| Local
Volunteers Earn Recognition |
By Erick Soricelli
Observer Staff Writer |
| Three Reston residents, two organizations with Reston ties
and a company with a Herndon office were honored in Volunteer
Fairfax's 13th annual Fairfax County Volunteer Service Awards. |
| At a ceremony on Thursday, April 21 at the Hilton McLean
Tysons Corner, 21 awards were made to individuals and groups
volunteering in arts, human services and education. Awards
were categorized by youth, seniors, adults, family and community
leaders. |
| The South Lakes High School Student Government Association
won the Youth Group Award for the first time, said Irvin Greene,
one of two faculty sponsors for SGA. |
| The student government provided food, clothing, toys and
gifts for a Reston family during the holiday season last year
and conducted a book drive and a tsunami relief fund drive. |
| SGA participants also tutor students in reading at Dogwood
Elementary School and Hunters Woods School for the Arts and
Sciences. |
| "It's a big deal for us to be singled out from all the other
schools," said SGA president Dennis Lee. "It just shows how
hard South Lakes worked to get it." |
| Computer Associates, which has an office in Herndon, won
the Northern Virginia Technology Council award for its technology
education efforts. At its Herndon office late last year the
company opened a "Digital Schoolhouse," a computer lab where
local grade school students could learn Web site design and
graphics. |
| Computer Associates also funds the Building for the Future
Program, giving weekly technology training to about 65 children
in Wexford Manor, an affordable housing complex in Falls Church. |
| Computer Associates senior vice president Lisa Mars said
the award helps the company with its charitable focus on children.
"It gets the information about what we're doing back into
the community," she said. |
| Reston residents who received awards include Andrea Foley,
the Rev. Debra Peevey and Kohann Whitney. Foley won the Direct
Service in Arts and Humanities award for her work in the Befriend-A-Child
program, sponsored by the county's family services department.
She mentored a boy and coordinated a performing arts workshop
for 40 schoolchildren with Lopez Studios in Reston. |
| Rev. Peevey, pastor of Journey of the Heart Ministries in
Reston and director of the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry,
and Kohann Whitney of Northrop Grumman received Community
Leadership awards. |
| The Reston-based Giving Circle of Hope received the Adult
Volunteer Group Award for raising almost $25,000 in grants
and starting a literacy program at the Embry Rucker homeless
shelter. |
