Denise Schromm

Speech #2

Hello everyone. I would first like to thank everyone for attending this ceremony tonight. I hope you are all having a great time and enjoyed your dinner. There’s still plenty more fun coming up with some dancing, but before we break it down it is time to present the award for the Volunteer of the Year for the New England branch. Here to present a plaque for this prestigious award is the founder of Starlight Children’s Foundation, the wonderful, Mrs. Emma Hayes.

Good evening. Wow, what a year it has been. It seems like just last week I was standing up here to present this award, but it has actually been a whole year. I am proud to say that a lot of exciting things have happened for Starlight Foundation over these past 12 months. Just five years ago we were helping

50, 000 children in 400 hospitals world wide each month. Incredibly today we have raised these numbers to an astonishing 85, 000 children in over 650 hospitals each month. This past year, we have had the greatest increase in our services than any other year, we should all be so proud. This is why we are gathered here tonight, to celebrate and reward ourselves for our hard work, dedication and amazing accomplishments. It is also a night to recognize the 2001 Volunteer of the Year.

Three years ago, I was leaving The Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts when a woman approached me and told me that she had seen the technology that the Starlight Foundation had just set up for the little 9 yr old boy suffering from Leukemia on the 5^th Floor, and she wanted to know exactly what the Foundation does. Just like I’m sure all of you do, I get that curiosity question a lot, followed by a gracious praise for all that we do, and it usually stops there. There was something different about these words however when they came out this woman’s mouth. I began to tell her how we are a non-profit organization whose goal is to brighten the lives of sick children between the ages of 4-18. She said “Tell me more, please.” I then proceeded to go into more detail telling her about advanced technology (such as large televisions and entertainment systems) we set up in the children’s hospital rooms, how we set up times for the children to meet their favorite celebrities and how we set up short vacations for the children to take a long awaited break from the hospital settings they are used to. Before I could even finish my sentence she said “I want to be a part of this.” I gave her the number to reach Matt Haymer, the President of our New England branch, and told her to give a call if she was interested.

The very next morning, I stopped by Matt’s office and he told me he had just received a call from a woman who decided she wanted to become a full time volunteer for Starlight. I knew right away it was the same woman. That afternoon she stopped by the office, filled out paperwork and was ready to start.

From that moment on, for the past three years, she has dedicated so much effort and time into the Starlight Foundation. She has cut back hours at her other job so that she can spend more time touching the lives of children. She amazingly finds time to travel to hospitals all over the country, just to help one last time, the children who can no longer go on. This task alone, as we all know is the most difficult one. This year’s Volunteer of the Year, exemplifies the textbook definition of dedication. Her hard work and brilliant attitude should be a model for all of us to follow.

So it is my honor to welcome the 2001 Volunteer of the Year, Alison Brown.