The Niles Star

Niles ready to give more

By By JESSICA SIEFF / Niles Daily Star
Next Friday will mark one year to the day that Chad Gardner took a day off of work at Cedar Lane School and went with his wife, Tammy, to be audience members at a taping of the Oprah Winfrey show.
The trip to Chicago would set forth a chain of events that would bring a community together and some much needed help to one Niles family.
That's when Gardner got the idea, inspired by Winfrey's "Big Give" television series special to give big to Tammy Beers. Beers had previously lost her husband and had been struggling with finances and faced a home in need of repairs all the while caring for her daughter, whose medical condition required routine trips to doctors, sometimes hours away.
Pulling together efforts of the entire Niles Community Schools system, over $70,000 was raised to help Beers and her family. And now Gardner, Beers and the rest of the Niles Community Schools staff and students are gearing up to give again.
"As soon as we did it last year, we decided we were going to do it again," Gardner said Friday. "It's just a nice community service project for the kids."
The "Niles Gives Big" event received more than $70,000 in donations for the Beers family and brought national attention to the area when Winfrey featured Niles on her daytime talk show.
"We had no idea how big it would get," Gardner said.
When Gardner got the idea last year, he'd already known the Beers family would be the recipient of the "Niles Gives Big." This year, the search is on.
Gardner said members of the Niles Community Schools staff are submitting names of families "in desperate need." The final day for nominations is Monday. A committee will choose one family to help.
"We (Cedar Lane) are just the ground troops, you know, we pave the way." Setting up individual ways of collecting donations is something Gardner said schools would do again.
The event itself, a "weeklong blitz" of donating and giving will take place March 16 – 20.
But this year, Niles Gives Big could prove to be a big challenge.
"This year is going to be easier because more people know about it," Gardner said. "But the economy is worse. So in the same respect it's going to be tougher too."
Ultimately, Gardner said, taking part in giving big can be a life altering experience. For example, the staff and students at Northside Child Development Center donated hundreds of dollars to the Beers family last year. "If you start at that young age, you create a lifelong lesson," Gardner said.
Once chosen, Gardner said he'd sit down with the family to talk with them about their needs. While most of the time it's financial, sometimes there are certain details to those needs. For example, Beers needed a specialized stove to manage the temperature of her home for her daughter's medical condition, repairs done to her home's rooftop and new windows.
What does Gardner expect out of Niles Gives Big this year?
"I always like to go bigger and better," he said.
Though he recognizes that many are struggling through the current recession, Gardner said he thinks that the community will be able to at least match their total of last year.
"Sometimes you've got to push," he said.
Looking back at her experience one year ago, Beers said the efforts of the community "helped a lot" and "took a lot of the stress off."
Though her daughter still struggles through medical issues, Beers said the family is doing well. Thinking back, to when Niles Gives Big gave to her, she said, "it's just amazing that people can come together like that."
This year, she'll be on the other side of the story. Beers said she plans on helping give to the next family.
"I just want to pay it forward," she said.