Tucker Foundation Receives Spirit of New Hampshire Award

Dartmouth Community Services (DCS), the local outreach and education arm of service at the Tucker Foundation, will receive a 2006 Spirit of New Hampshire Award, to be presented by Governor John Lynch on November 13 in Concord. Specifically, DCS has been chosen for a Volunteer Champion Award, which recognizes the contributions of organizations that support volunteerism through effective infrastructures and efforts that sustain volunteer commitment.

Spirit of New Hampshire awards are part of an annual recognition program administered by Volunteer NH! in collaboration with the Office of the Governor. DCS was nominated by the Reverend Nancy A.G. Vogele '85, rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in White River Junction, Vt. Her congregation is highly involved in outreach projects across the Upper Valley, which has helped to keep her aware of the contributions made by Dartmouth students to a variety of social programs. In her letter of nomination, Vogele quotes the DCS motto, "Idealism in Action," and notes that the program, on an annual basis, enlists 1,200 volunteers who donate 40,000 hours of service. Recalling her own experience with the program in the early 1980s when she was a Dartmouth student, Vogele says, "My own volunteer and leadership experiences as a young person in DCS helped form me as the person I am today, helped connect me to my vocation and to my Upper Valley home. For that I am forever grateful. That this program has grown and deepened over the years, sustaining its service, is an incredible blessing to New Hampshire communities and to the learning and growth of young people."

Letters supporting the nomination of DCS for the award were submitted by Barbara Mason, who works in guidance within the Mascoma School District in Enfield and Canaan, N.H., where students operate the Outdoor Leadership Experience Project, and by Merilynn Bourne, executive director of LISTEN Community Services, with which the Dartmouth program is associated for the Big Brother, Big Sister mentoring project, for food and clothing drives, and for the provision of a weekly community dinner in Hanover through the Students Fighting Hunger project.

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