malnourished. The total cost to feed all 1,200 primary school children per year equals a daily cost of $0.04 per child.
Cincinnati Area Students Learned About Homelessness
Homelessness. It’s hard to imagine. Sitting in my comfortable living room thinking about time treasured with loved ones, I realize how easy it is for us to take what we have for granted. But, in one stroke of bad luck, one moment in time, I know life can change. People can change.
No one empathized with those down on their luck more than an Over-the-Rhine icon, Buddy Gray, whose guiding spirit was 
again memorialized several weeks ago at the 15 year anniversary of his death.
Buddy opened the Drop Inn Center – now Cincinnati’s largest homeless shelter filled to its 222 bed capacity most nights. It was in 1973 when his idea came to fruition as an evening-only shelter for the homeless located in a series of storefronts in Over-the-Rhine. On January 13, 1978, the volunteer forces of the Drop Inn Center made the famous “People’s Move” to the former Teamsters Hall at 217 W. 12th Street where the shelter remains today. Buddy also founded the Homeless Coalition in 1984.
“On the street, he knew everyone’s name, and they knew him,” Tom Dutton, a Miami University architecture professor and director of the university’s Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “He was deeply loved. He was in people’s homes. One of the stories is how he used to fix people’s space heaters. He saw people as they were and didn’t judge them. It seems simplistic but is very powerful.”
A Simple And Powerful Lesson Lives On
Schools across the Greater Cincinnati are teaching their students to see the world as Buddy saw it, to understand the hardships faced by thousands, and to help with giving hands.
October was Homeless Awareness Month. Faces Without Places, the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, and the Manuel D. & Rhoda Mayerson Foundation collaborated to identify about 30 schools, create an idea sharing kickoff, and provide support for a citywide Shantytown.
Shantytowns are simulations providing creative way to sensitize students to the issues of homelessness, difficulty in accessing affordable housing, jobs, and food. This year, students’ minds and hearts were opened when they heard the story of struggle and resilience from a Homeless Coalition Speaker’s bureau member – someone who has experienced homelessness. Inevitably, stereotypes of people experiencing homelessness were challenged and changed.
At Aiken High School, for example, where their theme for the year is ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ Karen Barrett told me, “we wanted to make sure the students understood that to be involved in service, you don’t have to go overseas or out of state or even the school building.”
Beginning their Shantytown evening, participating students fed the school football team and cheerleaders and then cheered them off to the game. They made posters to advertise a canned food drive for Thanksgiving baskets and put them up throughout the school.
Then the students met peers from Shroder High School at a local grocery store where they were each given $1.00 to spend on snacks for the night and breakfast the next morning. “We explained that the $1.00 is just about the amount that a person on food stamps is given for each meal,” said Karen.
That night, eyes were open when an Aiken graduate shared her story of homelessness while attending classes the
re. Students saw the movie ‘The Soloist’ and talked about attitudes toward people on the streets before heading outside to sleep in the boxes they set up as makeshift housing. The temperatures that evening got down in the 30’s and many of the students came back in the building in the wee hours of the morning – an option they came to realize that was not available to those without homes.
For our Canned Food Drive, I went over to the Villa Madonna campus and picked up the mural that was made as a memorial for Buddy Gray. After studying it, one of my more artistic students commented, “I feel like I can see into the souls of those figures through their eyes”.
Shantytown served its purpose.
(Buddy Gray photo credit: Street Vibes)
