For a non-profit organization who has enhanced the quality of life in the community in meaningful and measurable ways and engaged in the development of sustained, reciprocal partnerships with a college or university.
Posters and certificates will be made available. Hover over image to see the recipient’s bio.
Tom Raffio, himself, is an engaged civic leader. His current community involvement includes but is not limited to: chair of the New Hampshire Coalition for Business and Education; chairman of the Bow Schools Foundation; board member and former chairman of the board, Early Learning New Hampshire; and board member of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats Foundation. He is also a member of the New Hampshire Scholars Leadership Board where he also serves as a champion.
Tom serves on the New Hampshire Historical Society's Democracy Project Committee as well. Along with these achievements, Tom and North East Delta Dental are staunch supporters of the Community College System of New Hampshire, supporting NHTI Mindfulness conferences, community road races, NHTI's dental programs, the President's Winter Fling fundraiser, and the college's athletics department.
Tom's most recent publication: Prepare for Crisis - Plan to Thrive: The Inside Story of How One Company Did It Right (2021) shows the resiliency of North East Delta Dental in a time of crisis and how the company supported its employees and the community through ingenuity and innovation.
NAMI NH strives to improve suicide prevention and mental illness educational outreach every day. Granite State College has been honored to work with such an extinguished group of individuals working together to improve lives affected by mental illness.
In fall 2019, the Rindge Food Pantry (RFP) partnered with Associate Professor Laura Christoph's Advanced Nutrition class, working with students to conduct an inventory of foods available, and create a recipe book containing healthy and affordable dishes that could be made with food pantry ingredients. The Rindge Food Pantry continued to support students by offering internship opportunities throughout both fall and spring semesters until the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated changes in operations to ensure health and safety.
Additionally, the Rindge Food Pantry partnered with the Franklin Pierce University Health Sciences Department and the New Hampshire Department of Public Health to support senior Public Health student Ashley Haluch '20 with a paid internship, during which she gained public health knowledge and experience outside of the classroom. As the internship preceptor, Stella Walling provided Ashley with tasks and guidance related to community health education and public health advocacy.
The Rindge Food Pantry has also been willing to support our students in need throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by not only in supplying food, but also provided resources for distribution directly to students in need, streamlining the process of administrative intake. In short, students who are identified as in need are able to contact Scott Ansevin-Allen, the University's Assistant Dean of Student Activities & Community Service, directly to complete simple intake forms. The RFP then allows the student support team to begin the direct distribution process by providing startup resources that are stored in the Campus Center, meeting students where they are without delay. Franklin Pierce staff provides administrative resources to them for processing and tracking through the State of New Hampshire.
In the spring of 2020, when organizations and the college went remote, the nursing home worked to develop creative virtual opportunities that helped to ease the residents' sense of isolation and engaged the students in an experience related to their courses. Students created engaging virtual programming that could be shared with the residents and worked with the nursing home staff to develop activities that would bring a little bit of joy during a challenging time. Over time, our students were able to return to in-person visits, further helping to ease the continued sense of isolation felt by the residents. This return to in-person engagement wasn't straight forward, but the staff at the nursing home figured out a way for this engagement to occur safely and on a regular basis.
SNHU students are frequent volunteers at the OutFITters Thrift Store (where they sort donations, clean, and organize the store), the Food Pantry (where they help clients, stock shelves, and organize donations) and the Family Place Shelter (where they provide monthly Family Fun Nights for kids staying there and serve dinner weekly). What makes our relationship with Families in Transition so valuable is the staff's willingness to find ways to make the service experience a meaningful learning experience for SNHU students. They take the time to talk about homelessness and food insecurity in our city with volunteers and are willing to come to campus to serve as guest speakers in classes.
Our work with Families in Transition is a true, reciprocal partnership where students can help fill organizational needs and enhance their learning while doing it.
As a long-time partner with Rivier University, Girls, Inc. engages our service-learning students as mentors for girls ages 5-18 at their Nashua location. Rivier students become positive role models, provide tutoring, and assist with on-site activities in their early learning center and after school program.
In advance of welcoming ClearChoiceMD on our campus, Joe Sicard and Adam Mason worked quickly and efficiently to ensure the successful launch of the drive-up clinic. During the peak of the Omicron surge, ClearChoiceMD employees tested upwards of 3343 people per day at all their state-sponsored testing clinics. River Valley appreciates Clear Choice MD responding to the need for increased COVID testing. This not only positively impacted our community, but the entire State of New Hampshire.
On behalf of River Valley Community College, we want to thank you for your partnership and service to the community.
Within the organization are two entities that enhance the quality of life for their community members, both of which have had wonderful collaborative partnerships with MCPHS University.
The first is CMC's Parish Nurse Program which has collaborated with our students to educate the public about health related topics, as well as provided blood pressure screening and patient medication reviews. This partnership provides opportunities for our future pharmacist to learn and grow, while helping to maintain the health of the greater Manchester area community.
The second department is the CMC Outpatient Occupational Therapy Department, which continually strives to provide meaningful and much needed care and treatment to all members of the community. The staff has worked with MCPHS to collaborate on knowledge and innovations, and many projects that provide improved healthcare outcome for patients and many opportunities for our students to apply what has been learned into practice.
