2010 Irving S. Gilmore Award: Pamela Roland

Pamela Roland remembers the struggles she encountered as a young girl and the adults who stepped forward and pointed her in the right direction.

So when she became an adult she felt a tug on her heart for girls she saw following a destructive path – taking drugs, dealing drugs, dropping out of school, getting pregnant – and she sought a way to reach out to them.

“My heart was just hurting because I saw so many girls making mistakes,” Roland said.

In 1986, she began to bring young girls into her home and help them build confidence in themselves; she counseled them in morals and values, instructed them in good manners, and helped them work toward a healthy future.

They became a sisterhood. They worked together and played together. They supported one another. They even gave themselves a name: the Kalamazoo Junior Girls Organization.

Twenty-four years later, Roland has shepherded some 1,600 girls through the organization. She has loved them, lectured them and provided them with life skills.

Roland, 57, has won many honors and awards for her work through the years. At the annual STAR (Sharing Time and Resources) Awards breakfast scheduled this morning at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites in downtown Kalamazoo, she was to add one more: the Irving S. Gilmore Lifetime Achievement Award.

“She believed God put her up to this challenge and she felt that’s what she was placed on this earth to do, so she just focused on this,” said Marvella Vincent, who nominated Roland for the top volunteer award.

Vincent is in a position to know Roland’s passion for reaching out to girls between 8 and 18 and helping them turn into young women with the desire and ability to build families and careers and give back to their communities.

Not only is Vincent a member of the governing board of Junior Girls, a nonprofit organization for girls 8 to 18, she was among the first class of eight girls who set the tone for the group and she is Roland’s daughter.

“We would have, like, just girl-type discussions,” said Roland, recalling the early days when she began mentoring her daughter and seven other girls.

“The group didn’t stay small long. The eight quickly turned into 25,” Roland said. “The program began to grow very rapidly.”

“We would do sleepovers and do popcorn and movies,” she said. “The girls were just spread out everywhere.”

At one time, the Junior Girls had nearly 100 members, but Roland now tries to keep it at a more manageable 40 girls.

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