Congratulations to Rik Flynn: 2012 Mohonk Consultations Distinguished Environmental Award Winner
Achievement Award Winner
As President and co-founder of UlsterCorps, Rik Flynn’s skills, passion and achievements inspired us to honor him this year for his leadership in making Ulster County more habitable, healthy and inclusive – for all.
The organization is countywide, non-partisan and not-for-profit. Since 2008 UlsterCorps has worked on myriad levels, from enlisting volunteers to spearheading fresh collaborative initiatives that generate real solutions to the challenges facing our communities. Volunteers help provide food, clothing, shelter, emergency services, literacy training, child and elder care, and animal welfare, among many other needs. Initiatives so far have resulted in the creation of such new programs as the Mid-Hudson Coalition to End Hunger, the Ulster County BOCES New Visions program for high school seniors, and Arts for Ulster. Rik’s work experiences combined to point him toward this unique enterprise. “Before retiring as a teacher from Ulster County BOCES,” he explains, they “permitted me to initiate a school-to-work program. I enjoyed it immensely.” It was because of the explosive combination of his supportive contacts across non-profit and for profit agencies, he said, “I became even more cognizant of what a particularly generous community we live in. I was then, and remain today, amazed at how many folks in this area are willing to lend a hand, to sacrifice their time and resources on behalf of others, if they perceive that it is going to better someone else and/or the community as a whole. This latter trait of our region is both why UlsterCorps exists and why it has achieved the level of success it enjoys.”
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s axiom always stays with him: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” Rik adds, “only when we can escape those ‘narrow confines’, do we find the source of real happiness. . . . The closer we can get to being selfless in our actions on behalf of others [the closer] it brings us to our own self-fulfillment.” With the growing challenges to our region, we are fortunate to have such a winning combination found in the commitment and leadership of Rik Flynn and UlsterCorps. See their website, ulstercorps.org, which received 34,356 visits in 2011.
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MOHONK CONSULTATIONS
2012 DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
THURSDAY JUNE 14TH, 2012
5 – 8 PM
Please join us in honoring the 2012 Distinguished Achievement Award winner
RIK FLYNN, CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of ULSTERCORPS
Linking Volunteers with Community
Reservations Required. Please call us at 845-256-2726 for an invitation.
