By Mark Millican

markmillican@daltoncitizen.com

For loving kids and books so much she brought them together, Phyllis Ledford received the Murray County Collaborative’s Volunteer of the Year award on Wednesday.

The Family Connection luncheon brought together dozens of social service agency workers, government representatives and church leaders who are committed to making their communities a better place.

“This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me in a long time,” said Ledford.

Ledford began a Head Start library at the agency’s classrooms at Old Eton Elementary School. She has started another library in the same building for the Murray County Alternative School, and she also volunteers her time at the North Georgia Family Crisis Center in Dalton.

Other nominees were Tommy Champion of the Murray County Red Cross; Maria Bradley, principal of Gladden Middle School; and Solomon Douhne, owner of Bear Creek Coffee.

Becky Croft of the North Georgia Health District unveiled the Visions of Hope project, a two-county strategy between Murray and Whitfield that has been a year in the making. Goals include getting healthy, self-sufficient youth ready to transition into adulthood and addressing some of the problem areas youth in both counties are experiencing.

In the area of teen pregnancy, for example, the rate for Murray County in 2006 for girls ages 15 to 17 was 71.1 per 1,000 girls. In Whitfield, the rate was 49.9 per 1,000. The rate for the state of Georgia was 37.7 per 1,000. Statistics are from the Kids Count database of the Georgia Family Connection Partnership (gafcp.org).

Visions of Hope also seeks to address the high dropout rate in both counties, plus above-normal levels of substance abuse and child abuse and neglect. The group will meet on Wednesday, Sept. 10, at 1 p.m. at the Dalton Community Center on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fredrick Street. The public is invited. For more information, call Karen Edmondson at (706) 483-2684.