Editorial

They Make a Difference in So Many Ways

We could call this the ‘year of the acronym.’ But we probably won’t.
That’s because doing so doesn’t come close to telling the story beyond the veritable alphabet soup of programs and initiatives that involve this year’s distinguished class of Difference Makers.
Let’s start with the Y-AIM program, initiated by the Springfield YMCA with a huge assist from Big Y Foods. It places youth advocates in Springfield high schools with the goal of helping students stay in school, inspire them to go on to college, and “move toward personal, family, and community advancement.”
There’s also LIPPI, the Leadership Institute for Political and Public Impact, started by the Women’s Fund of Western Mass. with the goal of providing women with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become civic leaders in their communities, as well as the PAFEC (Picknelly Adult & Family Education Center) in the old downtown fire station in Holyoke. A collaboration between Holyoke Community College, Peter Pan, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, and other partners, it provides GED preparation and testing, adult basic education, workforce-development classes, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), tutoring, mentoring, career counseling, and other services.
Then there’s TWO (Training and Workforce Options), a unique collaboration between HCC and Springfield Technical Community College established to support the workforce-training needs of the region’s businesses and nonprofits. And don’t forget BTG (Bridging the Gap), a program run by the Springfield Corps of the Salvation Army. It was created to assist first-time offenders in Greater Springfield and get them back on the right course. Since its inception, roughly 90% of its graduates have stayed in school and stayed out of further trouble with the law.
What all these acronyms and others do is help explain what this year’s class of Difference Makers does extremely well — to show that there are, indeed, many ways in which one can make a difference, and they all matter.
This simple fact was the driving force behind BusinessWest’s decision to create the Difference Makers program in 2008, and this year’s class uses all those acronyms and more to effectively bring home the point.
• Donald and Charlie D’Amour, the chairman/COO and president, respectively, of Big Y, are Difference Makers for myriad reasons — from Y-AIM to their work with area institutions like Baystate Health and the Springfield Library & Museums; from education initiatives such as the Homework Helpline and scholarships to huge donations of food to area pantries and food banks.
• Bob Schwarz has been making a difference for more than 30 years, through his work to create the PAFEC, but also his award-winning efforts to address homelessness not through shelters, but by creating far-more-permanent solutions.
• Bill Messner, president of Holyoke Community College, is making a difference through initiatives like TWO and the PAFEC, but also, and in more broad terms, by inspiring needed changes at the institution that have made the school more accessible and much more of a force in the communities it serves.
• The Women’s Fund of Western Mass. is making a huge difference through LIPPI, which has already inspired a number of women to seek elected office, but also through donations to countless area groups and what its leaders call “investments” in women and girls.
• The Salvation Army? Well, 2011 provided a window to the seemingly endless list of ways it can make a difference — from its Coats for Kids program to its tireless work providing food, supplies, clothing, and hope to last spring’s tornado victims; from the award-winning BTG to the rapid and multifaceted response to last August’s hurricane and the freak October snowstorm.
Taken together, all those capital letters and the numbers behind them paint a very powerful picture, one of groups and individuals who have found innumerable ways to improve quality of life in this region — and, best of all, continue to look for more ways to make a difference.
Congratulations to the class of 2012 and also to all those who have helped them achieve this distinction.