April 19, 2007
Szymanski Wins Presidential Award; Other ACDI/VOCA Volunteers Honored
Calling them “citizens of the world” and praising their enthusiasm for boarding planes destined for places they might not be able to spell, the Chairman of the Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) David Norman honored volunteers April 19 at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) headquarters in Washington.
ACDI/VOCA’s contingent of volunteers came in for more than their share of honors. Damon Szymanski, of Pulaski, Wisconsin, was the sole recipient of the President’s Call to Service Award. While the award required a minimum of 4,000 hours of service over a lifetime, Szymanski has logged 19,059 hours over 77 projects spanning 17 years. And he’s not done yet.
President Bush created the President’s Volunteer Service Award program in 2004 to recognize outstanding volunteer service and inspire others to volunteer. VEGA is a part of USAID that coordinates volunteer service dedicated to overseas economic growth, and ACDI/VOCA is one of its 15 organizational members.
Norman, who presided over the event, said that after 150 assignments in 18 countries that “we finally pulled our heads out of our papers and realized that we had really accomplished a lot through the VEGA model.” He highlighted the work in southern Sudan, saying that the organizations involved could not have achieved independently what had been done working together.
Other ACDI/VOCA awardees were Harold Handley and Kendall Mau, who both received Bronze Awards, and Beth Oliver, who received a Silver. The basis for the awards was hours volunteered in a 12-month period: Bronze -- 100-249 hours, Silver -- 250-499, and Gold -- 500+. In addition, Oliver was also among the select group of eight volunteers who received the VEGA Service Impact Award for her outstanding accomplishments in fostering economic growth.
Szymanski, who has retired from farming, has served in 15 countries in all manner of livestock and dairy, business planning, and farmer cooperative and association development assignments. USAID Assistant Administrator Jacqueline Schafer said, based on her exposure to the work ethic at the Sturgeon Bay shipyards where she had once christened a U.S. Navy ship, it was no surprise to her that the President’s Award winner was a Wisconsin native.
Oliver's two recent assignments in southern Sudan, her 10th and 11th with ACDI/VOCA since 1996, involved training extension workers in Farming as a Business and creating—in conjunction with Robert Alela from ACDI/VOCA’s Nairobi office—an extension manual. From Sept. 2005 to Sept. 2006, she donated 440 volunteer hours to assignments in Paraguay and Sudan. Oliver, who resides in New Mexico, is an enterprise development expert.
Mau, a former chief of party for a long-term ACDI/VOCA project in Honduras, has a doctorate in management and has run his own consulting company based in Mountain View, Cal. He has volunteered on 8 assignments since 1997, and in 2006 alone he donated 232 volunteer hours.
Handley, from Cockeysville, Md., had served as vice president for domestic sales and marketing for McCormick and Co. among other positions for the spice giant. He has completed six volunteer assignments for ACDI/VOCA since 2001, all related to dairying in Uganda. He donated 120 hours on his most recent assignment in 2006.
“There are many more volunteers who could, and should, have received awards,” said ACDI/VOCA Director of Volunteer Programs Diana Roach. “We appreciate the opportunity to properly and publicly thank our volunteers for all they do.”
To found out more about the VEGA awards, read its May 2007 newsletter (PDF, 1.2 MB).