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TI: Okay, so programs, working with people... I want to shift gears a little bit, because you've been involved with, in particular, with Manzanar and Heart Mountain, efforts to preserve these camps.

MS: Yeah, but I've been more involved in the community.

TI: Okay, and so let's talk about that first.

MS: First of all, my friend and I decided -- I belonged to a group called Director of Volunteer Services, Director of Volunteers, the organization. And this is the meeting of directors of volunteers in agencies. Well, we thought that, as we listened, that we're finding that the people who usually volunteered were now going to work, and therefore getting the kind of volunteers we used to have were no longer in existence. So my friend and I, Ellen Lindsley and I, decided we're going to start a group called Connect L.A. 1996, we got a core group of folks that, people who were management level, and we decided to start Connect L.A. And we have quarterly meetings, we don't have any membership as far as such, but we do issues of importance to the community. And we've been doing this since 1996. We're still doing it. And we've done things on the... which made me then go to the, when the social service people needed to change, Clinton signed a law about social services, and they had meetings all over the state and all over the county. And I went to a lot of those to listen to how they're going to... my conclusion was, if you're trying to get the leaders or staffpeople to do a change, I don't know if it's ever going to change, but they did some changing. And I went to listen to a lot of them. And I know we talked one time, they were saying, "Well, if a client goes in and tries to get a job and they aren't able to, they should do some volunteer work. And they said, oh, if they would work for a day or two, I said, "Oh, no, no. You're never going to get any experience that way." So I said, "You really get at least a week or two." So they didn't put that in. But it was fascinating to go around to see the changes that needed to meet.

Then the other thing I have done was the Safe Schools. The Belmont High School, they decided that the criminal justice department in Washington, D.C. had some huge grants to encourage the location areas around schools or programs in schools, to encourage the students to come and get better services. So they had an advisory committee, and I served on that advisory committee for four years, yeah. And it was very interesting because it was made up of people that were giving services to the committee, and I was the outside person. It was fascinating. And they gave me an appreciation certificate. And then the other committee that I was on was the... Anges Plaza is a residential for elderly people, low income. And they had an advisory council, and I was on that about five years. Oh, I stay on things long time.

TI: Good.

MS: And I think one thing that I did there -- and I'm proud that we did -- is that we as a committee wanted to talk to the residents more. Because there was kind of a feeling that they were treated like guests, but they were residents. And so we did have these small groups of the, like the, there's a lot of Koreans and lot of Filipinos and Chinese and other groups. So we broke down and really had a session about what they saw as their role and how to, so forth, and we made recommendations out of that and they used that as a base for some of the changes that they made. So I guess sometimes when you're on long enough, you make some changes.

TI: That's excellent.

MS: And then the other thing is, when I was with Dovia, we, I was president of Dovia at one time. But the court referrals, when you get a ticket, there were some people that worked in that department, probation department and so we put together a program using the volunteer centers. How somebody who gets a ticket, they could be referred to one of these volunteer centers. But we put a whole program together, and that has gone up for years, because it became a system where the judge could say to the person that's getting a ticket that if they couldn't pay for it, they should go to the center to do their volunteering.

TI: So this is like community service.

MS: Yes.

TI: When they say twenty hours of community service...

MS: Yes, yes.

TI: ...this is where that goes. Okay.

MS: And it was really fascinating, because we got a lot, we had a judge that was very, very interesting. He got his, some of the judges to come, and we had a big meeting. But when you think... we were talking about the county. So I worked on that one, too.

TI: Okay, wow. So you've been very busy.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.