Sister Berta Sailer’s phone rang early that Friday a month ago.
She had been tending to the daily work at Operation Breakthrough and hadn’t seen the news about a tragedy unfolding in Connecticut. But Sister Corita Bussanmas, who with Sailer founded the child care center in 1971, had.
“Berta, could you make sure the doors are locked?”
After the call, Sailer — like millions across the country — spent the next hours and days learning more about what happened inside Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14. She heard the names of the 20 children who died and of six adults who worked at the school. She prayed for the parents who showed up at Sandy Hook and watched dozens of kids walk out alive, but not theirs.
“You sit there and everybody feels bad and nobody can do anything,” Sailer said. “And you want to, you want to help, but you realize there’s nothing we really can do.”
Before long, though, she had an idea. People could do something. And do it here, as a way to honor the children who died inside the school.
In the month since the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., many tributes have gone out to the victims and survivors. College students in Illinois organized a spaghetti dinner. A high school in Washington state raised money to build a well in Liberia. Schoolchildren across the country, including some in the Kansas City area, made snowflakes for Sandy Hook students to decorate their new school.
“People find ways to help others after tragedies,” said Jo Ann Gann, senior vice president of community engagement at the United Way of Greater Kansas City. “We want to do something, and if we can’t find a way to do it there, we’ll find a way to do it here.”
That’s what Sailer was thinking, too.
She came up with a challenge, aimed at everyone in the Kansas City area: Pick a nonprofit group or social service agency that serves children in the metro, whether it’s one that provides food and shelter for families or that mentors at-risk youths or that helps young people with developmental issues. Then contribute, by giving time or money or used clothing and a bundle of diapers.
Make a difference, Sailer said. Give children who are in need here a little hope for the future.
“Each family could give to one of those organizations in the name of a child who died in Connecticut,” she said. “They could volunteer for that group. Get involved. Make life better for children.”
A few days after the Connecticut tragedy, a Star reporter called her on a different story.
“Hey,” Sailer said. “I have this idea…”
In the next year, The Star will stay engaged with her challenge and introduce readers to some of these organizations dedicated to helping children. The paper also will provide information on how people can donate or get involved, both to honor those who died in Newtown and to give hope to children here.
“If we want to show our kids they are in a safe world,” Sailer said, “we need to show them there are more good people than bad people.”
At Operation Breakthrough, an early childhood education center that serves hundreds of families in the urban core, that’s what staffers say they try to do every day.
In training, instructors tell future volunteers: Bond with a child. Talk to them. Get to know them.
For kids at the center — the vast majority of whom come from families making less than $15,000 a year — to be “spoiled” is important, said Destiny Hritz, the center’s coordinator for volunteer services.
“A lot of our children would never have the opportunity to interact with the people who come in here to volunteer,” Hritz said. “We’re able to bring people from different areas of life together. And our volunteers realize, ‘These kids are just like my kids.’ ”
Among regular volunteers last week, students from Pembroke Hill and Rockhurst high schools fanned out in classrooms and play areas in the day care center. A few, including Rockhurst seniors Harry Donaldson and Henry Mascaux, had volunteered at the center before, and when it came time to do their community service hours, they wanted to go back.
“After the Connecticut (shooting), you get to thinking about, ‘Man, what could I be doing for kids in need?’ ” said Donaldson, 17. “A lot of kids need more help than people realize.”
Mascaux has learned at Operation Breakthrough that everybody is equal, no matter the background.
“I can never fully understand what they have to go through,” said Mascaux, also 17, who says his family has never had to worry about things like money and having clothes, food and a furnace in the winter. “All I can do is try to help them.
“And somehow we feel like we’re helping a little bit. So it feels good.”
Sailer sees people like Mascaux every day. People who realize that once you cut through the socioeconomic differences, families at her center are just like other families. Her hope for the challenge is that if more families volunteer and get involved with social service agencies, they’ll see it, too.
At Operation Breakthrough — like many other nonprofits in the metro — volunteers are crucial. Each day, Hritz has five to 15 regular volunteers. Three women come in every week to work in the clothing closet. School groups regularly come in to complete community service hours and projects.
Ron Fenton of Overland Park, a retired Marine who has also left behind careers in carpentry and security, is there for three-hour shifts every Monday and Wednesday. When he retired from a security job in 2011, he knew he wanted to give his time somewhere. Searching online, he came across an opportunity at Operation Breakthrough.
“It had ‘rock babies’ on there,” said the 63-year-old Fenton, a grandfather of two. “That sold me.”
From day one, he has held babies when they cried, figured out how to make them happy again and gotten down on the floor to play with them. When the babies grew, he moved up to another room with them. Some of the kids he once rocked are learning how to say “Mr. Ron.”
Fenton has become a fixture at the center and plans to move back to rocking babies by the summer.
“I think everybody should volunteer, no matter what their age,” he said.
Pembroke Hill sophomore Brett Bethune sees it that way, too. When he learned about Sailer’s challenge, he thought it was a perfect way to honor those who died in Connecticut.
That tragedy hit hard. He found out about it right before his team’s first home basketball game. Before the team went out on the floor, the coach addressed the Sandy Hook tragedy.
“He gave a speech about not taking what you have for granted,” Brett said. “…It does make you take a step back and appreciate what you have.”
In the 44 years Sailer has been in Kansas City, life has gotten rougher for many of the families she sees. Used to be parents struggled to have a TV at home or keep a car running. Now it’s keeping the lights turned on, having heat in the winter. Food on the table every night isn’t a given.
Sailer said she knows one mother who hasn’t had utilities in her home for more than two years.
And the violence? That’s only escalated. The day after the Sandy Hook shooting, a 4-year-old boy was hit with a bullet from a drive-by shooting. He died several days later.
The changing, and dangerous, landscape is why Sailer thought about the challenge.
“We’ve got to do better,” she said. “The children growing up this way think it’s normal, and that’s scary.”
Gann, of the United Way, also sees how needs have grown, especially when it comes to young people.
“We probably have the largest number of homeless children that we’ve ever had,” Gann said. “Their parents aren’t able to find employment. There are those things in the environment that don’t allow them to concentrate in school.”
There are agencies to help. But they need resources and volunteers.
Some families don’t realize what assistance is available for their children. Some families who want to do something after the Connecticut tragedy don’t know how they can make a difference.
“I think (people) have all this angst,” said Jennifer Heinemann, associate development director at Operation Breakthrough. “There’s this feeling of limbo, where you want to do something, but you don’t know what to do. … People want to help and you think they know how to, but they don’t. They need that connector.”
All it takes is a family at a time to get involved, Sailer said.
And that’s the challenge she threw out.
“Those kids at Sandy Hook don’t get their tomorrows,” she said. “But we can give other kids their tomorrows.”
Article source: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/12/4008067/sister-berta-sailers-challenge.html
