WNY Women Volunteers
Francesca Mesiah:
Born to Volunteer
Read More WNY Women VolunteersBy Maria Scrvani
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Needless to say, the boys quickly found another place to play ball. But a few days later, one of them was at her door with a request, “Miss Francesca, could you take us to the library? We have exams next week.” Thus began an impromptu mentoring program, in which she shepherded three local kids (that’s all she could fit into her car) to the library on a regular basis, as well as the occasional outing to venues like the SUNY Buffalo campus. “I showed them a lecture hall, the common area where students hang out, and then the gym, and I told them that’s the order in which they should focus their school lives.”
This may seem like extraordinary effort for a single professional woman who could have just erected a fence to keep the ballplayers off her lawn, but Francesca Mesiah, who works as Director of Community Relations for Good Schools for All (formerly the Education Fund for Greater Buffalo), is more of a bridge-builder. It is, quite simply, the way this Buffalo native was raised.
“I was just taking an interest in the neighborhood kids,” she says. “My parents have always been like that, asking children who live around us what they’re up to, what they’re reading, how school is going.” She grew up in the Parkside area where her parents still reside. Her father is Frank Mesiah, a former Buffalo city policeman and public schoolteacher who currently serves as president of the Buffalo Branch of the NAACP and first vice president of the organization’s State Conference. Her mother Rica was a reading specialist in the Buffalo public schools. Two older sisters, Leza and Nicolette Mesiah, live out of town.
“We were always meeting people and saying good night,” she recalls of her childhood years when her parents hosted evening gatherings of people discussing issues from education to politics. Three generations of family members dined on Sundays at the Mesiah table, where the conversation revolved around church work and civil rights. “They didn’t call it volunteerism,” Mesiah recalls, “but the message was always, for change to take place, you have to get involved.”
She dates her own awakening to activism to an incident when she was in the fourth grade and answered her family’s telephone to hear a voice threatening to bomb their home.
Her first volunteer effort after that trauma revolved around security: she signed on as a safety patrol officer. "I guess that was my way of trying to keep kids safe in school, "she says.
Through high school she was involved in an NAACP youth group, serving as treasurer of the state council. She served as secretary of the Episcopal youth group, and was a member of All-High, the city-wide student government.
At a tender age, Mesiah was getting an eye-opening introduction to some harsh social realities. Delivering baskets to nursing homes and state hospitals, she saw some cruel incarcerations by uncaring family members. She visited prisoners through an NAACP youth prison chapter program, getting "a lesson in what it’s like to have your freedoms taken away."
While a student at SUNY Albany, she became a personal assistant to a visually impaired student. She was a student representative to the college administration and treasurer of the student association. "I had watched my parents who were involved in a multitude of volunteer activities, and I thought it was the routine," she says. All that work gave her a focus, and by the time she graduated (with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and urban planning, followed later by a master’s degree in social sciences in applied public affairs from SUNY Buffalo), Mesiah knew she wanted to work in housing, economic development, and government. She sought out public and private sector experience, including work in the health field. "I knew I had to have a complete understanding of how everything fit together to make public policy decisions."
She worked as a planning intern at Episcopal Church Home. From there she entered the management training program at Key Bank, became a health program administrator for the SUNY Albany Graduate School of Public Health, and a legislative research analyst for the New York State Senate. She worked for the Erie County Industrial Development Agency for eight years before joining what was then the Education Fund for Greater Buffalo.
Volunteering for the NAACP has been a lifelong commitment, and she currently serves as second vice president for the Buffalo Chapter as well as on its ACT-SO committee, a youth program. She has been a member of the United Way Cabinet, organizing its first-time campaign for new business. She sits on or has served on the boards of Grace Manor Nursing Home, the Erie County Cultural Resource Advisory Board, Leadership Buffalo, and the Junior League of Buffalo, where she worked to establish a diversity league in each Junior League Council. She is a motivational speaker for Buffalo Public Schools. She’s been active in Women for Human Rights and Dignity, Kids Voting for Western New York, Children’s Hospital, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Girl Friends, a social-civic organization of African -American Women.
Oh, and she still mentors kids from the neighborhood. "Not every group meets every week," Mesiah says of her volunteering merry-go-round. "Some meet every other month or just twice a year. With internet, fax machines, and speaker phones, volunteering has gone high tech, so you don’t always have to be there.
"To be a good volunteer, know what it is you like to do—that’s where you start. A lot of my volunteering stems from what I’m interested in, from civil rights to education to parent groups to politics. These were the things my parents and sisters were involved in...I had such a rewarding childhood. I feel like I have a lot to give back. I always say I did not get where I am alone—I have stood on many shoulders."
Maria Scrivani is a free-lance writer and former staff reporter for The Buffalo News.
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