South-End Activist Honored With Prestigious Public Service Award

The Jefferson Awards honor ordinary people who do extraordinary things for others.

Envisioned as a Nobel Prize for public service, the award was founded in 1972 by the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Senator Robert Taft Jr.

Since then, the Jefferson Awards program has developed into a nationwide effort that recognizes the highest ideals and achievements of individuals in public service in the United States, and one of the 2009 recipients is longtime Seward Park neighbor and community volunteer Mariana Quarnstrom. From the organizers:

Mariana Quamstorm is a citizen who has worked diligently for over 15 years to make her community a cleaner, safer, better place.

She has given thousands of volunteer hours to youth groups, juvenile offenders, local schools, the Southeast Seattle Senior Center, the Police Department and the South Precinct, Kubota Gardens, The Rainier Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Southeast Seattle Crime Prevention Council, and the Rainier Beach Merchants’ Association.

Quamstorm has brought groups together that had never partnered with one another before: the community, local businesses, and the police department with the schools and vice versa.

Mariana is a strong supporter of young people through outreach and empowerment.  She believes that youth need to be given alternative activities, diverted from getting into trouble; they need to have guidance, encouragement, and success – in and out of school.  Mariana’s current project is called YESS – Youth Empowerment in South Seattle; students come together to share their concerns and perspectives with adults and our local police officers.

Mariana Quamstorm is proof that one person can make a difference.

Photo/do communications, inc.

Related:

• Youth Violence Q&A With SSCPC President: “it’s Their Lives at Risk & We Don’t Hear Them, That Needs to Change” (10/1/08)
  

Tagged as: Seward Park