Hats off to our West Michigan Home Care program, based in Grand Rapids, which received the Best of Home Care 2012 award from Home Care Pulse, a company that surveys our home care clients and staff. And the Lansing office our our Children and Family Services program is a winner of the 2012 Best of Lansing Awards in the Human Services Organizations category. The Lansing Awards program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the area for enhancing the positive image of small business through service to customers and the community.    

 The Lansing office, Services for Children & Families, held a door-decorating contest for staff. The doors were decorated between Thanksgiving and the first week of December. Jill Peck, director of Quality Assurance, was the guest judge. First place was awarded to Bobbie Harden and Danielle Guty for their snowman door. Second place went to Michael Banks for his Naughty and Nice door (with lots of debate around the office about who was going on which list). Honorable emtnions wen to Andrew Martineau and megan Karinen, who used a Twelve Days of Christmas them, Jill Frame, Ashley Hayden and Nichole Hoerner for their door decorated with stockings, and Paula Bashore, who used a penguin/winter wonderland motif.

Looking for a fun family activity on Saturday, June 5? Come to Lansing, where Lutheran Social Services is one of the hosts of the fourth annual World Day celebration at Hunter Park, 1400 E. Kalamazoo Street. Enjoy world music, dancing, arts & crafts, free swim, a health fair, fabulous food and more. Admission is free. The event runs from noon till 8 p.m. Take advantage of the “Be a Tourist in Your Own Town” program and guy a $1 CATA bus ticket that enables you to visit a number of area attractions, including the zoo and museums, as well as the park. Lutheran Social Services will have an information table at the park. World Day combines World Refugee Day and the Hunter Park Music Fest. For more information, visit www.AllenNeighborhoodCenter.org.

Riak Mabil, 23, a refugee from Sudan who was helped by Lutheran Social Services’ refugee foster care program, will graduate from Central Michigan University May 8.

When he was 13, Riak fled his home in Sudan to join older siblings in a refugee camp in Kenya. By the end of the year, he was on his way to America.

Riak had never seen snow. When his plane landed in Chicago, he asked the woman next to him about the strange bits of white stuff on the ground. In Grand Rapids there was snow everywhere. “I was freezing!” he recalled. Members of a local church met him at the airport with winter wear. He had never had to wear gloves before.

Riak’s foster family lived in Charlotte, south of Lansing. “It was a very caring family. They took very good care of me,” he said. Midway through his sophomore year in high school, Riak went to live with his older brother who had come to the U.S. and was living in Grand Ledge. Riak graduated from Grand Ledge High School in 2005.

As a child he dreamed of getting a college degree, and maybe going farther than that. “Lutheran Social Services helped me with that dream,” he said. He is especially close to his caseworker, Sallie Campbell, who is now a supervisor in the refugee foster care program. Riak said, “She reminds me a lot of my own mother. If any of us refugees had a problem, the first person we called was Sallie.”

At CMU, Riak’s studied public health and joined the athletic program as a runner. He has competed in cross country and indoor and outdoor track since 2007. He was named second-team all-conference for cross country in fall 2008 and MAC Indoor Track and Field Champion in the 5000 meter race in 2009.

He wants to become a US citizen and then visit his home town, Duk, in southern Sudan, where many of his family still live. Then he’d like to go to graduate school – maybe even medical school.