[Music] about me syvia nlet I've lived in the district for about 20 25 years now my husband and I moved to Maplewood and raised our family here and uh have volunteered and worked in the district from time to time I'm involved and advocate for um the 622 Education Foundation um which primarily is an organization that supports um families and students in our district we have two main programs one of them is called the angel fund which really helps the uh social workers in all of our schools um provide things like boots and gloves and um things for families where there wouldn't be any other source uh when they need help and we also have the Award of Excellence for you know their hard work their work in the community um their persistence in perhaps helping their families along the way and um they all come from different backgrounds and it's really really amazing and uh inspiring um you never know what people are going through and what students are doing in their everyday lives um and so we get to hear about that collaboration for me is one of my favorite words if you can collaborate with people um you can go so much further it's just really important because we aren't we don't walk alone in this world the most rewarding part about being on the community Advisory Board is you really get to find out what is going on in our community and what the community community ed department is doing um before I became before I became a member of The Advisory Board I didn't know all that Community Ed does and it's antenna if you will uh is throughout our community and there are just so many opportunities for people to learn different things to um broaden their minds um and a lot of times we little to no cost we collaborated with St Marks right across the street to do a backpack program where uh kids could get a backpack uh and have food three meals for Saturday and Sunday um at no cost to them we had a coat giveaway that that winter that was so cold and I remember the first year we did it I think we had about 110 coats and in less than 2 hours they were all gone people had just come in from the community and it was donations from the community um we did a um prom dress giveaway again donations from we put the call out and said do you have something that you would be able to donate um and they did we took a couple of conference rooms in the in the office and theyd go in there and try on dresses and pick out the ones they wanted it was fantastic I mean and it was all because we just asked people to help those kinds of things those are the things I think that really make a difference in people's lives you know and it didn't cost us anything other than a little time the Betty Jane hat community service award is presented to an individual who demonstrates the same passion for our district around education volunteerism and community service that our BJ had oh it almost made me cry because I knew BJ and I knew I mean the idea that I would be compared to her is just like H heartwarming so to be uh in that category and then you look back at all the things she did throughout her life it's just [Music] like yep that was a life I'm honored [Music]