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THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1991
Family love was seed for helping
hundreds
by Mary George Beggs
JoeAnn Ballad, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Christian Center, credits a loving adoptive family with leading her into a ministry of helping others.
She and her brother were foster children reared by a great-aunt and uncle from the time she was 6 weeks old. "They were so gracious to raise us and take up in me to be like them. Compassion is a gift that I have. Helping people wasn't a job but a calling."
Thursday night Mrs. Ballad and the Neighborhood Christian Center will receive the annual Thomas W. Briggs Community Service Award during an invitational dinner attended by about 100 people at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She and her organization will be the seventh recipients of the award, presented by the Thomas W. Briggs Foundation.
Although she is pleased to accept the award on behalf of the center, Mrs. Ballad said her husband, Monroe, is the 'backbone" of it all.
"Actually it's a ministry we've done together for 25 years," she said. He was a volunteer with Neighborhood Christian Center for 14 years before he retired from teaching and became a member of the center staff as Director of Operations.
Mrs. Ballad and the Neighborhood Christian Center has grown ,beyond her dreams since she became associated with it in 1978. The center was started by Young Life and Campus Life to help the needy. It's supported by churches, foundations and individuals. There are now 11 local neighborhood centers and now in Jackson, MS, with close to 40 service programs, including a food pantry, clothes closet, utility assistance, college scholarships, a tutorial program, teen sexuality programs, revival services, job referral, dental referral and others.
"I started helping kids at home, and at one time there were 250 kids looking to us for help," she said. 'What I had in mind ordinally was to help needy people, but other things evolved from that. What we're after is helping the whole person. We have kids whose parents are on welfare, and we want to break that welfare cycle. The alternative is to get the kids in college so they can get jobs.'
The center has 11 full-time staff members, eight part-time employees and between 500 and 600 volunteers who work at the sites. The budget is $400,000. 'Last year we served 10,000 families, and this year we already have seen 9,000 families." Mrs. Ballad said.
She said the center has no problem getting the word out that it is there to help. "People are lined up outside the door," she said. "This morning between 7 and 10 we talked to 200 people. We offer them some kind of hope. They know we will do our best to help them."
Mrs. Ballad said the center will use the $10,000 awards money to implement a number of its programs. "This is a blessing from the ministry," she said. The late Thomas W. Briggs, founder of the Welcome Wagon Company, chartered the Thomas W. Briggs Foundation before his death in 1964.
Each year the foundation makes substantial gifts to schools and nonprofit agencies in the Mid-South area.
"Copyright, (1991), The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN 38103. Used with permission. Notice: This article may not be copied, downloaded, or reproduced in any form or medium without express, written permission from The Commercial Appeal."