Rotary club honors Jefferson Award finalists and names winner March 23
The Cincinnati Rotary Club will announce its 2023 Jefferson Award winner at a lunch meeting next week.
The Jefferson Award, recognized as the Nobel Prize for public service, was created in 1972 by Cincinnati-native and U.S. Senator Robert Taft and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and is presented annually to recipients in more than 90 cities in the United States.
Last year's Cincinnati Rotary Club winner was Roger Grein, founder of Magnified Giving.
The Cincinnati Rotary Club partners with The Enquirer, Local 12 WKRC-TV and the American Institute of Public Service to find and honor individuals in the community who go above and beyond the call of duty in their volunteer efforts in Greater Cincinnati.
The lunch meeting announcing the 2023 Jefferson Award recipient is at noon Thursday, March 23, in the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza Hall of Mirrors. Reservations are available until 5 p.m. Monday, March 20. Reservations may be made here or by emailing office@cincinnatirotary.org.
Here are the 2023 finalists for the Jefferson Award for Public Service.
Ronald Dumas, Reaching Out For Kids
Ronald M. Dumas is an assistant golf professional at Avon Fields Golf Course. While serving as a chief constable with the Hamilton County Juvenile Court System, Dumas saw the need to mentor youth both inside and outside of the court system, and in 1997, he founded Reaching Out For Kids, which uses golf as the platform to teach life lessons to at-risk youth ages 3-17. Each year Dumas and his group of volunteers offer disadvantaged children free golf lessons. The program has helped 185 at-risk participants secure college scholarships. Dumas also initiated and oversees a junior golf program for disadvantaged youth in Runaway Bay, Jamaica. In both programs, he teaches his protegees to transfer the values taught on the golf course to their everyday life: goal-setting, honesty, respect, discipline, confidence, having a positive attitude and consequence-based decision making.
Joseph Dehner and Noel Julnes-Dehmer, Summer Camp Reading
When tutoring at the Northside Boys and Girls Club in 2010, Noel Julnes-Dehmer realized that her students couldn’tdo their math homework because they couldn’t read the directions. Not finding any summer reading campsin the area, that summer she and her husband Joseph founded Summer Camp Reading, a program that has served more than 1.000 students in grades two through four who struggle with reading in under-sourced neighborhoods. During the summer program, which runs four to six weeks, campers receive individual tutoring with a reading specialist, work in a group on reading skills, read silently, journal, work alone at learning stations, listen to the Book of the Day and make crafts that highlight the theme, and play literacy games. Because owning books raises reading scores, every Friday campers choose books to take home and own, sometimes the only books in thehome. The duo have also volunteered with more than two dozen other agencies and projects and both volunteer about 80 hours each month.
Bruce Kintner, Samaritan Car Care Clinic
Bruce Kintner began the Samaritan Car Care Clinic in 2007 as a way to help low-income single moms who couldn't afford the cost of an oil change. Bruce and other volunteers offered complementary routine vehicle maintenance to single moms referred to the Clinic by Ion Center (formerly Welcome House, Women's Crisis Center), Life Learning Center, Brighton Center, and more. Every car needed more than just an engine oil change, but with limited funding, Kintner and his team of volunteers could only help with the basics. He continued to pursue funding, all while working full-time at PNC Bank. A major break came in 2021 when the Butler Foundation, the R. C. Durr Foundation, and the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation all agreed to some initial funding, provided that Bruce become the director. So after 34 years, he resigned from PNC Bank to become the director of the Samaritan Car Care Clinic in 2021. Samaritan Car Care beneficiaries are referred by multiple social service agencies. Last year, 315 low-income families were literally able to stay on the road because they received help to pay for car repairs.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Rotary club honors Jefferson Award finalists and names winner March 23
