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Shenango Chamber Honors CEO of Urban League
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- The Shenango Valley Chamber of Commerce, capping off a year in which it studied social service organizations, last night recognized Michael Wright, president and CEO of the Shenango Valley Urban League, as its Person of the Year.
Wright is “a shining example of that kind of commitment to making this a better place to be,” said Robert McCracken, executive director of the Shenango Valley Chamber. The chamber held its annual meeting at the Avalon Golf & Country Club @ Buhl Park.
“I was overwhelmed when I was told I was going to be the honoree,” Wright remarked. “I thought to myself, there’s probably somebody else better deserving than me, but words can’t describe it for me,” he said.
In his acceptance remarks, Wright told how he intended to pursue a different path. “I thought I was going to be a big-shot guy at US Steel -- Florsheim shoes, briefcase -- but that path was interrupted when I lost a job and had to learn that in order to really understand what your life is about, you have to go through some trials and tribulations,” he reflected.
“I’ve had some good days and I’ve had some bad days. I’ve had some ups and I’ve had some downs. But when you can touch somebody’s life and give them a word of encouragement and let them know that despite the hard times they’re going through, there is a power that will look after them and people who are concerned about them, that makes a difference,” he said.
The Shenango Valley Urban League provides foreclosure and housing assistance; food assistance for women, infants and children; and resume writing and job search programs.
The food and foreclosure assistance programs both “have seen significant increases” in recent years, and the strain on resources that increased demand creates is a concern, Wright noted.
“Because of the budget cuts from the state, we constantly have to look for outside funding such as grant money to help us sustain certain programs. But overall, we still manage to service everybody that comes through our doors and try to give the best support that we can,” he said.
The evening’s keynote speaker, Karen Winner Sed, CEO of the Winner Companies in Sharon, told how the chamber’s board of directors spent the past year looking into the “business of caring,” visiting nonprofit agencies to learn about their missions and the needs they fill.
“There is a beauty and appreciation to our differences, that we all care about certain things and at different levels because when combined, we create a tapestry that we call our community," she said. "We aren’t designed to care about the same things but we are designed to care. It’s part of being human.”
Winner Sed said she frequently hears visitors comment on “how different we are as a community and how we care,” observations others in the room have heard as well, she added.
She cited numbers quantifying that community commitment, such as the 652 volunteers who helped put on WaterFire Sharon, the 54,166 pairs of shoes donated to local school districts, and the $82 million in assets held by the Community Foundation of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. The $45.5 million in grants given by the foundation is ranked fifth in Pennsylvania in terms of allocations based on percentage of total assets.
One of the foundation’s programs, Students for Charity, teaches philanthropy to high school students, something her father, the late James E. Winner Jr., “knew it was important to teach,” Winner Sed remarked.
Each of the high schools has its own board that earns funds to donate to the foundation, which then matches what is raised. “They just crossed $400,000,” she said.
These kinds of works only come about because people and businesses care, she pointed out.
Business is sometimes a bad word, “especially when you put ‘big’ in front of it, but I think we’ve let that happen to ourselves,” Winner Sed continued. “All business is are the people who create them and the people who work in them. Business is very personal and business does care very much.”
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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