CORNERSTONE

LEAF celebrations are back in person starting with a packed house for the Donor Appreciation party

By Lory Barton Redstone Review

LYONS – Greetings, friends and neighbors. Although summer is a slow time in nonprofit land, here at Lyons Emergency & Assistance Fund (LEAF) we never rest. Our calendars and our hearts are full this summer.

Coming up at LEAF: In-person Group Wellness sessions started Thursday, July 8 at 1 p.m. It’s not too late to join. Visit our website at leaflyons.org to learn more.

“I’m A LEAF Lover” Volunteer Party will take place on Wednesday, July 21, 5 to 7 pm at Bohn Park. If you were a regular volunteer in 2020, we hope you’ll come.

Plan to attend the Hootenanny at River Bend, our community-wide, familyfriendly fundraiser with Lyons Community Foundation. The hootenanny will be held on August 29, from 3 to 8 p.m. at River Bend, 501 West Main Street.

Mark your calendars for Rave to the Grave 2021on Saturday, October 30. More details to come.

LEAF’s board and staff were thrilled to welcome 80 donors to our “I’m A LEAF Lover” donor appreciation party on June 21. After scrubbing the event last year due to Covid, it was a joy to come together again. As the party began, board members Kevin Schafer, Heather Santesteban, and Suzanne Davis greeted our guests on the sidewalk outside LEAF’s facility at Lyons Community Church, where guests were offered a warm greeting, a cold beverage, and a schedule for the evening’s festivities.

Once inside, guests visited different stations to meet LEAF’s teams and learn about our services.

Nancy Reckling, our pantry co-director and Cassidy Batts, our pantry volunteer, treated our guests to tours of LEAF’s bright new food pantry space. Thanks to our partnership with Lyons Community Church, we are able now to keep the pantry set up and in place throughout the week. New shelves create an environment that is like a grocery store, where our participants can shop for the foods they prefer to eat. Fresh paint and cheerful, bold artwork by Lyons’ own Cynthia Marsh round out a wonderful community space.

Meals on Wheels leader Pam Browning hosted a station where guests learned about LEAF’s Meals on Wheels program. Sharing stories of impact, LEAF’s donors were inspired to know their gifts make a tremendous difference in the lives of our most vulnerable and at-risk friends and neighbors.

Rick DiSalvo and Cathy Rivers represented Lyons Volunteers, sharing with donors the many projects large and small that the Lyons Volunteers undertake all across our community.

Our mental health therapist Cherie Maureaux welcomed guests to her office, where she shared information about the vital community-based mental health care she provides at LEAF. As we all emerge

from the trauma of the past year and more, growing numbers of new clients are coming forward for support. Thanks to our donors, LEAF provides an array of mental health services at no cost to people who aren’t able to access or afford care elsewhere. Following the learning sessions, our guests congregated upstairs for the evening’s program. To start, we played a TV-showstyle game called “Whadya Know.” Guests were challenged to correctly guess answers to tough questions about LEAF’s work Barton throughout the greater Lyons area. Staff member Karen Kay Thompson and board member Kevin Schafer showered correct guessers with candy: Smarties and Kisses. Next up, LEAF donors were uplifted to hear powerful stories directly from LEAF participants. Liz Lytle shared her family’s story of resilience and overcoming. Her partner, Alex, suffered a serious accident early last year, and then she and Alex lost their jobs due to COVID. Partnering with LEAF’s Basic Needs and Resource Matching program, Liz and Alex were able to survive these serious challenges and rebound quickly. They are back at work and their family is thriving. Their family’s story is

Board Chair Tricia Marsh presents an award to Barbara and David Harrison. LEAF leadership Cassidy Batts, Nancy Reckling, Ashley Cawthorn, Kevin Schafer, Megan Walsh, Cherie Maureaux, Rick DiSalvo, Heather Santesteban, Crystal White, Rebecca Major, Tommy Holley, Lory Barton, Pam Browning, Suzanne Davis, and Tricia Marsh preparing for the “I’m A LEAF Lover” donor appreciation party.

Continue LEAF on Page 11 Pyper Braly-Ortega and family, of the Braly Family Foundation, check in. Pictured LEAF board members are Kevin Schafer, Suzanne Davis, and Heather Santesteban.

Teachers of the Year 2021

Allison Zema, Lyons Middle/Senior High School

By Andrea Smith Redstone Review

LYONS – Allison Zema is the choir and drama teacher for grades four through six at Lyons Middle/Senior High School. She earned a master’s degree in music at CU Boulder and a B.S. in business from the University of California at Irvine. She has been chosen at the Lyons Middle Senior High School as the Teacher of the Year 2021.

Allison Zema has done a tremendous job meeting the challenges of this year. She built her drama class into a class that every student wants to go to each day – a difficult feat in the time of online learning. Her passion and ability to teach the underlying concepts has propelled student interest into a new avenue.

As a fine arts, drama and choir teacher Zema has had to get very creative so that both she and her students could thrive in the current environment. Zema has worked hard to make sure that choir is equally engaging. She has had students learn and practice songs at school, creating a new classroom outside by constantly bringing her mobile keyboard and speakers outside. Then at home, students sing and submit the songs they are learning in a video format.

Over the course of numerous hours, she painstakingly put the student videos together for our winter concert. Even though we could not have a concert in person, Zema was committed to having this concert and maintaining the standards of her choral program, because performing for people is one of the highlights of choir.

For drama, she had students write and perform their own plays, collaborating in breakout rooms and then presenting on video while students were both virtual and in person. She also had students prepare monologues and present those on video. Zema did a great job breaking the assignments into pieces and giving students three or four opportunities to present and get feedback from herself and peers before they gave a final presentation. It was awesome to hear and see students practicing something they had never done before.

Resilience and courage are often a theme of Zema’s classes, and in order to alleviate some of the fears about performing alone, she designed her curriculum to include how to perform alone, at home. This is a very different experience than singing in a group with accompaniment, so teaching the students what to do and how to perform well in that new environment was essential for the success of the. Students will carry this confidence outside of the classroom and into other challenges they are facing this year.

Andrea Smith is the Principal of Lyons Middle Senior High School.

Pamela Browning, Lyons Elementary School

By Andrew Moore and Susan de Castro McCann Redstone Review

LYONS – Pam Browning was selected by our community as the Lyons Elementary School Teacher of the Year. She has served as our Gifted and Talented teacher for the past 5.5 years. Her vision for Gifted learning has enhanced our program, added affective needs support, increased advanced math opportunities, and developed engaging lesson extensions for our Gifted Students. Her ability to support teachers, parents, and students has been incredible. We wish her well as she transitions from our school, and look forward to seeing her in the community. Browning graduated from what was Lenoir-Rhyne College but is now a university, in Hickory, North Carolina with a Bachelor of Arts concentration in elementary education. Although she has enjoyed her time teaching, Browning said that she is anxious to do more volunteer work in the community. Volunteer work has always had a major role in her busy schedule. She was the chair of the Lyons Emergency & Assistance Fund (LEAF) for several years and has recently become the Administrator for the Meals on Wheels program which is a program within the umbrella of LEAF. Browning will coordinate all the schedules of the drivers and see to the need of the clients.

She said that many people don’t know that Meals on Wheels lunches are not limited to elderly shut-ins who can’t get out on their own. “We help people with a range of issues. We recently helped out a client that had surgery and was not able to make his or her own meals,” she said. “The client was alone at home and needed someone to prepare meals. We were able to deliver lunches until that client recovered.”

Browning is also serving on the board of the Friends of the Library. She has a variety of hobbies and she loves spending more time on her hobbies of gardening, hiking, and playing the upright bass in her trio. Traveling is also on the horizon. She said she is all ready to go. Browning said she may still find her way back into teaching in some capacity, but for now she is volunteering and loving it.

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Andrew Moore is the Principal of Lyons Elementary School.

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