2019 Award Honorees

ACCET’s Third Annual 2019 
Tom Tillia Community Service Award

Winner & Honorable Mentions


Winner – UEI Encino
(Encino, California)

UEI College’s mission is driving personal and community transformation by empowering students to make a positive and enduring life change. At our Encino, CA campus, we make community involvement ‐ locally and globally ‐ a priority and it is one of many ways we work towards empowering our students to transform communities while fostering personal development.
Community is so much more than the place we live. Community is people. People we touch throughout the day, in all aspects of our lives.
Students like all of us, flow through multiple communities as they navigate their day. The first community interaction may begin in the home, a “community where they reside” with their family and loved ones. It continues as they travel through their “local neighborhood community” to UEI College’s Encino campus. On campus, students interact with a “community of faculty and staff”, as well as a “student community” with their fellow students. Once students graduate and are employed, they continue to grow and develop professionally within the “employer community”. At UEI College, our “Professional support organization community” allows us to extend our reach to an “international community” through the various outreach initiatives.
Our partnerships and community activities:
  • Partnership with the Encino Chamber of Commerce
    • Paint the Balboa Bridge Community Event
    • Friends of the LA River Clean
  • Valley Presbyterian Hospital Volunteerism
  • Valley Presbyterian Health & Wellness Community Fair Volunteerism
  • Food Scarcity – Local, Regional and Global Community Outreach
    • The Food Pantry: UEI College Encino has a developed a dedicated “Food Pantry” on‐site
    • M.E.N.D. Partnership
    • M.E.N.D. Christmas Toy Donations
    • Children’s Hunger Fund Poverty Encounter Partnership
    • Coin Pak Fundraiser
    • Children’s Hunger Fund Volunteering
Our ongoing commitment with organizations and independent initiatives allows us to provide UEI students, staff, and faculty the opportunity to volunteer their time and help across all “our communities”. We strive to create positive community support and make a change in our society.

Click HERE to view this entrant’s video presentation

 

Runners Up


 

InterCoast Colleges
(Santa Ana, California)

America is in the midst of an opioid epidemic. Right now, drug overdose is the leading cause of death among Americans under 50. Approximately 70,000 teens and adults die each year from drug overdoses. The question is: What can we, as part of a larger community, really do about this problem?
InterCoast has committed to giving our time and resources, in a variety of ways, to support those people and organizations that are also committed to eradicating this horrible disease and saving lives. This has been a mission for Chris and Geeta Brown for many years. InterCoast has been involved in a variety of community activities related to this mission:
  • Volunteering with Options for Recovery: Treatment for Mothers with Children
  • Participation in the Western States Opioid Summit
  • Partnership with Jodi Barber, director and producer of overdose awareness projects Overtaken and Overtaken 2
  • Volunteering at a Recovery Happens event at the state capital
  • CCAPP Annual Conference partnership
The core message of our community outreach when it comes to addiction and recovery has to be about connecting- connecting with community leaders, counselors, volunteers, and everyone who wants to be a part of the solution to the problem of addiction. That’s what education is about: reaching into the community and helping. If we can continue with that mission, we will see a great change in our society.

Click HERE to view this entrant’s video presentation


 

American Advanced Technicians Institute
(Hialeah, Florida)

American Advanced Technicians Institute was founded due to a community need. Since then, we have been involved in serving in various ways directly and indirectly.   We feel fortunate to have the opportunity to give back.   AATI assumes the responsibility of the potential of our trade to truly make a difference.
Some examples of AATI’s community efforts include: working with local charity Children in Action, raising funds to support one of our instructors and his family while he recovered from surgery, partnering with the city of Hialeah and the Hialeah Firefighter Benevolent Association for a Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, supporting communities in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and supporting communities in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian.
Each time we serve it inspires us for the next time around.  Our team, our community, our family comes together for the same purpose and the results are just fulfilling.

CEC American University of Beirut
(Beyrouth, Lebanon)

Lebanon currently hosts the greatest proportion of adults aged 65 years and over in the region (nearly 9%), and by 2050 this proportion will approach 20%. Older people of today are generally healthier and living longer than their parents and many aspire to remain socially connected. Yet, prospects for older people in Lebanon to remain active and intellectually stimulated are largely lacking.
Within this aging context in Lebanon, the University for Seniors was established in 2010 by two academic experts in health and aging at the American University of Beirut (AUB). The UfS aims to create a positive face of aging in Beirut, Lebanon and the Middle East region. It is a pioneering program for seniors, who wish to remain intellectually and socially engaged, eager to learn new things and keen to contribute to their communities at large. It has served over 1,890 members to-date, and around 380 leaders and lecturers have volunteered their time and expertise.
UfS members in turn, and on several occasions, volunteer their time and expertise and contribute back to community. The following are some examples where our members have participated in:
  • “Senior to Senior” activity, in collaboration with the Office of Students Affairs at AUB
  • Collaboration with Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) Arabic Summer Program
  • Proctoring at Olayan School of Business
  • Two Master’s students’ dissertations
  • Lebanon’s first national strategy on aging, commissioned by the UNFPA and the Ministry of Social Affairs