TWO AREA UNITED WAY PROJECTS EARN RECOGNITION BY NATIONAL UNITED WAY

Two Cape Girardeau projects co-sponsored by the Area Wide United Way have been selected for national honors in the United Way of America's 1991 Reach for the Stars award program.

The YELL for Newspapers project, sponsored by the United Way and the Southeast Missourian newspaper, was selected to receive a silver award in education and literacy.

The Southwestern Bell Telephone Volunteer Awards received an honorable mention for volunteer recognition programs.

Dorothy Klein, executive director of the Area Wide United Way, said: "This is the first time we've entered the competition. One of the things United Way is really interested in is education and literacy. We thought the YELL campaign was ideal.

"It's quite a feather in the cap for the Missourian and the United Way to receive this national award," Klein said.

Klein did not know how many winners had been selected across the nation. The gold award is the top award, followed by silver and honorable mention.

Kim McDowell, who helped coordinate the YELL promotion for the Southeast Missourian, said: "The community should be proud of this award because it's an award for all the people who participated service organizations, the United Way, businesses and everyone who bought a YELL newspaper."

McDowell said organizers were very pleased with the first year of the local project. A second annual YELL for Newspapers event is being planned for September.

In addition to receiving the national honor, Craig Felzien, past president of the United Way who also helped coordinate the YELL project, will attend the 1992 leader's conference in Indianapolis March 21-23 to discuss the program.

"He will be talking about YELL with other United Way representatives," Klein said. "Probably somebody else is considering doing something like this in their community."

Over 250 volunteers worked on the project, and the YELL newspapers sold out much earlier than expected. In all, 9,000 YELL newspapers were printed. The Southeast Missourian printed 7,000 of the special newspapers; the Cash-Book Journal at Jackson printed 2,000.

The project raised close to $13,000. That money was divided equally between the Southeast Missourian's Newspaper In Education program and the United Way's literacy programs.

The Southwestern Bell Volunteer Awards are given annually to community volunteers in different age groups.