On May 16, the Berkshire United Way honored Berkshire Athenaeum Director Alex Reczkowski for not only his 13-year tenure at the facility, including seven years at its helm, but also for his involvement in numerous other groups that benefit the local community including serving as president of the Rotary Club of Pittsfield and as a volunteer with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. He was presented with the Daniel C. Dillon Helping Hands, Caring Heart Award which, per the organization, is “given to an individual or group who shows up time and time again for those in need.”
The sunny afternoon’s catered event also celebrated Vanessa Guess Slaughter and Manny Slaughter. The couple received the Robert K. Agar Jr. Volunteerism Award for their exemplary commitment and dedication to volunteerism. They spent the last three decades offering free after-school activities for children including dance, homework sessions, literacy, and sports within their nonprofit organization, The Focus Is Our Children. The Slaughters’ dedication has now expanded to new plans that will continue to help underserved youth in the Pittsfield community.
All of the individuals considered in this year’s award process are “worthy and [have] done so much for the community,” Berkshire United Way President and CEO Tom Bernard said. “It’s really thinking about people who have made an impact in the community, who have a history of being involved and engaged and giving of their time and their talents in all kinds of ways,” he said. “You look at Alex, and he’s involved in so much. You look at the Slaughters and … their focus on young people, that core belief in the potential of young people and the power of mentorship is just amazing.”
Alex Reczkowski: “Connecting people to resources”
Reczkowski was destined for library stardom at an early age. “When I was four, we had a bookshelf behind my rocking chair and I thought that I needed to catalogue those books and keep track of who had which books when,” Reczkowski said. That path was solidified when he soon earned a date stamper and stamp pads, enabling the budding librarian to reenact a library at home. And, he’s been on his way ever since.
Although the Athenaeum was closed for only six weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic, funding cuts impacted its structure, especially the young adult division, Reczkowski said. However, now the library is on an upswing in its efforts to serve as a meeting place for individuals and groups to congregate. “We are at this really exciting time where we are rebuilding relationships,” he said.
Over the past year, the Athenaeum has re-instituted a young adult librarian, it’s first new position in two decades, resulting in a resurgence of interest for that segment of the population, Reczkowski said. In May, a bilingual Spanish/English full-time staff member joined the team and a world languages collection was recently launched in addition to offering a library outreach program to the community.
Reczkowski said that the group especially “needs community, they need support, they need connection,” citing high suicide rates among the youth population. “The answer to our problems is connection and that’s possible at the library,” he said.
Reczkowski’s seven-year involvement with the Rotary organization stems from humble beginnings. While cleaning a bathroom at a community theater in Farmville, Va., he was asked about his future plans by the president of a local Rotary club. He said he desired to go to Hungary to learn about the culture, and, two years later, his dream came true as an ambassador scholar with Rotary International. The position entailed studying and presenting information about his home country to the visiting country residents as well as information about that country to the home group upon return. “When I came back, I knew that I wanted to be involved with Rotary,” Reczkowski said.
Locally, he could see how the club was valued in the community and aimed for its leadership. In the last 12 months, Pittsfield’s Rotary has focused on growing its membership, offering one evening meeting monthly in addition to lunch functions, Reczkowski said. This month, a social meeting at Pittsfield’s Methuselah Bar and Lounge was scheduled to allow members and guests to get to know each other better on a personal level.
Reczkowski said he’s grateful to his “library family” for their generosity, patience, and kindness, as well as his Rotary group and local arts and culture groups for their welcoming nature.
The Slaughters: A force for positive change
The Slaughters’ dive into volunteerism emanated from meeting their family’s needs 30 years ago. When Vanessa and Manny moved from Springfield to the Berkshires with their two young daughters, they couldn’t afford a dance school for their eldest child, said Vanessa, who has had dance training.
“So, with her and some of her friends that she got together, we started Focus Is Our Children dance program,” she said of the 19-year program that ran for 10 months out of the year. The nonprofit program was initially funded with a $2,000 Pittsfield Cultural Council grant. “There was such a need, and especially a need on the West side [of Pittsfield],” Vanessa said of the growing program.
About eight-and-a-half years into the dance program, Manny added summer options that focused on sports and literacy, rounding out a full year of free youth activities for the community. “We started the sports and literacy program because it was a form of recreation to keep our kids in a safe haven,” Manny said of the program for children ages seven to 16 years old. Although the sports program included typical kids’ activities such as basketball, kickball, and jump rope, the literacy option was essential because “if you can’t read, you can’t fill out a [job] application,” he said.
“It only made sense to have a literacy program because a lot of our children, during the summer, were sliding back,” Vanessa said. “Now we have children going to college. They had never seen a college or been to a college. That fear of college is gone.”
Hundreds of children have passed through their program, too many to count, with some program graduates having received full college scholarships, she said. Pre-COVID, the summer sports and literacy programs attracted about 60 to 90 children for five days a week, Vanessa said.
Manny credits the program’s success to a foundation that’s built on trust with the children enrolled. “If you don’t have the trust of children, you’re not going to be able to do anything with them,” Vanessa said.
Recently, the duo implemented an after-school homework and mentorship program at Price Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, 163 Linden St., Pittsfield. The summer program is returning following the pandemic but won’t be daily yet.
Manny and Vanessa are grateful for their long-standing partnership with United Way that helped get the literacy program off the ground in addition to numerous community banks, lending institutions and credit unions. As an impetus to his community work, Manny recalled advice he received from his uncle Bud years ago. “He told me, ‘Manny, somebody has to represent the unrepresented,’” Manny said. “And that’s where we come in, me and my wife.”
