Among the guests who came to help celebrate the office grand opening, were several supporters such as Two-time Olympic Goalie, Sara DeCosta Hayes, an Honorary Board Member for Skate For Joy and Kevin Boryczki, Vice President of Marketing for the Providence Bruins.    One of the highlights of the evening was receiving a Citation from The Honorable David N. Cicilline.  The Citation was given in recognition of the tremendous value Skate For Joy’s skating program brings to the underprivileged youth of our community.  To learn more about this wonderful program, we encourage you to visit our Website at www.skateforjoy.org  to see the joy that this program brings to the children!

###

Providence, R.I.—SKATE FOR JOY, a Providence, R.I.-based program that teaches ice skating and hockey to low-income, under-served youth, will hold an open registration on Tuesday, Sept. 30, from 3-5 p.m. at the Cabot/Harman Ice Center at St. George’s School in Middletown, R.I.
The program, which targets children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to lace-up skates in a high-quality, after-school program, has met every Thursday for the past five years, with ice time donated by the Bank of America City Center. Last year, more than 85 inner-city children, ages 5-16, were registered in the U.S. Figure Skating Basic Skills Program.
“The partnership with St. George’s School, which is so generously donating ice for our program, marks Skate For Joy’s first statewide expansion,” said Carolyn Drumm, a former competitive figure skater and Skate For Joy’s founder and executive director. The board of directors, volunteers and supporting partners are thrilled to bring our program to the Greater Newport area.”  Children from the Martin Luther King Center and Child And Family will be participating in Tuesday’s program.  In addition, there are 20 open slots available on a first-come, first-served basis. Instructions, skates, helmets and sweatshirts ALL will be provided free of charge. To learn more about the program, please visit www.skateforjoy.org or contact Carolyn Drumm at 401-751-4569.

-30-

(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) — The Rotunda Room at Cafe Nuovo was the setting for the fifth annual Skate For Joy fundraiser on Friday April 4, which raised over $30,000.00.    This unique non-profit organization is the only one of it’s kind in Rhode Island that teaches the U.S. Figure Skating basic skills program in figure skating and hockey to disadvantaged youth in a high quality, after-school program.  A record 85 children, ages 3 to 16, and mostly from the city of Providence, were registered this past season.

Governor and  Mrs. Carcieri served as Honorary Chairpersons.  Live Auctioneer and TV personality Gene Valicenti gave generously of his time and talent, while getting supporters to bid high. Highlights included original artwork from Randy Stevens, a mixed media pastels called  TAXI TAXI which sold for $1,800.00.  Two sets of Red Sox tickets which went for $900.00 each.  Dinner for eight, cooked in your home by the General manager of  Ruths Chris Steak House, Kevin Gaudreau which sold for $1,400.00.

Founder and executive director, Carolyn Drumm, was thrilled to formally announce that the organization will be going state-wide next season with donated ice from Saint Georges School in Middletown, R.I.  “This is an exciting opportunity to offer expensive sports like figure skating and hockey to low-income children from the greater Newport area” she said.  ” After six long years of searching for inside, consistent ice to run our program, our prayers have finally been answered.  We appreciate the generousity of St. George’s School as we strive to replicate the success  we’ve had in Providence for the past six years.”

Skate For Joy also has a new office located at 76 Dorrance Street in downtown Providence.  Be sure to check out the website at:  www.skateforjoy.org.

Skate For Joy is a unique 501(c)(3).  It offers disadvantaged youth an opportunity to learn the U.S. Figure Skating basic skills in figure skating and hockey.

Honorary Chairpersons for this event are The Honorable and Mrs. Donald L. Carcieri.  Co-Chairs are Donna Bokor and Joan Redmond.

This year’s event will be hosting a cocktail party with hors’ d’oeuvres, cash bar, silent auction and a live auction featuring Channel 10’s Gene Valicenti.

Tickets for this event are $50.00 per person.  To purchase tickets please contact Donna at 401-742-8287 or Joan at 401-301-1498.  For detailed Corporate Sponsorships please visit  www.skateforjoy.org.

COME JOIN IN THE FUN!!

The second skill she teaches is how to get up.

That is her goal, really. Drumm wants to teach disadvantaged kids how to pick themselves up by learning a new sport and new skills. She wants them to feel a sense of accomplishment of progressing from wobbly baby steps to smooth, gliding strides across the ice.

“It’s much more than just skating,” Drumm said.

Drumm founded Skate for Joy two years ago. The nonprofit organization outfits low-income children with skates, helmets and skating bags. About 25 children aged 5 to 14 participate in weekly skating lessons given by Drumm and volunteers. And it’s all free.

Drumm, 41, a Warwick resident, was inspired to start the program after watching The Oprah Winfrey Show.

“She had this segment on called ‘Use Your Life,’ and she just mentioned whatever talents you have, use them for giving back to others,” Drumm said. “Ithink that’s when I had that light-bulb moment. I said you know what — I used to be a pretty good skater at one time.”

Drumm skated competitively as a youth and spent her summers at a training center in Lake Placid, N.Y. She performed for one season in an ice show at Busch Gardens and in another show in Puerto Rico.

But she quit skating to start a family.

“I hung my skates up for about 14 years, got married, helped my husband build a business, had my kids and made them the focus of my life, and now they are getting bigger,” she said.

That’s when she saw the Oprah show.

“I decided I could use my skating and put it to good use and teach some disadvantaged kids to skate,” Drumm said.

She started giving informal skating lessons three years ago, and then created Skate for Joy. The program is a U.S. figure-skating basic skills program for both figure skating and hockey skating. The children receive badges for each skill level they achieve.

Skate For Joy is financed by Drumm’s husband’s company, J.D. Cement Works, and Bank of Rhode Island. She is looking for more corporate sponsors. The organization is hosting its second annual fundraiser March 3 at the Federal Reserve, in Providence.

It costs about $20,000 to pay for the equipment and a full season of ice time. Drumm’s dream is to run Skate for Joy as an after-school program throughout the school year. One of her biggest obstacles is renting space at an indoor rink. She is desperate to find a rink that is willing to rent to the skating program during the peak after-school hours.

When she can’t find an indoor rink — last Thursday, for instance — Drumm gives the lesson at the Bank of America Skating Center, formerly the Fleet Skating Center.

The temperature was 15 degrees.

The first 20 minutes of the hourlong lesson were spent lacing up the kids’ skates and bundling them in warm clothes. With red Skate For Joy sweatshirts pulled over their winter coats, the children tottered to the rink.

Drumm followed, wearing leopard-skin skates and a furry headband and holding the hands of two new skaters. On the ice, she asked them to let go of her hands. They refused. She finally persuaded them to let go.

“Fall down,” she instructed them. They stood frozen. She let her own skates slip out from under her and landed on her butt. The children realized Drumm was serious, and they silently squatted down, as slowly as possible, until they lost their balance and hit the ice with a thud.

Then, of course, Drumm taught them how to get back up.

First appeared in the Providence Journal
Sunday, January 30, 2005

First you fall; then you learn
Skate for Joy sharpens low-income kids’ skills on the ice
by: Cathleen F. Crowley

It doesn’t seem that it should be that difficult. There are plenty of well-groomed patches of the stuff. And considering what Drumm does, it seems that some well-meaning person with some solid ice connections should be calling.

But Drumm is finding that the kind of ice she is looking for is in such demand that there is no room for her and her unlikely band of skaters. Her work might come to an early end this year for lack of a place to do the good thing she does.

When the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony was held at Providence City Hall last year, Drumm’s work was part of the celebration. Onto the ice at the Fleet Skating Center, in their Skate for Joy sweatshirts donated by BankRI, came kids who probably never would have put a blade on ice if not for Drumm.

“The look of pride on their faces, it was wonderful,” she says.

It was one of those moments when she knew that her decision to lace up the skates again was a good one.

She had been a competitive figure skater, seeing a fair amount of the country as she took her skills on the road.

Then she got married and had children and put the skates away.

But four years ago, she realized that what she had put away could be brought back out and put to very good use.

She was watching Oprah Winfrey, who has been the source of a bunch of good ideas over the years. This particular show was about “using your life.” It was about taking whatever skills or knowledge or resources a person has and putting them to work.

“I thought, ‘I used to be a pretty good skater,’” says Drumm. “I can use that.”

She talked to her husband, Jim, who owns a construction company, about all the charitable solicitations they receive and all the donations they make. And they decided the time was right to create a good cause of their own.

Drumm wanted to bring the pleasure of skating, something that had been such an important part of her life, to kids who might never see ice beyond the stuff on the sidewalk in February.

She wasn’t really sure how to go about it, but she remembered going to the Urban League of Rhode Island to visit her husband when his company was building an addition to the league’s facility.

So she called the Urban League. And the Urban League filled a van with kids and brought them to the Fleet Skating Center. And Skate for Joy began on some wobbly young ankles in the middle of Providence.

It has grown. Two years ago, Drumm hooked up with the Fox Point Boys and Girls Club. There are now eight volunteers working with her to teach both figure skating and hockey. Skates have been donated.

Sponsors have been generous. One of the most generous is J.D. Cement Works, her husband’s company. The program does not cost the kids or the families a dime.

And some of the kids are getting very, very good on the ice.

“I enjoy seeing kids master skills they might not have had the chance to,” Drumm says.

There are some rules. A kid who uses foul language does not come back to the ice the following week.

And there are some small, comfortable rituals. Drumm provides a healthy snack after each session. And there is a banquet at the end of the season.

But the season ends too soon. There is still a lot of skating to do, things to learn. Drumm very much wants to expand Skate for Joy’s year to coincide with the school year. And she wants to find a place where she can teach without the distractions of the Fleet Skating Center.

So she has called. She has called colleges. She has called any place in Providence that has that sheet of ice. All she wants is one hour a week. Just one hour. She and her volunteers can do what they want to do in an hour.

“I’m trying to partner with some colleges, get some of their students involved,” she says. “We just want a place to call home.”

But she is hearing that that hour is just not available. Every minute of ice time on every rink in Providence is spoken for.

She figures she might have to just go ahead with this year’s banquet at Wes’ Rib House in Olneyville and start planning for next season. But she would like to have something in place for September, a rink for just an hour a week where she can pass along the lasting pleasure of skating.

It is a modest request that promises rich returns. There has to be a way to make it happen.

First appeared in the Providence Journal.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Skate for Joy could be running out of ice
by: Bob Kerr

The newly formed organization, devoted to bringing ice skating to inner-city children, filled up the Hi-Hat at Davol Square with 125 guests. The mayor of Providence made an appearance. Honorary chair Fayneese Miller of Pawtucket, an associate professor of education and human development at Brown University, addressed the crowd, and a silent auction saw a Maxwell Mays painting sell for $400. Chef Kevin Millonzi of Atomic Catering donated by whipping up a gourmet dinner for 10, which sold for $500. Some $10,000 was raised.

First appeared in The Sunday Journal Magazine.
Sunday, March 7, 2004
Lifestyles
$10,000 raised for kids on ice
by: Faye Zuckerman
Warwick’s Carolyn Drumm, a former figure skater who masterminded the organization, said she was pleased with the response. She added, “My hope is that we will be able to expand the program.”

The learn-to-skate program is being offered to children at a Boys and Girls Club in Providence. It began nearly four years ago when Drumm asked her husband, Jim, to pay for children to use the downtown Fleet Center ice rink. She rented the equipment and started teaching the basics.

I was behind her project from the beginning,” Jim Drumm said. “I gladly wrote the checks.”

Nearly a year ago, Carolyn Drumm and two friends from Warwick, Meredith Sackett and Carolyn McGillivray, decided to formalize the skating program. They put together the non-profit corporation one evening while sitting on Sackett’s front porch.

“Look at what we have accomplished,” said McGillivray, a nurse practitioner and the board’s vice president. And the icing on the cake, she said, was that the first fundraiser for Skate for Joy scored such high marks.