Community Service

Linda Brown (3^rd Degree Black Belt)

Linda Brown, 3rd degree black belt and nationally certified Tae Kwon Do instructor has been volunteering for the American Red Cross since 2003. She is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist in private practice. She is also a Certified Trauma Specialist. Given these credentials, she is a part of the Disaster Mental Health Team for the Red Cross. She goes on calls where mental health services are needed; from house fires to county wide disasters. She is also part of the advisory board which meets every month to refine the mental health policies for the San Diego Red Cross Mental Health team. She also is pager officer 1-3 times per year for a month at a time.

Mrs. Brown also volunteers for the International Conference on Abuse, Violence and Trauma. IVAT plans a yearly conference on training for those who practice in all areas of trauma. She helps the planning committee host the conference, contact experts in the field of trauma and chairs panels and presentations. She received the Volunteer of the Year award at the 2009 conference.
 

Rhonda Epstein (3^rd Degree Black Belt)

Rhonda Epstein and her sons Aaron and Ethan led a community wide drive to collect used athletic shoes to be recycled. Rhonda works as an acupuncturist/massage therapist at Comprehensive Therapy Services, or CTS. The idea of the collection was suggested at a CTS staff meeting and CTS generously donated the collection bins. Team Epstein placed bins at several sports clubs around San Diego’s North County to collect the shoes. Ethan got his peers at Carmel Valley Middle School behind the project and shoes were collected there as well. The Epstein Family collected, sorted and bagged the shoes which were then donated to Nike’s “Reuse-A-Shoe program. The shoes will be ground up to make “Nike grind”. Nike Grind is used to make different parts of sports surfaces in communities around the world. To find out more about Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program you can go online to http://www.letmeplay.com/reuseashoe/overview.html. Rhonda, Aaron and Ethan collected more than 200 pairs of shoes and had a fun time in the process.

Amanda Reis (2^nd Degree Black Belt)

Amanda Reis spent twenty-four days this summer traveling in Ecuador. Half of her trip was spent doing a community service project in a small village called Santa Barbara. She and sixteen other American teenagers built a wall to turn a one-room school house into two rooms, reinforced the foundation of the school, dug a hole to act as a sewage system so the school could have flushing toilets, and taught some English classes to the school children. Amanda’s favorite part was getting to spend time with the children, whether by teaching them English, reading them stories in Spanish, playing soccer, or drawing pictures. She really misses them, and has stayed in touch with one of the older girls by email.

Andrew Ribner (2^nd Degree Black Belt)

Andrew Ribner has been organizing and leading demonstrations at elementary schools in the North County to emphasize the importance of making healthy choices in life. These demonstrations feature black and red belts who speak on subjects such as peer pressure, and self-motivation. These senior students also perform board breaks, forms, and other choreographed routines. So far, demonstrations have been performed for Cardiff Elementary school in front of 300 students and for Skyline Elementary in front for 500 students. The hope is that these students will be motivated to make the most of their lives and to make healthy choices in all that they do.

Aaron Epstein (Jr. Black Belt Level XIII)

Aaron recently finished heading up the ALS walk. Right now he is helping out on the Temple’s Community Service Teen board with their board. Just before we left on vacation, he and I visited Taft Middle School and taught a street defense class (for the developmentally challenged students) in Debbie Green’s regular class. He is in a holding pattern with his DVD as we are waiting to get a release of liability waiver written from a lawyer. We need to receive this before he can start to market it. That is what he is doing at the moment. You can email him at aaron.epstein@yahoo.com if you want to get details on any of these things. Thanks for your interest.
 

Seti O'Brien (Red Belt)

Ithemba is a group for the San Diego AIDS Walk founded by Seti O'Brien, a teen brown belt, and many other AFMA members, who want to help their community by fundraising and showing support for people with AIDS and HIV. After three years and a group total of over $13,500, Miss O'Brien was awarded the 2007 AIDS Walk Hero Award for her and Ithemba's effort and spirit.

Now, in Ithemba's 4th year we have a goal to raiser at least $6,500 to bring our total impact to $20,000.

If you are interested in helping, please consider sponsoring our studio's team as it works toward helping provide essential prevention and care programs to 16,000 men, women and children living with in San Diego County HIV/AIDS.

To donate, go to www.aidswalksd.kintera.org/2009/ithemba. To contact Miss O'Brien, email her at seti.ithemba@gmail.com