The event brought together educators, first responders, nonprofit leaders, and volunteers who have made meaningful contributions to their communities over the past year. Organizers said the goal of the awards is to highlight everyday individuals who are making a difference through service, innovation, and compassion.

“Behind every strong community are people who step up when it matters most,” said event coordinator Melissa Grant. “This evening is about recognizing those individuals who go above and beyond without expecting recognition.”

Awards were presented in several categories, each highlighting a unique form of community contribution.

The Community Service Award was given to a local nonprofit volunteer who has spent years organizing food drives and coordinating outreach efforts for families in need. Through partnerships with local businesses and schools, the volunteer helped distribute thousands of meals throughout the region.

A Public Safety Award recognized a group of emergency responders who acted quickly during a recent residential fire, helping evacuate families and prevent further damage. Their coordinated response and calm under pressure were credited with keeping the situation from becoming more severe.

In the Education Excellence category, a high school counselor was honored for expanding college readiness programs and helping students navigate financial aid and career planning. The counselor’s efforts have led to a measurable increase in college enrollment among graduating seniors.

A Youth Leadership Award celebrated a local teenager who has dedicated hundreds of hours to community projects, including environmental cleanups, tutoring younger students, and organizing donation drives.

Business leaders were also recognized for their contributions. A small, family-owned company received the Community Partnership Award for supporting local events, sponsoring youth programs, and providing resources to area nonprofits.

Organizers emphasized that while the award recipients represent a wide range of fields, they share a common commitment to improving the lives of others.

“These stories remind us that impact doesn’t always come from large-scale efforts,” Grant said. “Sometimes it’s the consistent, everyday actions that create lasting change.”

The event concluded with a call for continued community involvement, encouraging residents to stay engaged, support local initiatives, and recognize the contributions of those around them.

Nominations for next year’s awards are expected to open later this year, with organizers inviting community members to submit individuals and organizations who are making a positive difference.

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And Inland Empire Girl Scouts are ready.

They picked up boxes to sell during Mega Drop events across the region on Saturday, Jan. 24.

Hundreds of volunteers gathered at four sites — in Riverside, Lake Elsinore, Apple Valley and Palm Desert — to sort and distribute more than a million boxes of cookies, a news release states.

The Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council hosts the event each year to launch the cookie sales season.

Across the Inland Empire, 326 troops signed up to sell nearly 900,000 packets of cookies — nearly 73,000 cases, according to the council.

The sales helps girls learn entrepreneurial skills, how to manage money and business ethics, the release states.

For information on buying Girl Scout Cookies, click here.

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The ideal volunteer enjoys meeting people, likes to learn new things and is passionate about the environment.

Press Release | County of Riverside

Are you interested in helping the environment? Do you like to compost or recycle? Become an outreach volunteer with the Riverside County Department of Waste Resources and help the earth by helping others become better recyclers and composters.

Outreach volunteers assist with classes or events by interacting with the public, answering questions on outreach programs and distributing materials. The ideal volunteer enjoys meeting people, likes to learn new things and is passionate about the environment. The total volunteer commitment is attendance at the orientation and training meeting and ten hours of volunteer time donated each year while participating in the program. Opportunities to volunteer at classes and events exist across the entire county. Plus, the volunteers select the events, dates and times that work best for them. Bilingual volunteers are needed.

Outreach volunteers can also choose to attend extra training and volunteer more hours to become certified as a master composter. Once a volunteer reaches master composter status, the volunteer is allowed to teach classes on their own or work with schools and community gardens as a composting mentor. Outreach volunteers are integral to the success of recycling and composting programs and are recognized by the County annually for their dedication and hours worked.

Orientation and training is scheduled for Saturday, March 11, from 8 A.M. to 12 P.M. at the Riverside County Department of Waste Resources, 14310 Frederick Street, in Moreno Valley.

For more information or to register, potential outreach volunteers can visit http://www.rcwaste.org/volunteer or call 951-486-3200.

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SEATTLE (AP) — When Seattle’s largest health care system got a mandate from Washington state to create a mass COVID-19 vaccination site, organizers knew that gathering enough volunteers would be almost as crucial as the vaccine itself.

“We could not do this without volunteers,” said Renee Rassilyer-Bomers, chief quality officer for Swedish Health Services and head of its vaccination site at Seattle University. “The sheer volume and number of folks that we wanted to be able to serve and bring in requires … 320 individuals each day.”

As states ramp up vaccination distribution in the fight against the coronavirus, volunteers are needed to do everything from direct traffic to check people in so vaccination sites run smoothly. In return for their work, they’re often given a shot. Many people who don’t yet qualify for a vaccine — including those who are young and healthy — have been volunteering in hopes of getting a dose they otherwise may not receive for months. Large vaccination clinics across the country have seen thousands trying to nab limited numbers of volunteer shifts.

It’s raised questions at a time when supplies are limited and some Americans have struggled to get vaccinated even if they are eligible. But medical ethicists say volunteers are key to the public health effort and there’s nothing wrong with them wanting protection from the virus.

Ben Dudden, 35, of Roanoke, Virginia, volunteered at a mass vaccination clinic in the nearby city of Salem on a day off from his part-time job at the Roanoke Pinball Museum. His wife, a nurse practitioner who was administering doses, encouraged him to volunteer in case he could get vaccinated.

He spent that January day helping people fill out questionnaires, not knowing if he might get the coveted dose.

“It wasn’t an official thing like, ‘Everybody who needs a vaccine come this way.’ I kind of had to ask,” Dudden said. “At end of day, I found whoever was in charge of that.”

He got what he was hoping for and still wants to volunteer again.

“It was a little bit of a selfish thing — ‘I’m gonna get the vaccine if I do this’ — but for me, it wasn’t the only factor,” Dudden said.

At the Seattle vaccination clinic, Swedish Health Services considers volunteers part of the state’s Phase 1 vaccination group. About 5,000 have been inoculated, and about 1,000 of them have come back to work again, Rassilyer-Bomer said.

During their shifts, volunteers are handed colored vests matched to their skill level and experience. The majority wear orange for general tasks, which includes sanitizing clipboards, asking people to fill out forms, taking temperatures and monitoring the newly vaccinated to ensure no dangerous side effects.

Some may question whether it’s fair for volunteers to get to the front of the line for what’s often clerical work.

Nancy Berlinger, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center, a research institute in Garrison, New York, said the bottom line is that volunteers are interacting with the public and there’s nothing wrong with them wanting protection.

They also go through training and other obligations.

“There would be easier ways to game the system,” Berlinger said. “If that was really your goal, this could take more work I think than some other routes I can think of.”

While many volunteer shifts are several hours on weekdays, Berlinger said that doesn’t necessarily mean only people of a certain class or demographic can sacrifice that much time.

“That could apply to students, it could apply to people who are unemployed, people who are retired. It could be people who are family caregivers,” Berlinger said.

On a chilly January night in suburban Phoenix, Lou Ann Lovell, a 67-year-old retiree, got the Pfizer vaccine after volunteering from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. at a state-run site at State Farm Stadium, where the Arizona Cardinals play. Her daughter persuaded her and other relatives to volunteer.

Lovell committed before realizing those 65 and older would be eligible for vaccines days later. Still, she’s glad she did.

“For the first time, I felt I was part of something that was really important and big,” said Lovell, who would like to volunteer again. “You stand there and see all these headlights and people are just continually pouring in there.”

The stadium and another state-run site in metro Phoenix require a combined 3,900 volunteers a week. HandsOn Greater Phoenix, a nonprofit handling online volunteer recruitment, opens 1,400 to 2,000 spots a few times a week, and interest hasn’t waned, CEO Rhonda Oliver said. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people try to sign up every time new spots open, she said.

Volunteers who have nabbed shifts say they shouldn’t be lumped in with those who believe they’re entitled to a vaccine.

In the Seattle area, three King County hospitals came under fire last month after revelations that donors, board members and some hospital volunteers used their connections to get shots. The King County Council approved a measure calling on state lawmakers and Gov. Jay Inslee to make it illegal to grant special access to the vaccine.

Berlinger said there’s a clear delineation between a connected official and a volunteer at a vaccine clinic getting a shot.

“The volunteers we’re talking about at registration centers are people who are part of the public health effort. They are performing a crucial role,” Berlinger said. “It’s easier to help people who already have privilege. The thing about COVID is we have to push away from that and we have to say, ‘No, we must allocate vaccine and vaccination.’”

Lovell, the retired volunteer in Arizona, said critics should target the healthy 20-somethings she saw trying to get the vaccine the night she volunteered.

“If you want to volunteer, volunteer and work,” she said. “If you say, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ then wait until your number comes up.”

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Two COVID-19 vaccines might be nearing the finish line, but scientists caution it’s critical that enough people volunteer to help finish studying other candidates in the U.S. and around the world.

Moderna Inc. and competitor Pfizer Inc. recently announced preliminary results showing their vaccines appear more than 90% effective, at least for short-term protection against COVID-19.

If those early results hold up and U.S. regulators agree the shots are safe, emergency use of small, rationed supplies could start in late December. Other countries with contracts for early doses would undertake their own reviews.

But multiple vaccines will be needed to meet global demand and help end the pandemic, raising concern that studies that still need to sign up thousands of volunteers could run short if people wait for an already OK’d option instead.

“We don’t want to see that happen,” said Dr. James Cutrell, an infectious disease expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Supplies aside, other COVID-19 vaccines under development may work differently in different populations and “we likely will benefit from having a menu of vaccine options,” Cutrell said.

“We still need volunteers,” stressed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, urging Americans to sign up.

Additionally, participants in the Moderna and Pfizer studies who originally got dummy shots would almost certainly be offered the real vaccine if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows emergency use. But no one knows how long protection would last, meaning those studies also must continue to track recipients somehow.

“It’s one thing to be effective two months after your last vaccination and another thing to be effective a year” later, said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former director of the FDA‘s vaccine division. “It’s going to be really important to complete these clinical trials and the trials of the other vaccines so we can make comparisons.”

The promising Moderna and Pfizer news bodes well for some of their competitors, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert whose team at NIH helped develop the Moderna candidate.

Those shots target the “spike” protein that studs the surface of the coronavirus, and the early results prove that’s enough to generate “a protective response,” Fauci said. “Conceptually this looks good” for other spike-focused vaccines made in different ways.

Here’s a scorecard of the frontrunners in the global vaccine race:

GENETIC CODE VACCINES

The Moderna-NIH vaccine and the candidate developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech aren’t made with the coronavirus itself, meaning there’s no chance anyone could catch it from the shots.

Instead, the vaccines are made with a brand-new technology that injects a piece of genetic code for the spike protein. That messenger RNA, or mRNA, instructs the body to make some harmless spike protein, enough to prime the immune system to react if it later encounters the real virus.

There are no licensed mRNA vaccines for people, so scientists had no idea if or how well the COVID-19 candidates might work.

Both manufacturers are working to scale up production in factories in the U.S. and Europe. They can’t simply partner with other vaccine companies to take on some of the work because the technology is so different than the way most of today’s shots are made.

“It is not a very easy or quick swap,” said Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.

TROJAN HORSE VACCINES

A different way to target the spike protein: Use another, harmless virus to carry the spike gene into the body. Once again, the body produces some spike protein and primes the immune system.

Britain’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca are making their version of this “viral vector” vaccine with a cold virus, or adenovirus, that normally infects chimpanzees. Studies of tens of thousands of people are underway in the U.K., U.S. and several other countries.

Johnson & Johnson is using a human adenovirus for its version, and is the only option in advanced U.S. testing aiming to show if a single dose rather than two would be enough.

China’s government authorized emergency use of CanSino Biologics’ adenovirus shots in the military ahead of any final testing. Russia likewise began offering an adenovirus vaccine ahead of late-stage tests.

PROTEIN VACCINES

Novavax makes its vaccine candidate by growing harmless copies of the coronavirus spike protein in the laboratory and packaging them into virus-sized nanoparticles.

There are protein-based vaccines against other diseases, so it’s not as novel a technology as some of its competitors. Novavax has begun a large final-stage study in Britain, and is set soon to begin another in the U.S.

“KILLED” VACCINES

Spike-focused vaccines aren’t the only option. Making vaccines by growing a disease-causing virus and then killing it is a tried-and-true approach — it’s the way Jonas Salk’s famed polio shots were made.

China has three so-called “inactivated” COVID-19 vaccine candidates in final testing in several countries, and has allowed emergency use in some people ahead of the results. An Indian company is testing its own inactivated candidate.

Safely brewing and then killing the virus takes longer than newer technologies. But inactivated vaccines give the body a sneak peek at the germ itself rather than just that single spike protein.

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