As we approach the beginning of 2023, a new year means some due reflection on the previous one.
For many of us, 2022 brought on a range of obstacles. But the year also presented an opportunity for people to help and inspire people through a variety of mediums, and that’s what several Johnson Countians did.
From tackling sustainability and poverty to talking mental health, many Johnson Countians found ways to give back to each other — and the community at large — this year.
Here are some of the people in Johnson County who inspired us in 2022:
Michala Gibson and Mandy Shoemaker, founders of Connectivities memory care boxes, Overland Park
Sisters-in-laws Mandy Shoemaker and Michala Gibson operated group homes for people living with dementia since 2014. This year, they decided to take on a new form of memory care.
The two of them launched Connectivities, a monthly subscription box service that mails activities to adults with dementia aimed at stimulating their minds and helping them connect with their caregivers.
Each box has a different theme, and some of the included activities include crafts, writing prompts, puzzles and games.
“It’s really hard, I think, for people who have a loved one living with dementia to get past the loss. They can sometimes be really focused on how their loved one is different,” Shoemaker said. “And so the goal of Connectivities is to help people learn how to interact with who their loved one is today.”
Read more: Overland Park biz mails monthly brain activities to adults with dementia
Komal Kaur, student who runs nonprofit helping immigrants get green cards, Olathe
During her junior year at Olathe East High School, Komal Kaur began working on creating Eye of an Immigrant, a nonprofit aimed at helping people with applying for and gaining green cards — from funding filing fees to connecting applicants with legal resources.
Now a freshman at the University of Kansas, Kaur has continued working on the project. Kaur’s parents immigrated to the United States from India, and she said this experience helped shape the creation of Eye of an Immigrant.
“Nobody should have to struggle that hard to build real roots in a new country,” Kaur said. “Being able to take my challenges and seeing what my family went through and being able to help another family that’s currently going through that is really the ultimate goal.”
Roseann Newcomer, woman now helping oversee nonprofit that helped her, Overland Park
When Roseann Newcomer was eight years old, she went with her mother to the Johnson County Christmas Bureau’s annual holiday market to find Christmas gifts for their family.
The nonprofit allows Johnson Countians living up to 150% of the federal poverty line to pick out holiday gifts and essential items for free.
Now a mother herself and a business owner, Newcomer works as a volunteer with the Bureau and will join their board in 2023.
As a previous client both in childhood and later as a single mother, Newcomer said this served as an opportunity to give back to the organization that has contributed to her own family’s Christmases.
“It’s allowed me to give back in all kinds of different ways,” she said. “That’s probably one of the things (volunteering at the bureau) does —it allows me to be blessed, and to be able to give blessings back. It fills you up so much more than a job that you’ll be paid for.”
Read more: Johnson County woman gives back to nonprofit that helped her
Olivia Bloomfield, playground accessibility advocate whose legacy lives on, Leawood
Olivia Bloomfield, 10, died on July 5, but her legacy as a tireless champion of inclusivity and accessibility lives on.
Born with congenital muscular dystrophy, Bloomfield spent much of her free time advocating for inclusive playgrounds in the metro because, as she told the Post nearly a year ago, “everybody deserves a chance to play.”
After her death, Bloomfield’s parents, Sara and Matt, launched the Olivia Bloomfield Foundation, which they say will focus on partnerships with organizations like Variety Kansas City that aim to improve accessibility and inclusion.
“When you see somebody that looks different, make an effort to say hello and get to know them and understand them,” Sara said. “It makes a whole world of difference.
Read more: Olivia Bloomfield Foundation to carry on JoCo 10-year-old’s legacy of making a more inclusive world
Nathan Mestel, eighth grader fighting food waste, Lenexa
Last year, eighth grader Nathan Mestel pitched an idea in the Shawnee Mission School District’s “Next Great Idea” pitch contest that later became a bonafide project.
His idea, The Milk of Human Kindness, involves helping reduce food waste by giving people food recipes that reuse food products. It debuted at the Lenexa Farmers’ Market this year, where he said he wants to start the initiative off as an educational tool.
He hopes to eventually partner with a local grocery store to set up regular pick-ups for unsold milk that the store plans to toss out.
“Kids can sit there all day and say, ‘Oh man, this problem sucks,’ but they might not go out and do anything about it because they might not have the resources or really even a reason to do anything about it,” Mestel said. “Now, I feel like — hopefully — being able to help people reduce food waste in their own lives, I feel like that will help make a much bigger impact than I was planning on initially.”
Read more: Shawnee Mission eighth grader wants to reduce food waste — Here’s how he’s doing it
Dr. Dhanunjaya “DJ” Lakkireddy, cardiologist, Overland Park
Earlier this year, Kristiana Rigney of North Carolina found a solution to a heart condition she’d struggled with for three years — halfway across the country in Overland Park.
She and her mother flew here, where cardiologist Dr. Dhanujaya “DJ” Lakkireddy identified her as a candidate for a rare form of heart surgery.
Lakkireddy then helped perform the procedure on Rigney at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
A few months after the surgery, Lakkireddy received recognition from the Kansas City Medical Society for his work on irregular heartbeats, from years of research to his hand in creating and operating the Kansas City Heart Rhythm Symposium.
“There are many new techniques and many new treatments that we have initiated here that have now are slowly becoming standard of care and practice in other parts of the world,” he said. “That’s what makes this journey a lot more interesting and exciting. Yes, you’ve got to fight some uphill battles to get on it. But if you have a team that supports it and believes in it, then the job becomes a lot more fun.”
Read more: North Carolina woman finds solution to rare heart condition at Overland Park hospital
Prairie Elementary’s “Green Team,” Prairie Village
This year, a group of roughly 20 students at Prairie Elementary School in Prairie Village banded together to find ways to make their school and community more environmentally friendly.
The Prairie “Green Team” began meeting every two weeks and is made up of students in grades 4 through 6. This is the district’s first team of this kind, but similar groups have been formed in other schools throughout the country.
For some of the students — including fifth grader Emeline Wilinski — the group serves as a way for them to play a hand in an issue they’ve been concerned about for a long time.
“In second grade, me and my friends were interested in helping the environment and stuff like that,” Wilinski said. “We kind of started our own thing, and then when Green Team started we got really excited because that’s what we had been wanting to do so we joined it.”
Megan Nicolas, mom who wrote a graphic novel about dyslexia, Overland Park
On a trip to the Johnson County Library’s Corinth branch in Prairie Village, this spring, Megan Nicolas and her twin sons, Luca and Xavier, noticed a lack of books that portrayed dyslexia positively.
So they decided to write their own children’s graphic novel to fill that gap.
The goal of “Discovering My Dyslexia Superpowers,” Nicolas says, is to empower dyslexic children and bring public awareness to “how brilliant the dyslexic mind can be.”
“It should be something that’s normalized, that we kind of value each other’s strengths,” she said.
Read more: Overland Park mom, inspired by son, writes graphic novel about dyslexia ‘superpowers’
Waverly Atlis, artist who repped Kansas on Google’s main page, De Soto
Waverly Atlis, a recent graduate of De Soto High School, was named Kansas’s winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google contest.
Atlis’s doodle, “Park Serenity”, was a response to this year’s prompt, which was “I care for myself by…”.
The doodle took a couple days to finish via ProCreate, an iPad appl. Her victory put her in the running to become a national finalist in the contest.
The inspiration, Atlis said, came from her enjoyment of riding bikes to parks and swinging at recess as a child — which served as a form of catharsis.
“I’ve always loved drawing and I am going to get an art major — it’s something I want to make a career out of and it was something I’d be interested in,” Atlis said. “The amount of scholarship money would also be really useful, so I figured, you know, why not throw my hat in the ring.”
Read more: This De Soto teenager is in running to have ‘doodle’ displayed on Google’s main page
Susie Gurley, ‘Just a Mom’ podcast host, Leawood
Five years after her son founded the annual You Matter Festival, aimed at raising mental health awareness in the Kansas City metro through music, Susie Gurley wanted to add her own voice to the conversation about mental health struggles.
This year, Gurley launched the “Just a Mom” podcast — which is centered around a parent’s perspective on kids’ and families’ mental health struggles.
On the podcast, she talks with parents whose children have struggled with mental health challenges and ways they have dealt with them.
The goal of the podcast, she said, is to shed light on the intersection of mental health and parenting while taking away the stigma against openly discussing mental illness.
“It’s really amazing to me and humbling that people are willing to share their stories,” she said. “I’m so appreciative of that because I know that every single person who opens up, it’s going to help somebody.”
Read more: Leawood woman’s ‘Just A Mom’ podcast wants parents to talk about mental health
