Team 'Positive Alternatives' of LM'24 Community Service Project Benefits Cornerstone Family Programs

By Kevin Murphy
The Morris County Chamber of Commerce offers an amazing program called LEAD Morris, where the focus is on Leadership, Education & Development. The Class of 2024 is the largest ever with 40 executives from different organizations all over Morris County. A major focus of the program is giving back to this wonderful community. The class is split into teams and each team decides which specific organization we would like to volunteer for. There are so many deserving organizations, but our team decided on Cornerstone Family Programs & Morristown Neighborhood House.

---

We are Team Positive Alternatives and our mission is to, “empower children to be more confident, resilient and equipped for success through constructive activity, engaging education, and positive mentoring.” Our amazing team, I am proud to be a part of, consists of our captain, Rob Caridad of Advance Realty Investors, Beth Johns of Fulton Bank, Shana Baer of Interfaith Food Pantry Network, Sarah Ur, LNHA of Saint Clare's Health Stephanie Parise of Garden Savings Federal Credit Union, Claudia Patterson of eXp Realty, LLC and Randall Willms of Minuteman Limousine & Car Service
We decided to spend a day focused on fun, learning, and positive mentoring with seventeen 5th & 6th graders from Cornerstone Family Programs at Anchor Golf of Whippany, NJ.  We also had the pleasure of spending the day with some of Cornerstone’s awesome Counselors as well as their VP of Programs & soccer star, Jacquelyn Looby.

We started the day filling goodie bags for all the kids & counselors with treats we collected as a team. Anchor generously provided t-shirts for all. We then split up into three groups and each took ours to either Pickleball, Bucket Golf or Miniature Golf & Soccer. It was amazing seeing all the smiles and hearing all the laughter throughout the day and it wasn’t just the kids!  We all enjoyed getting to know the children throughout the day and overhearing some of them saying things such as, “this was the best day ever” and “this was the best time I’ve had all summer.” The day wrapped up with a special ice cream treat from Anchor and gave us an opportunity to take some deep breaths and chug some water.

Our focus was to make a positive impact on these wonderful, deserving kids and think we did just that, however, the added bonus was the incredible impact that they made on us.  We will never forget it!

Thank you Cornerstone Family Programs & Morristown Neighborhood House for all you do each & every day. We sincerely appreciate you letting us enjoy this one!  Special thanks to Jay Weisman, Danielle Grayson, Kimberly Iozzi & Meghan Hunscher and Anthony & Tony from Anchor Golf!