For more than 20 years, Progress Energy volunteers from the H.B. Robinson Nuclear Plant have been mentoring children at North Hartsville Elementary School and providing a positive influence for children identified by the school as students who would benefit from the program.
On Tuesday, the mentors and their students ate lunch at Pizza Hut and then returned to the school to wrap presents for two Hartsville area families they adopted for Christmas as their service project for the year.
“I do it because of the look on their faces,” Employee Teresa Hodges said. She has been volunteering since the program’s beginnings. “Everyone needs to know they are special to someone and are loved.”
This year 30 volunteers have been mentoring 33 children, visiting them once a week, usually at lunchtime. In addition to employees, some of the mentors are retirees from the H.B. Robinson plant, and others are community volunteers.
The employees visit the students once a week on company time to eat lunch with them, help them with subjects they are having difficulty with, read to them and talk with them about what is important to them, said Renee Gainey, Progress Energy employee and organizer of the community service project.
Andy Cole, communications specialist for the plant, said the service project is done completely by the employees of the plant rather than by the corporation.
Each year the mentors and their students develop a community service project, Cole said. For the past couple of years, they have adopted needy families at Christmas and provide them with Christmas presents.
The wish lists of the two adopted families, one with four children and the other one child, were posted at the H. B. Robinson Nuclear Plant, and employees purchased each and every item on their lists, said Gainey. They also provide food for the families.
Gainey said the children mostly wanted clothes, but every child wanted a bicycle. One wanted a baby doll because she had never had one.
“This is a wonderful program and a most outstanding school,” Faye Page said. A former teacher, Page has taught in Atlanta and Columbia and said she has not seen a more organized and well run school. She said this must be attributed to an excellent principal.
Page’s daughter, Quida Page Valdez, also is mentoring as community volunteer this year.
The little girl’s face just lights up when she sees mother,” Valdez said.
After wrapping presents everyone had cake and refreshments. Gainey said this is one of the most rewarding projects in which employees at H.B. Robinson participate.
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