NEED DOESN'T GO AWAY ON WEEKENDS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

If you have something to give, why not give it, asks Suzanne Wilson of North Hollywood. What does it hurt?

If you can find an hour or two a week out of your life to help someone who needs help, why not spare it? wonders Laura Remington of Northridge.

Seems so simple and obvious, these two San Fernando Valley women say - this business of trying to make a difference.

They and about 30 other local volunteers from Food on Foot are being honored this weekend by USA Weekend Magazine and the Points of Light Foundation for the difference they made on Make A Difference Day.

More than 20 local volunteer groups and individuals in the Daily News circulation area partook in the 11th annual Make A Difference Day on Oct. 27, 2001, and Food on Foot, which feeds the homeless on weekends, was selected as the newspaper's local honoree.

Each volunteer in the group had a month to fulfill a Make A Difference Day wish for one of the homeless people they had been feeding throughout the year.

The wishes, which could not be monetary, ranged from helping them find shelter, medical help, a job or a long-lost relative to providing them with a sleeping bag, backpack or clothes.

``It's very gratifying to be honored like this, especially when you think that it all started with one person feeding a few homeless people fried chicken and pizza outside a post office in Hollywood six years ago,'' said Jay Goldinger, a local businessman who started the volunteer group.

``Now we have more than 30 volunteers feeding 500 homeless people and families every weekend at sites in Venice and Hollywood,'' he said.

Goldinger saw what a lot of people weren't seeing back in 1996 when he came up with his own way to make a difference.

``There were a lot of places during the week for the homeless to go to get some food and shelter, but nothing really on the weekends,'' he said.

``Young kids in families and elderly people, which make up a growing segment of the homeless population we feed, were basically going hungry from Friday night to Monday morning,'' he said.

So Goldinger told a few friends, and they told a few more, and before he knew it volunteers like Suzanne Wilson, a 39-year-old paralegal, and Laura Remington, a 32-year-old video editor, were finding time in their busy work schedules to make a difference every weekend.

``The reward for me is when they get to know you and see you coming back every weekend to feed and help them,'' Suzanne says. ``It's the thank-yous and God-bless-yous, especially from the seniors.

``If you have something to give, why not give it?'' she says.

What we all forget, adds Laura, is that these people are not just hungry on holidays and special days, like Make A Difference Day. They're hungry every day.

``So it takes an hour or two out of my life every week to help feed and clothe them. Big deal,'' Laura said.

``The few hours are nothing in comparison with the powerful emotional feelings you get when a child or old person walks up to you and gives you a hug for caring about them.

``I come home after that and lie in my bed looking at my four walls, and I want them to have the same thing,'' she said.

While it was Food on Foot the USA Weekend judges selected as the local honoree this year, all the volunteer groups that took part in Make A Difference Day are winners and deserve our recognition.

So thanks to the students of Esperanza Elementary School for creating activity books for children with cancer, the residents of Norco for planting trees on the city's major thoroughfares, and the kids in the educational program Touthink who spent the day cleaning, greening and painting over graffiti at a downtown school hit hard by vandals.

Thanks to the Assistance League of the San Fernando Valley for providing English-language dictionaries for 180 elementary school students in Pacoima, the Brandeis Community Services for the San Fernando Valley for making knitted and crocheted blankets for the children at Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles, and cancer survivor Susan Lee of Thousand Oaks for sending 14 inches of her hair to the cancer support group Locks Of Love, which makes hairpieces for financially disadvantaged children undergoing cancer treatment.

Thanks to Veterans of Foreign Wars posts and Rotary Clubs for spreading out over local communities and cleaning up weeds and trash, and WYNGS, a local chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, for hosting a fund-raising wheelchair carwash in Calabasas.

Thanks to Neva Hughes and Margaret Odorn of Sylmar for collecting books, stuffed animals, and clothing for the boys and girls at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, and the La Canada Junior Women's Club for delivering 209 stuffed bears to local fire departments so the firefighters could give them to child victims they're helping in car accidents.

Thanks to the 50 employees at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal who collected more than 1,500 books for the students at 9th Street School in the firm's downtown business community, and to the members of Chappie James Post 578 for providing clothing, shoes and blankets to the adults, and toys and books for the kids living in shelters in South Central Los Angeles.

And, finally, a big thank-you to a lot of local kids who rallied their schools and Girl Scout troops to get involved in a variety of great community projects.

The kids who turned in Make A Difference Day entry forms to the Daily News are Bess Rizzi, Kristin Melendez, Janet Jarosh, April Cauthron, Stacey Haslett, Marissa Esquibel and all the students at Hollenbeck Middle School who wrote get-well cards for the children in Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

A big thank-you to everyone who makes a difference. You're all winners.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Clive Forrester and Jay Goldinger help the needy for Food on Foot, an organization which has won recognition on Make a Difference Day.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News

(2) no caption (USA WEEKEND cover)