Volunteers still helping others after 90 years

Jewish women's group's list of initiatives is destined to grow longer

Saturday, November 8, 2003
By ROBERT MILLER / The Dallas Morning News

For 90 years, the Greater Dallas Section of the National Council of Jewish Women has been in the forefront of social action in Dallas.

The pace never lets up, and neither do the financial demands on the group.

A roll call of "firsts" in which this all-volunteer organization either initiated a program or helped others launch one could fill the space for this column.

Brenda Brand, a past president of the Greater Dallas Section, gave us an abbreviated timeline of the council's many local milestones:

• A year after the local chapter was created in 1913, it provided the first volunteers in the Dallas Public Schools.
• That same year, it instituted a Penny Lunch Program that became the first of its kind within the school system.
• Three hundred children were served wholesome hot lunches at a penny a dish.
• In 1917, the council put the first medical facility in the Dallas Public Schools.
• In 1925, it offered the first English lessons for adult foreigners.
• The next year, it was the first to hold classes and hire a teacher for the blind outside the Dallas Public Schools' programs.
• In 1932, it was the first to hold classes and hire a teacher for the deaf outside the Dallas Public Schools' programs.
• Two years later, its Minnie Hexter Milk Fund started a free milk program that continues today as the only free milk program for children in Dallas.
• It helped start the Mental Health Association and worked to establish a graduate school of social work in Texas.
• In 1961, in cooperation with The Dallas Morning News , it started Literacy Instruction for Texas, or LIFT, the adult reading program that continues to this day.
• In 1979, the council founded Foster Child Advocate Services in cooperation with the Family Court and Dallas County Child Welfare.

This agency is now known as Dallas CASA.

The council helped work with the Dallas Independent School District to implement desegregation, organized a volunteer program at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library downtown, and inaugurated a docent program at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

HIPPY program

But one of the programs with the biggest impact is the council's highly acclaimed Home Instruction for Parents of Pre-school Youngsters program, or HIPPY, which started in 1988.

"Its purpose is to reach the parents of preschool children ages 3-5 and prepare them for success in school," says Kyra Effren, current president of the Greater Dallas Section.

The program works "by motivating the parents to work with their children and prepare them to enter the school environment, a continuing process that will last for the duration of their school career," she says. HIPPY also helps encourage parents to further their own educations.

Many have received GEDs and enrolled in community colleges after participating.

The program is now offered in English and Spanish.

There are 40 HIPPY sites in the DISD, four in Richardson schools, 25 in Irving and two in Grand Prairie.

In Richardson ISD, Dobie Elementary School assistant principal Nancy Stenberg was unstinting in her praise of the council, which took the program to Dobie and Lake Highlands Elementary six years ago.

Ms. Stenberg says the "wonderful aspect of HIPPY is that it emphasizes that parents are the child's first teachers."

The council provides some of the financial support, and its volunteers go with the families on field trips to the Dallas Museum of Art and other cultural places.

'An exciting place'

Kit Prince, HIPPY coordinator for the RISD, says, "There are about 75 families involved with both schools. This is an exciting place, watching the parents and children gaining skills.

"A weekly literacy program involves five lessons over a seven-day program because home instruction is part of the program. ...

"The structured lessons - whether at school or at home - include role-playing by the parents. It may involve jumping to illustrate the direction up," for example.

There are 30 weeks of lessons, with time out for holidays.

But, Ms. Prince said, "Many parents even ask for lessons to use over Christmas."

The program enables HIPPY children to enter first grade on their grade level or above.

Ms. Brand says that Syl Benenson, the National Council of Jewish Women's chairwoman of the HIPPY program, is a big reason for its success.

"There would be no HIPPY in Dallas, Richardson, Irving and Grand Prairie if it were not for Syl," she adds.

"I feel that she is the most committed social service volunteer that the city of Dallas has."

More to come

The council's Greater Dallas Section isn't planning to rest on its laurels, though.

Ms. Effren says it's working on several new programs, including "Making the Connection," a program at Parkland Memorial Hospital's OB/GYN clinics that helps educate mothers about infants' first three years of brain development.

Other new programs involve Legal Services of North Texas, Dallas Furniture Bank and Our Friends Place.

The council has dispensed $1 million in grants to more than 40 area projects in the last five years, Ms. Effren says.

To help fund programs in the future, the council is presenting Broadway and TV star Mandy Patinkin in concert at 8 p.m. Nov. 23 at the Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson.

Tickets are $52 to $152. Call 972-744-4650 or visit www.eisemanncenter.com.

For more information or to become a sponsor, call 214-368-4405.

E-mail bmiller@dallasnews.com.

Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/rmiller/stories/110903dnbusmiller.3a730.html.