Points Of Light

In Kansas City, Cliff Sargeon, the director of the LandlordNegotiation Committee, has led the effort to close down 200 crack houses.In Oklahoma City, William and Sandra Hale, a doctor-and-nurse team both stricken with multiple sclerosis, continue to run a free health clinic that serves thousands of indigent patients a year.In Glen Arden, Maryland, Van Standifer started a midnight basketball program to get teen-agers off drugs, off crime and off the street.The Points of Light Foundation was created a year ago not just to showcase individual programs like these, but to help raise the notion of voluntary service to the status of a national movement.

If you're wondering where "a thousand points of light" went, I can tell you: America's movie theaters. Sit in any cinema these days and you witness a mysterious, distracting flickering as soon as the lights go down. And it's not coming from the screen. It's coming from the hands of people in the audience who keep their Palm Pilots and BlackBerries and cell phones armed and ready for any precious sports scores, news breaks, text messages and e-mails that come in while they're purportedly watching the film.

For the next three months, buyers of residences in the Colonnade condominiums may also receive, tax-free as part of their purchase, enough funds to cover a substantial portion of a grandchild's college education.If the buyers are relatively young and can't yet afford a mortgage payment at the Colonnade but expect a raise in the near future, they may qualify for a "lifestyle subsidy payment" that would give them $500 a month for the first 18 months after they move in to bridge the gap.If they are worried about selling their current house, the developers of the Colonnade will guarantee the sale for them.

ACCORDING to the Ancient Talmudic legend of the Lahmed Vovniks (the Thirty-Six), there are at any given time 36 righteous, saintly individuals in Israel and 36 in the Diaspora who try to imNrove the world by helping others. I think that I have used up the quota for North America. As a blind man with congestive heart failure, which makes walking difficult, I am constantly receiving help from good people.Among the ''Lahmed Vovniks'' to whom I am indebted are my wife, son, daughter-in-law, neighbors and Roslyn and Lem Wills -- my long-suffering secretary and her husband without whose help I could not function at all -- and a retired insurance executive, Samuel Weinblatt who is my dedicated volunteer reader.

WASHINGTON -- President George Bush's beloved points of light did not all go out when he did.In fact, the non-partisan Points of Light Foundation, which embodied Mr. Bush's national service campaign, has expanded and is developing a working relationship with the Clinton administration."

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his presidency, George Bush persistently promoted his "1,000 Points of Light" campaign as the antidote for hunger, homelessness and poverty.But an examination of financial records by the Los Angeles Times shows Mr. Bush's Points of Light Foundation, touted as the charitable solution to poverty in the United States, has spent less than 11 percent of its multimillion-dollar budget on grants to volunteer efforts.The records also show that $22.3 million has been spent on glitzy promotions, consultants, salaries, travel and conferences.

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his presidency, George Bush persistently promoted his "1,000 Points of Light" campaign as the antidote for hunger, homelessness and poverty.The slogan, coined during Mr. Bush's acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention, grew in popularity to become a signature of his administration. Six days a week, Mr. Bush honored someone -- a so-called "Point of Light" -- for performing exemplary volunteer work.In 1990, while declaring that solutions to some of the nation's most vexing problems lay in the hands of ordinary citizens and organizations -- and not huge government bureaucracies -- Mr. Bush launched a private, nonprofit foundation to motivate every American to engage in community service.

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his presidency, George Bush persistently promoted his "1,000 Points of Light" campaign as the antidote for hunger, homelessness and poverty.In 1990, Mr. Bush launched a private, nonprofit foundation to motivate every American to engage in community service.Today, the lone remnant of the Bush initiative has the look of a wasteful, Washington-dependent operation. So far, the Points of Light Foundation has received $26.6 million in federal funds -- more than half its budget -- while incurring a wide range of costs that amount to questionable spending, experts say.An examination of financial records by the Los Angeles Times shows that $22.3 million has been spent on glitzy promotions, consultants, salaries, travel and conferences.

I WAS driving home from work about a week ago when I spotted them, on the corner of Calvert and 33rd streets, I think. They were mostly young people; it was mostly dark. They were holding candles and signs hastily scrawled in marker on poster board: "Bring the troops home."It is more than Christmas, of course, that has fueled the sense of urgency about the plight of AmeriLindaCottoncans in the gulf; the nation's college students -- for whom Vietnam is just another boring chapter in a history book -- suddenly are hearing talk of a musty, old tradition called the draft.

When President Bush used a "thousand points of light" to describe the benefits of voluntarism, it caught the public's imagination. An off-shoot of that presidential remark has been the private, non-profit Points of Light Foundation, which is enlisting corporate and political heavy-hitters to promote voluntarism during a nationwide campaign this month. On Monday, that foundation honors the efforts of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a church- and temple-based organization that is in the midst of a $24-million undertaking to construct 300 units for low- and moderate-income homebuyers.

Thirteen-year-old Amber Coffman and a few friends took part in "National Make A Difference Day" recently by donating time to help homeless people locally and in Baltimore.The eighth-grader served a hot breakfast to about 20 homeless people at the Salvation Army office in Glen Burnie, gave them clean clothes and checked off some jobs from the want ads that they might look into.Amber, a student at Old Mill South, founded a group several years ago, Happy Helpers for the Homeless, to make and package about 400 sandwiches every Saturday.

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his presidency, George Bush persistently promoted his "1,000 Points of Light" campaign as the antidote for hunger, homelessness and poverty.In 1990, Mr. Bush launched a private, nonprofit foundation to motivate every American to engage in community service.Today, the lone remnant of the Bush initiative has the look of a wasteful, Washington-dependent operation. So far, the Points of Light Foundation has received $26.6 million in federal funds -- more than half its budget -- while incurring a wide range of costs that amount to questionable spending, experts say.An examination of financial records by the Los Angeles Times shows that $22.3 million has been spent on glitzy promotions, consultants, salaries, travel and conferences.

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his presidency, George Bush persistently promoted his "1,000 Points of Light" campaign as the antidote for hunger, homelessness and poverty.The slogan, coined during Mr. Bush's acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention, grew in popularity to become a signature of his administration. Six days a week, Mr. Bush honored someone -- a so-called "Point of Light" -- for performing exemplary volunteer work.In 1990, while declaring that solutions to some of the nation's most vexing problems lay in the hands of ordinary citizens and organizations -- and not huge government bureaucracies -- Mr. Bush launched a private, nonprofit foundation to motivate every American to engage in community service.

WASHINGTON -- Throughout his presidency, George Bush persistently promoted his "1,000 Points of Light" campaign as the antidote for hunger, homelessness and poverty.But an examination of financial records by the Los Angeles Times shows Mr. Bush's Points of Light Foundation, touted as the charitable solution to poverty in the United States, has spent less than 11 percent of its multimillion-dollar budget on grants to volunteer efforts.The records also show that $22.3 million has been spent on glitzy promotions, consultants, salaries, travel and conferences.

WASHINGTON -- President George Bush's beloved points of light did not all go out when he did.In fact, the non-partisan Points of Light Foundation, which embodied Mr. Bush's national service campaign, has expanded and is developing a working relationship with the Clinton administration."

In soup kitchens, shelters, clinics, schools and tumble-down homes, Erin D. Swezey's army is hard at work.Hundreds of freshly scrubbed Loyola College students are rolling up their sleeves and confronting poverty in the city's grittiest neighborhoods, in Appalachian mountain towns, in Mexican orphanages.Since arriving four years ago as Loyola's director of community service, Ms. Swezey has mobilized the campus into a hub of good works and good faith.That's not to say Loyola's party-hearty reputation has evaporated.

BEFORE THE saga of White House chief of staff Joh Sununu's frequent flying at taxpayer expense passes into the footnotes of history, it may be worth pointing out one aspect that tells something of the mind-set of some of the folks who are running the country right now. They're all for volunteerism -- when it's somebody else's.Among the flights Sununu took on military planes were two that carried him in the winters of 1990 and 1991 to New Hampshire, the state he once governed and still calls home.

Thirteen-year-old Amber Coffman and a few friends took part in "National Make A Difference Day" recently by donating time to help homeless people locally and in Baltimore.The eighth-grader served a hot breakfast to about 20 homeless people at the Salvation Army office in Glen Burnie, gave them clean clothes and checked off some jobs from the want ads that they might look into.Amber, a student at Old Mill South, founded a group several years ago, Happy Helpers for the Homeless, to make and package about 400 sandwiches every Saturday.

Defining what it takes to make a hero has always been a difficult task. What measure of courage, dedication and good works qualifies?Sometimes someone comes along who leaves little doubt that he or she deserves to be called a hero. Such a person is Neil Gaffney, a Glenelg resident, whose volunteer works merit recognition as well as gratitude.Mr. Gaffney has for 10 years used his spare time to refurbish the homes of the disadvantaged and handicapped, as well as to rally local churches to house the homeless.

Howard County isn't known for homelessness or dilapidated housing, and if Neil Gaffney can help it, it never will be.Mr. Gaffney, a Glenelg resident for 10 years, has organized construction workers, teen-agers and professionals to refurbish homes of the disadvantaged or handicapped and has rallied local churches to house those who have no homes to begin with."