Rising Stars: Meet Pam Miklavcic

Today we’d like to introduce you to Pam Miklavcic.

Hi Pam, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
In a roundabout way, The Davies Project for Mid-Michigan Children emerged from my son Peter’s battle with blood cancer (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) at the age of 3. Even with every resource at hand–married, highly educated, employment at MSU, a house, two cars, English speakers, excellent insurance–this was an incredibly challenging time in our lives. My husband and I continually witnessed families in a similar boat who were not as lucky as we were. Navigating cancer, and other serious pediatric diseases, is next to impossible when transportation access, and resources of all kinds, are severely limited. Although I was in the final stage of completing my Ph.D. in agricultural economics, it became clear that my new path would be devoted to making medical access easier for families with seriously ill children.

Our vision at The Davies Project is for the children of Greater Lansing to be as healthy as possible through free rides to all kinds of medical care. If a child has a condition that requires the services of a specialist, The Davies Project then makes it possible for that child to attend every kind of medical appointment they need. This includes all specialty care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, mental health services, dental and eye care, and even regular pediatrician visits. Our services are very important in a community where, historically, 70% of the children who rely on the specialty clinics are on Medicaid and miss 60% of their outpatient appointments.

These figures are representative of the situation faced by communities across Michigan as well as the rest of the country. In fact, ours is the first organization in the country to approach this pediatric problem with volunteer-provided rides. The model we have created is working wonderfully on behalf of the families we serve, and the volunteers get as much out of the rides as the families do. Best of all, we are introducing people to one another who never would have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. This gives both drivers and families a feeling of hope as well as a sense of belonging in our community.

Highly screened, highly trained volunteers provide the rides using their own cars. Most are retirees from teaching, medical, and social work backgrounds. Their lifetime of skills make for compassionate companions to and from medical care. Each ride, the drivers carry healthy snacks to the children as well as gently used books to keep. We love using this opportunity to build children’s home access to reading!

Since our goal is to help our community’s children be as healthy as possible, we also drive expecting women to prenatal care and parents back and forth to the hospital if their newborns must remain in the neonatal intensive care unit after birth. We want all infants born as healthy as possible, and we also know how important parent-infant bonding is to the overall well-being of the infant when they finally have a chance to go home. Too often, women cannot attend their prenatal appointments, and parents cannot visit their infants in the hospital. Our model has changed that.

Now in its ninth year of providing rides to medical care for Lansing area children, The Davies Project has helped close to 800 families in need. Think of it this way. In 2022, we provided close to 2000 rides, all to appointments that likely would have been missed without our help. Imagine how this has improved the health of those we serve!

Our biggest need now is for additional volunteer drivers. As more and more families and clinics learn about our services, the demand for rides to medical care is going up very quickly. A year ago, we were providing 135 rides per month. This rose to a monthly average of 183 rides in 2022. Then, in January 2023, we provided close to 230 rides. Without additional drivers, we are having to start a waiting list–something we had hoped to never have to do.

So, if anyone is looking for a very flexible volunteer opportunity, taking as many or as few ride requests as fit your lifestyle, please consider reaching out to The Davies Project at www.thedaviesproject.org. We need you and are filled with lots of KIND folks like you who you will enjoy getting to know!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Creating an effective model that could reliably deliver children to their medical appointments was the hardest part. Now, nine years in, the challenge is a post-COVID one. Whereas we had many volunteers stepping in to help before the pandemic, we are finding volunteer recruitment more difficult as we emerge from isolation. Clearly, there are people who are now more hesitant about accepting a volunteer role in the community. Nevertheless, we continue to insist on numerous safety protocols when riding in cars together (masks, hand sanitizer, cracked car windows, etc.) and have successfully kept our families and volunteer drivers safe as a result.

It’s always been a fine balancing act. As ride requests increase, we need to have a certain number of volunteers available to help. We neither want to turn families away due to insufficient drivers nor have so many drivers that they cannot find a ride that fits their schedule. Thanks to an excellent team at our office, we bounce these ideas around often, always looking for ways to improve the services we provide.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
The inspiration for this work has clearly been my son, Peter, who is now 26 and just completing his PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. In the summer, he will be moving to Newport, RI, where his skills will be put to the test in underwater vehicle development.

Peter’s cancer diagnosis came about when I was six weeks out from delivering our third child,  Marija (who is 23 and now learning to sail tall ships in the Atlantic). His brother, Will, is 19 months younger than Peter (now 24), and presently pursuing an MD/PhD in Omaha, Nebraska. His youngest sister, Claudia, is a freshman at MIT in Boston. While I doubt that our life can ever be as stressful as it was during Peter’s three years of chemotherapy, I believe those years forged in each of us how lucky we are to have each other as well as the will to make the most of life. Second chances matter.

Like Peter, who has had the opportunity to thrive and succeed, my hope is to give more children in greater Lansing the opportunity to pursue their dreams through healthier beginnings. Together, we can do this.

The team we have put together at The Davies Project is top-notch. Nancy Zamiara is our family services coordinator, who schedules all the rides using a wonderful app called Assisted Rides. Mary Jo Weigel is our volunteer recruiter/coordinator, responsible for all recruitment and training. Maria Churchill is our director of engagement. Her job is to connect families with other resources in the community as needed while also finding ways to introduce families to one another for mutual support. Rich Howard is our successful COO and fund developer. Last, Mary Meierfrankenfeld is our office manager who keeps things running smoothly behind the scenes.

Our office is housed in an old firehouse in Lansing. Bought and renovated by remarkable donors for our use, it is the oldest standing firehouse in the area (1904), right near Sparrow Hospital. We are grateful for the space we now have and the wonderful donors and foundations who make our work possible. Among these are the Joe D. Pentecost Foundation, the United Way of South-Central Michigan, Jackson, the Community Foundation, the City of Lansing, the Rotary Club of Lansing, the East Lansing Kiwanis Club, the Carls Foundation, and many, many others.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
My favorite childhood memory is of my four girl cousins, all close in age to me, who would return to New England every other summer for a couple of months. Their father and mother were in public health and worked overseas in Africa and Indonesia throughout my childhood. Their adventures are what spurred me to go to Africa with the Peace Corps twenty years later. Had I not met my husband at Michigan State, I likely would have remained there!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thedaviesproject.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedaviesprojectmi (@thedaviesprojectmi)
• Facebook: facebook.com/thedaviesproject
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Davies_Project (@Davies_Project)
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIpXZFwflIo