Senior volunteers seek youth support

A 56-year-old nonprofit agency that provides food, shelter and utility assistance to those in need is in need itself of a new generation of volunteers, its leaders said.

“We want the young people to get involved,” said 88-year-old Eunice Rooks, treasurer of Good Neighbors Inc. “We want the dream to not die.”

Ms. Rooks, who has been a member of the organization since the late 50s, and Joan Campbell, 60, said recruiting young people to continue the charitable works of the organization is a priority.

“I am the ‘next generation’,” said Ms. Campbell, executive director for the homemaker and nutrition program at Good Neighbors. “We need young people to be more active.”

Most Good Neighbors volunteers are in their 70s and 80s, she said.

The late Rev. William Whiteside and his wife, Maudette, started the organization in 1952 months after Mrs. Whiteside learned of a family in dire financial straits.

At the time, the Rev. Whiteside was a manager for the Chattanooga Housing Authority and Mrs. Whiteside did housekeeping on Lookout Mountain, Ms. Campbell said. The couple started buying food to provide for that family and other families in need.

The couple later appealed to congregants at New Hope Baptist Church for donations, she said.

The Revs. Horace Scruggs, Willie D. Clark and Melvin Jordan are among several ministers who once worked with Good Neighbors but are no longer in good health, officials said.

Good Neighbors once had 18 clubs where people could seek out help. That has dropped to eight, said 84-year-old board chairman Edward Fletcher. The locations are at various churches in Avondale, Glenwood and Brainerd.

“We can’t keep dwindling down and maintain the organization,” he said. “We need to do something.”

Good Neighbors operates with about a $10,000 annual budget. Volunteers, some of the 18 board members and officers raise half of the money to assist people with basic needs such as housing and utility payments.

The remaining $5,000 comes from the federal government to provide Meals on Wheels and Home Makers program services, officials said.

Good Neighbors assists about 200 people a year, Ms. Campbell said.

“We serve the people who fall through the cracks,” she said.

Group members, however, also work on much larger projects, such as a $394,000 renovation of several vacant apartments on East 10th Street and M.L. King Boulevard. The group hired Tower Construction to renovate the apartments into livable units by the end of summer.

Money for the project came from the city, which awarded Good Neighbors at HOME grant, said Sandra Gober, the city’s director of economic and community development.

Good Neighbors met the requirements and they have a record of renovating rental housing with the city, Ms. Gober said.

Wiley Morton, a Good Neighbors volunteer who said he came out of retirement to work with the organization, meets with about six youths ages 8 to 18 once a month to discuss the importance of Good Neighbors and to encourage them to be volunteers.

He also reaches out to young people through the Hal Jackson’s Talented Teens International Scholarship Program.

Bernisha Madding, a 15-year-old singer, said she’s interested in Good Neighbors.

“It would be good to volunteer there because a person needs to get into something instead of getting into the streets,” the Tyner Academy 10th-grader said.

FOR MORE INFO

For more information about Good Neighbors, call 266-1772.

TIMELINE

* 1951 — Maudette Whiteside hears of neighborhood children who need food, buys groceries for them and others

* 1952 — Good Neighbors Inc. formally organized at New Hope Baptist Church as a locally supported charity.

* 1957 — State of Tennessee grants a charter to Good Neighbors to function as a tax exempt charitable organization

* Early 1970s — Purchased E. 10th Street building for $15,500 for Good Neighbors office

* Late 1970s — Built Whiteside Faith Manor for the elderly