Rotary clubs are a wonderful way for ECHO to inform the local business community of the work they do and the many services they offer to both large and small organizations.

After her well received presentation, Karen was herself presented with a $1,000.00 check from the Rotary Club of Purcellville.  The check was presented by the Rotary Club President, Brian McDonald, of Edward Jones and Dr. David Milam.  Mrs. Russell was surprised and thrilled by the generosity of the rotary club and looks forward to working with their members in the future.

May   18, 2012 - Sterling, VA   - The Dulles Greenway’s 7th annual Drive For Charity has set a new   record for donations with an amazing $261,652 collected   on Thursday, May 17, 2012.  As always, this money will be donated to   great local charities and a local scholarship program.
  
“The Drive for Charity is always a fantastic event and this year has been   unbelievable,” said Terry Hoffman, Public & Customer Relations Manager of   the Dulles Greenway. “The commitment Dulles Greenway drivers have to our   charity partners are making a real difference in people’s lives. We are proud   to be a small part of making Loudoun County a better place.”

Quick Facts about   the 2012 Drive for Charity:

• Thursday, May 17, 2012 was our highest traffic day in the past 2 years
• In seven years, the Dulles Greenway has now raised $1,528,462 for local charities and scholarships.

Recipients for 2012 include:

• March of Dimes
• Every Citizen Has Opportunities (ECHO)
• Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter (LAWS)
• Fresh Air/Full Care
• Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy
• Dulles Greenway Scholarship Program

The Dulles Greenway is a privately owned 14-mile toll road   that connects Washington Dulles International Airport with Leesburg,   Virginia. Since the Dulles Greenway’s dedication on September 29th 1995,   commuters have enjoyed a non-stop alternative to Routes 7 and 28. The   Greenway project represents a new paradigm for cooperation between the public   and private sectors for resolving infrastructure issues.

If you have additional questions or need further comment, please contact   Terry Hoffman via email at thoffman@dullesgreenway.com or   via phone at 703-668-0033.

Follow the Greenway at:   
  For more information on the Dulles Greenway and its Drive for Charity event,   visit the Greenway website at www.dullesgreenway.com.

For the 140 program participants of the non-profit ECHOworks, the Dulles Greenway is a path toward self-fulfillment in more ways than one.

More than a long strip of smooth asphalt that conveys them to jobsites around Loudoun and western Fairfax, the Greenway — through proceeds generated from its annual “Drive For Charity” campaign, held this year on May 17 — also provides them with the van they rode in on.

“If we didn’t have a way to get our folks from home to work, none of this could happen,” said Bill Haney, for 29 years the CEO of Every Citizen Has Opportunities, Inc., branded as ECHOworks.

“That’s what the Greenway does for us,” he continued. “It allows us to purchase and maintain our vehicles so our people can get to those work opportunities. It couldn’t happen if we didn’t have that capability.”

This will be the fourth consecutive year that ECHOworks — a Leesburg-based philanthropic organization with a 37-year history of connecting persons with special needs to local businesses for mutual benefit — has received a healthy share of funds raised by the Greenway’s one-day event.

“It’s proven to be an excellent partnership,” Haney said.

In each of those years, the substantial largesse has reliably allowed ECHOworks to maintain its fleet’s existing 12-passenger vans in good repair while also adding a much-needed new one.

“It’s essential in updating the fleet and keeping our vehicles operating safely,” Haney said, noting that last year the Greenway was able to contribute over $47,000 to ECHOworks.

His marketing manager, Karen Russell — herself a 35-year ECHOworks employee — then spoke up about the Drive For Charity.

“It is the best fundraiser we have,” she said emphatically. “And it all comes from one day. We’re very excited about the upcoming drive.”

Several of ECHOworks’ vans are painted green beneath white lettering indicating that the Dulles Greenway directly enabled that particular vehicle — and the disabled citizens inside, headed off to work — to be there.

Each workday, those vans spread around Loudoun and Fairfax counties, frequently using the Greenway, to pick up and deliver program participants to the jobs ECHOworks has solicited for them — whether sorting parcels in mailrooms, aiding manufacturing processes or streamlining a company’s overall service.

That is the nature of what ECHOworks does: placing mentally, physically or developmentally disabled citizens into positions of valuable work, for which they receive both a paycheck and a justifiable feeling of usefulness in the community.

In so doing, ECHOworks helps local businesses increase efficiency and improve production while publicly demonstrating that their program’s participants bring genuine value to the area’s workforce, assisting myriad organizations from Telos Corporation to the U.S. Geological Survey to INOVA Loudoun Hospital.

Four years ago, the employees of INOVA Loudoun Hospital were dealing with an ineffective internal-mail system that saw deliveries made at most once per day. Upon the introduction of an ECHOworks team, mail distribution in the time-sensitive facility rose to three times daily on regular schedule.

“They became a seamless part of our operation,” said Lance Greene, the hospital’s Director of Materials Management, to ECHOworks’ newsletter. “This is a part of our long-term solution.”

Since, INOVA has contracted with ECHOworks to provide similar services to another of the corporation’s hospital.

“And we can still do more,” Russell said.

Whether ECHOworks can benefit a local business is not in doubt. The primary issue, according to Haney, is letting those businesses know that ECHOworks can help.

“When our program participants get to be part of a company, the people at that company get to see that our people are human, just like they are, that they have strengths, just like they do,” Haney said.

“Companies learn that our people are valuable. Without those worksites, we wouldn’t have that linkage to the community.”

Not that ECHOworks is a well-kept secret among the region’s business community.

“In the end, the company that benefits most from our relationship is us,” said Joe Travez, CEO of Ashburn-based Prototype Productions, in a recent testimonial.

Such benefits, of course, are not limited to businesses. A citizen who is referred to ECHOworks as a program participant from a county or state agency reaps rewards as well.

“One man actually got to the point where he didn’t not want to come to this specific program,” said Russell, recalling a citizen who participated in ECHOworks’ program for over 20 years. “Getting up and getting on our van and coming out here is what kept him going.”

That case is emblematic of the sign proudly emblazoned next to ECHOworks’ front door and atop the ECHOworks.org website:  “Providing Jobs, Purpose, and a Future.”

ECHOworks is able to provide that purpose due to the outreach of the Dulles Greenway and its campaign to “Drive For Charity,” helping citizens reach for opportunities by getting them there.

Thank you to Allegra Print and Imaging for their generous donation to ECHO from their 2012 FootPrintFund. Pictured is John Flynn, Allegra’s owner, and Karen Russell, Marketing Manager for ECHO.

CIS Secure Computing, ECHO’s biggest enclave to date, presently employs 18 ECHO program participants and plans to hire more! Honored were CIS owners Dale and Terry Collins, and production/product manager Jeff Owen.

Also honored, Shannon Sollinger, ECHO’s own volunteer roving reporter/writer/photographer. In addition to her tireless pursuits to write fantastic stories and shoot great pictures, she also volunteers at numerous ECHO functions.

Thank you Dale, Terry, Jeff and Shannon! ECHO is privileged and honored to know and work with you…and a much better place because of you!

CIS Production/Product Manager, Jeff Owen along with ECHO’s CEO, Bill Haney, and Marketing Manager, Karen Russell.

CIS Secure Computing owners, Terry and Dale Collins

ECHO’s own newsletter volunteer reporter/writer/photographer, Shannon Sollinger.

 Not any more for Virginia Delegates Tag Greason (R-32) and Tom Rust (R-86). They took several hours out of a busy schedule July 15 for lunch with CEO Bill Haney and the staff, and a tour of the facility on Lawson Road. 

“Many of us don’t know the extent of services provided here,” said Rust, a 10-year veteran of the House of Delegates in Richmond. “This visit was very informative. I love that this is here, and it is probably underutilized.” 

Rust expressed some surprise when he learned that ECHO serves western Fairfax as well as Loudoun. He said he would use his newfound appreciation of ECHO simply to raise awareness among his colleagues in Richmond. 

Greason, in the second year of his first two-year term in the General Assembly,  said he arrived “knowing very little and now I know a great deal. I think there is an opportunity to help get some doors open here, to get some local companies to expand their workforce [with a team from ECHO]. More people and more positions, that’s what I’m going to work on.”

Greason jotted notes during the visit and will work with Karen Russell and Karen McCarthy to get the message out to more local companies that can benefit from ECHO services. 

Greason elaborated that his guiding principle as an elected representative is that “government should be involved in a limited number of core functions and do those core functions very well – education, defense, infrastructure are certainly on the list. We don’t expect each of us to go out and build roads.” 

Do that well, Greason said, and there will be resources available for his second guiding principle: “We should be there to help those who can’t help themselves.”ECHO,  he said, clearly falls into that category.

 By Shannon Sollinger

Starting in 2006, the Greenway has donated every penny collected the third Thursday in May at its toll booths to five local charities and to its own scholarship

program. On May 19, 2011 that came to $235,354.87 – a whopping $10,000 more than the record setting (then) $226,246 collected in 2010.

Only the support of the entire community has made this fund raising such a spectacular success, said Terry Hoffman, the Greenway’s manger of customer and public relations. “That makes it possible for us to give this amount of money.”

The other four beneficiaries of the Greenway’s generosity are Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter, Fresh Air/Full Care, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy and the March of Dimes.

ECHO buses are such a common sight on the Greenway, said Greenway CEO Thomas Sines, that he gets inquiries about the “Greenway Connector Buses.” He dubs the small fleet “Bill’s Greenway Bus Service.”

Less than three weeks after collecting the tolls, Greenway management invited the recipients to a lunch at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm in Ashburn and handed over the checks. Hoffman noted that the Greenway had turned to ECHO’s document removal and disposal service earlier this year when they had to clear out several storage buildings on short notice.

By Shannon Sollinger

Roll, baby, roll! A huge thank you to Leesburg Target for allowing their employees to volunteer for ECHO…and wow, doing it with a smile!

If you’ve noticed the bright, freshly painted walls at  ECHO’s administrative building on Lawson Road, thank the United Way Day of Caring and a team of volunteers from Target. Megan Johnson, executive team leader of human resources at Target, was looking around last summer for a way to “reach out to our community, to make a difference.” She called United Way who put her in touch with CEO Bill Haney, and the rest is history. Haney and the ECHO staff met Megan and eight volunteers at the front door Aug. 23 with rollers, brushes and paint and work started. In half a day, the Target team painted the main hallway, two lunch rooms, two bathrooms and an office. We anticipated every need so no time was wasted,” Haney said. “We had drop cloths, ladders, paint, tape and rollers.” The day started with a “get to know” meeting, Haney said, so ECHO could use its volunteers’ skills in the best way. Don’t like ladders or walls?

Leesburg Target employees and Bill Haney, ECHO’s CEO, enjoying a moment after volunteering their time at ECHO. Thanks to all who participated!

No problem – the parking lot needs striping. Haney said he will happily give a similar opportunity to other groups. “And if a group wants to help ECHO but doesn’t take to painting, I can match them with some other project. I can always find a suitable project.” Every year, Johnson said, Target designates a month to ask its employees and staff for donations to their community. This was their first trip to ECHO and it “was a great experience, very rewarding,” Johnson said. Sterling resident Debbie Romanovitz, produce team leader, said she had been looking for an opportunity to volunteer, but out of the store. “It was fun, doing things together,” she said. By Shannon Sollinger for ECHO