Service Above Sefl – December 2023

    Though it may seem counterintuitive, the call to public service often begins with an introspective question: What do I need?
    What do I need? is not a selfish question like its cousin, what do I want? Instead, what do I need? is a quest to find what is missing – to identify and fill a gap in resources, ideas, connection or support that affects your life and, by extension, the lives of others like you.
    When you identify that need and act in response, you can make a profound difference.
    That’s exactly what Orinda’s Anna Tague did in 2009-2010 when she answered the question “what do I need?” by creating Parents of Orinda Individuals in Special Education (POISE), a service and support organization that has touched the lives of hundreds of Orinda families.
    POISE is an all-volunteer group that helps Orinda families of children with special needs arising from Down syndrome, epilepsy, autism, ADHD, dyslexia or other challenges, navigate life and the sometimes daunting world of school services for their children.
    Equally, or maybe even more importantly, POISE creates a supportive community for families that otherwise may never have found each other.
    Tague created POISE because her daughter Nicole has Phelan-McDermid syndrome, an extremely rare genetic anomaly that can lead to a combination of speech and developmental delays, physical impediments and other diagnosable conditions such as autism. When Nicole received her diagnosis, there were fewer than 300 people who shared it.
    Seeking other families like hers, Tague attended conferences in 2009 and 2010 dedicated to Phelan-McDermid syndrome families. At every meeting, she found a temporary sense of community that she knew she needed, but could not find, at home.
    So she created it.
    After her second conference, Tague began reaching out to other people in Orinda, including significant people in charge of special education in the Orinda Union School District.
    The first POISE meeting had 45 attendees. POISE grew into an organization – meeting three distinct needs: (1) helping families understand and navigate school district resources and processes; (2) connecting those families with other helpful resources outside of school; and (3) through coffee chats, speakers, and focused subgroups, creating a sense of community that Tague wanted for herself and other families.
    Alicia Keenan has led POISE for the last six years. She’s a supermom who was profiled in the April issue of The Orinda News (find and read the great interview here).
    Keenan’s son, Simon, has Down syndrome and when the family moved to Orinda, Keenan, like Tague, was looking for community. She found it in POISE, which now extends its reach to Miramonte High School.
    Tague and Keenan’s commitment to service in connection with the community is not surprising.
    Experiencing so much volunteerism in Orinda and, as a member of Rotary Club of Orinda for 16 years, I believe the need for and the belief in community underlies most public and volunteer service.
    Rotary, for example, didn’t start out as a service organization – it started as a group of people from different professional backgrounds coming together to create a community. But it’s a very short intellectual, emotional and intuitive step from embracing the idea of community to taking action to support your community, however you define it.
    What do I need? Four little words. One simple question. But asking it, and acting on the answer, has the power to change lives. Tague and Keenan’s answer – community – has helped hundreds of families in Orinda through POISE. Rotary’s founder, Paul Harris, had the same answer in 1905, and Rotary has since helped billions of people around the world.