Please help me congratulate Ms. Cyndi McHolland for receiving the National PAL Female Volunteer Award for the year of 2007.   This award is given to only one female volunteer for the entire country.  All PAL Chapters are open to nominate any volunteer for this award, then National PAL reviews all entries and selects one male and one female volunteer for the year.  This is a very prestigious and special award.

Ms. McHolland has been involved with PAL for five years now.  She has served many functions for PAL, such as teacher for after school literacy and math programs, Running & Fitness Club Coach, and event coordinator.  In winter of 2002 and continuing for 3 years after that, McHolland led the Warm Fuzzies Club. This group of students and parents from the local neighborhood met in the Art Classroom and made blankets from donated polar fleece material giving neighborhood students the chance to work with their parents and share their talents on a joint activity. The result: a blanket they had made with their own hands and could keep forever. 

The Meyzeek Running Club began as the Meyzeek Walking Club in the spring of 2006. The original Meyzeek team of 9 students and one police officer walked the 13.1 miles of the Mini-marathon in 2006. The following year, with 20 students, 3 teachers, one parent and two police officers, team members both walked and ran the race. This year, the 30 students ran the full race with much-improved and very respectable finish times, ranging from a little over 1 1/2 hours to just over 3 hours. In their months of training, Ms. McHolland  taught them the value of hard work to achieve a difficult goal, shared with them the joy of success, and introduced them to habits of physical fitness that can last a lifetime.

Ms. McHolland also oversees the Math Therapy Group, an after-school PAL Learning Club program underwritten by the Louisville PAL chapter. As with most of her projects, Math Therapy started as an after-school project a year earlier – as Math For Girls – and  has grown since then. As Ms. McHolland describes it, Math for Girls is an opportunity for the “hesitant mathematician” to spread her wings – a place for the insecure math student to gain confidence and unravel the mysteries of math.  The participants become “Teacher Leaders” – in-class student assistants who help guide fellow students through complex math problems, using what they’ve learned to help others. As is her policy, McHolland turns no one away – so eventually more than 40 girls attended regularly. With PAL becoming involved in the effort in 2007, the group now includes boys.