Outstanding Volunteers Honored for Impact at National Service Conference

New Orleans -- The Corporation for National and Community Service presented nine outstanding volunteer programs and participants with the Service Impact Award at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service today.

The Service Impact Awards recognize the outstanding impact made by everyday citizens who serve their communities. Awards were judged upon the impact made in the one of the six focus areas outlined in the agency's five year Strategic Plan: disaster services, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, healthy futures, and veterans and military families.

This is national service at its best, said Robert Velasco, II, Acting CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. The work being done every day by these remarkable individuals shows how the power of service can transform communities and be the solution to pressing local challenges across the nation.

Honorees received the award at the closing ceremony of the conference, which featured the Daily Show's John Oliver, R&B legend Percy Sledge, CNBC's Nicole Lapin, First Lady of New Orleans Cheryl Landrieu and other entertainers and leaders.

The conference, sponsored by CNCS and Points of Light Institute, brought 4,000 service leaders to New Orleans to connect and develop strategies solve pressing issues across the nation through service and volunteering.

Listed below are the recipients for Disaster Services:

• Norman Moeller, Missoula Aging Services RSVP: Norman Moeller, an RSVP volunteer since 2002, joined the RSVP Community Task Force (CTF). The CTF links highly skilled and motivated volunteers with Missoula County agencies and local non-profits to increase capacity and address key community needs. In 2009, when the City-County Health Department needed help with H1N1 pandemic flu prevention efforts, Moeller organized hundreds of volunteers and played a major role at emergency immunization clinics. His efforts helped make more than 22,000 immunizations possible.

• The American Red Cross Ready! Tennessee Rural Initiative: Red Cross Ready! Tennessee Rural Initiative is an AmeriCorps VISTA project that places AmeriCorps VISTA members at American Red Cross chapters to work in rural and impoverished counties within Tennessee. VISTAs on the project build partnerships and contacts within rural communities and identify facilities that could serve as post-impact disaster shelters. The largest test of the Rural Initiative occurred during the Tennessee flood of May 2010. The flood was a 1,000-year disaster that affected Western and Central Tennessee. VISTAs on the project had been building disaster relief capacity in the affected areas and were prepared to respond.

To read about ALL the Service Impact Awards given out, go to: http://www.nationalservice.gov/about/newsroom/releases_detail.asp?tbl_pr_id=2005