In 1996, Hillary Clinton reminded us of the ancient African proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child.” But for some St. Helena schoolchildren, sometimes it just takes an island - Dataw Island. Thanks to the hard work of Denise Ogden and a group of approximately 60 Dataw Island volunteers, students at St. Helena Elementary School are learning about the joys of reading, writing and arithmetic through the Adopt-A-School program.

 

Launched by Dataw resident Marge Jarvis 15 years ago, the Adopt-A-School program uses a team of volunteers from Dataw and neighboring islands who work with approximately 100 St. Helena Elementary School children on their reading, math, social studies and science skills. Denise was asked by Marge to share some of her more than 25 years of teaching experience with the St. Helena Island students in October 1998, just one month after retiring to Dataw Island with her husband, Doug. Eleven years later, both contribute heavily to the success of the Adopt-A-School program as Marge is the president and Denise coordinates the volunteers.

 

Most volunteers meet weekly with students in grades one through five, who were designated by their teachers as possible “at risk” students. Working in small groups and in one-on-one situations, the volunteers give the children more attention with their school work, and some frequently share travel experiences to help the children understand that there is a world beyond the island. Many volunteers enjoy reading stories aloud to the students in their classrooms to instill a love of books and literature.

 

Twice a year, the Adopt-A-School program provides each of the 400 St. Helena Elementary School students with a book for their home library and to reinforce the importance of reading every day. Thanks to the donations from residents of Dataw Island and other communities, Denise and two volunteers travel to Georgia to sift through thousands of books at a book warehouse specializing in over-run and over-stocked books to find 800 books that the students will love and enjoy for years to come.

 

Denise also manages a program called Alphabet Junction, an extension of the Adopt-A-School program, but for younger children. Alphabet Junction works with approximately 20 or more students at St. Helena Early Learning Center who have entered kindergarten lacking skills that others are exposed to at home. Denise and her volunteer staff of a dozen or so Dataw residents use a variety of fun and innovative hands-on teaching methods to introduce the children to one alphabet letter a week, its sounds, and how the letter is used to form words.

 

Denise has not limited her work with education on St. Helena to school-age children. Through the Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry, the California native has made a life-changing impact on one Dataw Island staff member, Dwayne Washington. When they met in 2006, Dwayne, a 31-year-old landscaping staff member, was unable to read his job chart, hampering his job performance for daily updates on his activities.

 

Through weekly meetings in the Dataw administration building, Denise and Dwayne have advanced through phonics, recognizing words, vocabulary enrichment, reading comprehension and sentence writing.  Believing that you must involve the whole family in order to successfully make such a change in one’s life, Denise provides Dwayne with picture books as part of his homework to read to his three children. After three years of hard work, Dwayne will be honored by Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry on September 8^th as the “Lowcountry Basic Student of the Year” for his accomplishment in overcoming obstacles to achieve his literacy and personal goals.

 

“Working with Dwayne and the children of St. Helena is a joy for me and my way of giving back one of my passions to my community,” said Ogden. “We are lucky to have so many Dataw residents who care and volunteer their time to help St. Helena and Early Learning Center students. I am so proud of the work that Dwayne has done over the last three years and look forward to him receiving his certificate of accomplishment on September 8th. I hope that our entire Dataw family will come out that night to join his friends and family to show support for his hard work and efforts.”