Spring 2020 Volunteer of the Quarter Steve Parker

Steve Parker has volunteered a grand total of 186.25 hours over the last two years, and that is with taking the summers off! He began volunteering with USO Stuttgart in June of 2018. Since his Language Learners class sessions began, every Thursday he can have up to 9 participants at a time and yet he still makes sure to give very attentive instruction for any and all skill levels present. In fact, Steve is so invested in making his classes the best experience they can be, he designed his own instructional booklets for participants to have so they can continue practicing their language skills at home and not lose their progress from week to week. To date over 110 community members have benefited from these classes. In addition, Steve has been very active in some of USO Stuttgart’s larger scale events such as Sun & Fun. During this event in 2019, Steve shared another of his talents and taught juggling to kids in attendance. Over 4,400 individuals were present at Sun & Fun Day in 2019, and Steve’s juggling lessons were well attended there! Even beyond that, Steve is the kind of volunteer up for anything. If students haven’t arrived for class on Thursdays yet he will get started on projects around the center to help out. He will stock the soda fridge or take out the trash and recycling. All minor duties but so much appreciated! If he knows there is something specific we have coming up he will also help out in that regard in whatever fashion he can. For an upcoming National Buttermilk Biscuit Day Steve brought in ingredients and made surprise homemade biscuits to the delight of all staff and center visitors present! And once we began the major switch to online programming due to the COVID precautions, Steve jumped right in making videos in support of the Stuttgart Shows Off program. In that particular video he shared his talents of playing the guitar, tap dancing, and quoting movie lines in character! With that short video posted on the USO Stuttgart Facebook page, 963 people were reached, 131 engaged, 25 liked or shared the post, and 6 commented making it a very popular part of the program and connected the USO mission to so many community members.