CIS Unsung Heros Award

Deborah Yarbrough, CIS Site Coordinator at Edison Environmental Science Academy is one of five individuals to receive a Communities In Schools Unsung Heroes Awards. Nominated by CIS Executive Director Pam Kingery, this prestigious award is given to select individuals throughout the country who bring to life CIS’ core values. The last time these awards were presented was in 2007. Surrounded by her CIS peers at a professional development training held at Douglass Community Association, Deborah first learned of this honor as Pam Kingery read aloud a letter of congratulations from CIS President, Daniel Cardinali:  “…it is site coordinators like you who personally connect with the kids every day, and prove that it is indeed people, and their unique gift of building life-giving relationships with kids, that transform lives. Members of our national staff and board of directors were moved by the persistence and dedication with which you face the challenge of your job…”

Deborah Yarbrough and CIS Executive Director Pam Kingery were both flown to Washington D.C. on September 23, 2010 where Deborah was honored with the prestigious Unsung Hero Award.

Superintendent Dr. Michael Rice and Congressman Fred Upton, along with others attended the event. Thanks to the support of AT&T Deborah received $1,000 for Edison school as part of the award.

Please find her acceptance speech below:

Good evening. I would like to express my overwhelming gratitude. I am honored to receive this award. Standing here before you, I realize that I am accepting this award on behalf of my own silent unsung heroes: my executive director, Pam Kingery, the staff of CIS of Kalamazoo, my principal Chuck Tansey, our CIS partners, the Kalamazoo Public School children and their families that we serve, and my family. They are the heroes who make it possible for me to stand before you.  I thank them for supporting, leading, and empowering me to do my best. 

I want you to know, I love my job as a Site Coordinator.  I am given a gift each day: to serve children and their families. Daily, I receive thank you’s in the form of hugs and words from children. Just last week one of our CIS students, a Kindergartner, said to me with a big smile on her face, “Mrs. Yarbrough, we should have the CIS After School Program at the beginning of the day, then I would be ready to work the rest of the day.”

Our children want to learn. They want to succeed. And yet, so many have obstacles—mountains really—in their way.  The basic needs so many of us take for granted are out of their reach--shoes to come to school in. Food in their belly. Clean, warm clothes on their backs.  They come to school late or tardy because their family is struggling to make it day by day and can’t afford the luxury of an alarm clock. In my role as a CIS site coordinator I meet children at the bottom of these mountains. They want to climb, but it is overwhelming.

It is not always easy to show up each day. But I do. I see the struggles but I also see the great progress that we are making in students’ lives. I show up because my school--Edison Environmental Science Academy--has embraced the CIS model.  Our Kalamazoo community is working with us to meet the needs of students. We have mentors and tutors. We have a school based health clinic. We have therapists. We have our local food bank, faith based and business organizations surrounding our children with their services and caring relationships.  Because of this coordinated, comprehensive approach to helping children, we are seeing academics, attendance and behavior improving so that our students can remain in school to learn. We still have a ways to go, but together, we are moving mountains.

 

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