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Log inA year later, Safe Passage thrives
A year later, Safe Passage thrives
by Outspoken on Sun Jan 13, 2008 7:21 am
A year later, Safe Passage thrives
Hanley Denning died a year ago, but her gift of inspiring others is alive and well.
By JOSIE HUANG
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald
Among Hanley Denning admirers, the story of how she started Safe Passage is the stuff of lore.
The young woman from Yarmouth was visiting Guatemala City in 1999, when she saw hundreds of people in the local dump scavenging for food and recyclables, saw children eating and playing amid the heap, and said to herself, "I have to do something."
Denning opened a drop-in center that in seven years spun off into three campuses. The program tutored and fed nearly 600 children of trash pickers with help from an international cadre of volunteers and donors, many of them from Maine.
Then, last January, as Safe Passage began the year with its biggest-ever budget of $1.7 million, Denning was killed in a car accident in Guatemala.
People wondered whether Safe Passage would be the same without its charismatic, can-do leader. Some school groups who had planned trips to volunteer at the program reconsidered going.
In Guatemala, mothers who called Denning the "angel of the dump" voiced fears that the program would fold.
"She was the chief fundraiser, the chief administrator, the chief everything," said John Gundersdorf, the development expert called in to help the organization after Denning's death.
But as the organization prepares to mark the year since Denning died with a Jan. 18 service at Yarmouth High School and in Guatemala, board members said Safe Passage is as strong as ever, buoyed by what is perhaps her greatest legacy -- the ability to inspire people and harness their talents for a cause.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=162039&ac=PHnws
Staff file photo
Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer
Hanley Denning died a year ago, but her gift of inspiring others is alive and well.
By JOSIE HUANG
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald
Among Hanley Denning admirers, the story of how she started Safe Passage is the stuff of lore.
The young woman from Yarmouth was visiting Guatemala City in 1999, when she saw hundreds of people in the local dump scavenging for food and recyclables, saw children eating and playing amid the heap, and said to herself, "I have to do something."
Denning opened a drop-in center that in seven years spun off into three campuses. The program tutored and fed nearly 600 children of trash pickers with help from an international cadre of volunteers and donors, many of them from Maine.
Then, last January, as Safe Passage began the year with its biggest-ever budget of $1.7 million, Denning was killed in a car accident in Guatemala.
People wondered whether Safe Passage would be the same without its charismatic, can-do leader. Some school groups who had planned trips to volunteer at the program reconsidered going.
In Guatemala, mothers who called Denning the "angel of the dump" voiced fears that the program would fold.
"She was the chief fundraiser, the chief administrator, the chief everything," said John Gundersdorf, the development expert called in to help the organization after Denning's death.
But as the organization prepares to mark the year since Denning died with a Jan. 18 service at Yarmouth High School and in Guatemala, board members said Safe Passage is as strong as ever, buoyed by what is perhaps her greatest legacy -- the ability to inspire people and harness their talents for a cause.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=162039&ac=PHnws
Staff file photo
Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer
"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."
Plato (427-347 BC)
Plato (427-347 BC)
