Saturday, December 16, 2023
The nomination letter from Catholic Family Charities for her Volunteer of the Year awarded in 2019:
We are nominating Lucille Alonzo as Volunteer of the Year.
Lucille has been on the Refugee Dept. Program Advisory Committee for over 10 years and is now chair of that committee. She and her church, where she is a deacon, have been actively involved in resettling refugees including some of the Lost Boys of Sudan in 2001.
Lucille's involvement with our Department began during her work at Monroe County's Health Department (MCHD) where she was involved in the TB clinic and served as a key collaborator between that office and our Refugee Resettlement programs.
As part of her role at MCHD, Lucille was instrumental in developing the NYS Department of Health Database. When Lucille retired last year, she learned, through her involvement on our Advisory Board, that our department would benefit greatly from having a central database. After her retirement she offered to develop such a database for us.
The procedure "B.L." (Before Lucille) was that at intake, Resettlement workers would hand write the information and than later type it into the computer, each form separately. Later when the client was transferred to the Employment program, a new intake was done by the employment worker, this was typed into the computer individually. This meant gathering the same information and entering it again and again. Copies of some forms required that Resettlement files be located, the forms removed, copied, and returned to the file. This process was very time consuming and inefficient.
Lucille has helped to integrate the data collection of the two programs into one database! Now all this data is entered once and can be carried over to all forms with a click of a mouse. Lucille has spent over 20 hours per week for the last year in developing this database for us! A large part of her work initially was cleaning up all the areas where a client's name had been written in two or three different ways, or an alien number had transposed digits, or a birthday had been entered with two different dates. Now our data is consistent, accurate and easily accessible. Resettlement Staff and Employment Staff do not have to spend valuable time chasing down paperwork. Reports are up-to-date with a click of a button.
While many volunteers give of their time to work directly with clients (which Lucille has done in the past), Lucille understands the need for sound, efficient organizational infrastructure that supports the daily service provision of an organization. As such, her contribution to our Department in the form of an efficient data collection system has been invaluable!
In all of this effort, Lucille has been patient, open to suggestions from everyone, and very pleasant to have around. She listens to our ideas, problems, and concerns and tries to find a way she can make it easier. Her work has enabled the department to run much more efficiently and we are very grateful.
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