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Dunkin offers a helping hand

By: JESSICA STEPHEN//December 4, 2014//

Dunkin offers a helping hand

By: JESSICA STEPHEN//December 4, 2014//

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Regina Dunkin - executive director, Merrill Community Center Inc., Beloit
Regina Dunkin – executive director, Merrill Community Center Inc., Beloit

Aug. 9 is Regina Dunkin Day in Beloit.

Since 2006, municipal leaders, volunteers and others have paused to recognize Dunkin, who has led the Merrill Community Center in Beloit since 1997. She said she could not believe it when the city declared a day in her honor.

“Look, I just live life to the fullest, but I stop to help other people along the way,” Dunkin said. “It’s important that I help other people. And it makes me happy to give to others.”

Dunkin started the first children’s program at the Beloit Domestic Violence Center. She is president of the Eclipse Charter School. And, at Merrill, she established after-school and summer programs, which provide, among other things, homework help and computer time, as well as free lunch and snacks for as many as 100 children each day.

“We work together,” Dunkin said, “to provide programs and services for people who wouldn’t have anywhere else to turn.”

Nearly 10 years ago, her work caught the attention of former Gov. Jim Doyle, who invited Dunkin to join the nine-member State Public Defender Board. Her work for the board has included a role as chairwoman of its Outreach Committee, which offers programs for nearly 10,000 people statewide, including more than 3,600 children.

“I can’t help but help,” Dunkin said. “I can’t stop myself.”

It’s her job, she said, to fight inequality on every level, whether that means advocating for people of color to be appointed to state committees, finding bus tickets for job seekers or delivering a mattress to a young boy who struggled in school because he couldn’t get a good night’s rest.

“What I do,” Dunkin said, “I just do it from my heart, with love.”

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