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Grandma Ora Wins Foster Grandparent Award
By
Michael A. Piekarz
Staff Writer
Ms.
Ora Rakestraw, 87, says
she doesn’t understand
what the fuss is all about, “I
don’t feel I’ve
earned any awards. I’m
just doing something I
love.”
Grandma Ora, as she know to the foster grandchildren she has worked with for
27 years, is a recipient of the 2006 MetLife Foundation Older Volunteers Enrich
America Awards as the Gold Honoree in the Mentor Category.
The award was first sponsored by MetLife in 2003. Administered by the National
Association of Area Agencies on Aging, the awards are presented to 25 honorees
in three categories, mentor, team spirit and community champion.
Gold awards are given in recognition of extraordinary volunteer service and awarded
to one person in each category. This year, the recipients come from 39 states
and the District of Columbia and included Grandma Ora.
When she was 60 years old, Grandma Ora was living in Chicago and raising five
foster children. “I needed somebody to share my love with,” she explained. “Once
they were ready for school, I needed something to do, so I volunteered at a hospital.
One of the people there mentioned the foster grandparents program and told me
I should volunteer there.”
Grandma Ora rode the bus for an hour to get to the Foster Grandparent’s
office in Chicago. She has been a volunteer for the program ever since. In the
27 years since she first volunteered, Grandma Ora has contributed 27,000 hours
of volunteer service.
Her first assignment was at the Marglo School in Chicago where she worked with
physically and mentally challenged children. “I loved it there,” she
recalls, “And when I moved to Sacramento in 1978, the first thing I did
was ask if they had the Foster Grandparent program.”
Then and now, Grandma Ora never considers it work. “I get more from these
kids then I think I’m giving. When I think about them, I’m alive.”
Grandma Ora spends her time each day with the children who are reading at the
lowest levels and who need the most one-on-one attention and tutoring. Woodridge
School teachers praise her for her soft-spoken manner and her caring attitude.
The teachers credit her with increasing the reading scores of five third-grade
classes in her school by a full ten percentile points and make special note of
her soft-spoken manner and caring attitude.
Grandma Ora explains this is just her way. “I enjoy working with children.
Each and every one of them is my boy or girl when I am talking with them.”
She is a born teacher, an avocation she wanted to pursue since she was a child
in Birmingham, Alabama. Grandma Ora’s achievements with “my kids” are
a source of amazement to the professional educators she works with.
A school therapist had spent six months working with a child having great speech
difficulties. Grandma Ora listened to him read “The Three Little Pigs” out
loud and was not able to understand what he was saying, so she broke the words
down to their smallest component and showed him how to place his tongue and mouth
when speaking the words.
She worked with the boy diligently until he was able to correctly pronounce the
words in the title of the book. What the therapist had unsuccessfully attempted
to accomplish for six months was done by Grandma Ora in two days.
She has volunteered with children who have physical and learning disabilities
compounded with communication difficulties. She helped the children learn how
to use words to request items, and with her help and coaxing, they learned to
say understandable words to communicate others. Grandma Ora also volunteers at
her church in Sunday school, recruits and helps train new volunteers and helps
the program raise funds every year.
Each day when school is in session, Grandma Ora can be seen at her desk helping
children succeed. When students pass her desk, they place their head next to
hers in a special hug. She always has a smile on her face and makes sure that
each child feels important.
Grandma Ora listens to children and helps them with problems beyond the academic
realm. She helps them when they are afraid and listens to what they say. She
also passes along the lessons that life has taught her.
When Grandma Ora was a child, she washed the white work shirts worn by her father. “He
used to roll up the sleeves when he worked,” she recalls, “And the
first time I washed them, I had forgotten to unroll the sleeves.”
When she showed her father the freshly laundered shirts drying on the clothesline,
he complimented her on the job she had done, then unrolled the sleeves and showed
her that there was still dirt trapped in the rolls of the sleeve.
“I learned then that if you are going to do a job, you have to do it right
the first time,” she says of this experience. Doing it right the first
time seems to work for Grandma Ora, and while she doesn’t seem to think
it’s special when she does it, her kids and their teachers sure do.
The County of Sacramento Department of Human Assistance sponsors the Foster Grandparent
Program. The program provides meaningful volunteer activities for low-income
seniors to work with children on an individual basis in community settings.
The program recruits, screens, trains and places the volunteers in programs that
fit the individual volunteer’s needs, skills and ease of commute. The volunteers
receive reimbursement for out of pocket expenses, a yearly physical and TB test,
monthly in-service training and recognition.
The program staff visit monthly with volunteers at their sites and provide training
and other support needs to the volunteer and their supervisors. The Corporation
for National and Community Service provides the funding and technical support.
For further information, the local Foster Grandparents program can be contacted
by telephoning (916) 875-4462 or through their website at www.rsvpsacramento.org.
This page and its contents ©2006
Metropolitan News Company, Inc.
