The Jefferson Award for Public Service was founded in 1972 as a national award to honor citizens who perform outstanding public service and inspire others to follow their example. The Post and Courier is the sponsor of the Charleston-area. Of the 2007 nominees, six honorees have been chosen by a panel of citizen-judges and will be announced March 19. From this group one person will be selected by the national selection committee to travel to Washington, D.C. in June 2008 to represent The Post and Courier Jefferson Awards at the National Awards Ceremony.

DIENTJE KALISKY ADKINS goes to local schools to tell students about her experiences as a young girl in Nazi-occupied Holland. She was a Jewish child in Bussum, Netherlands, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and her parents sent her into hiding. Her message is one of hope, but it is also a cautionary tale.

JENNI BEARD is co-founder and president of the Lowcountry House Rabbit Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to rescuing abandoned bunnies and educating people about the realities of rabbit ownership. Beard leads about15 volunteers who provide foster care and adoption help for rabbits in need.

CHUCK BOTTS is a motorcycle enthusiast who started the annual Paw-ker Run to raise money for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

ARCHIE BURKEL founded The Hat Ladies of Charleston, an all-female group that practices public service with style. The group has branched out to at least nine other cities across the nation, and Burkel is lauded as the “Top Hat.” The women are best known locally for their annual Easter Promenade, held in April in support of Child Abuse Prevention Month.

LISA BUZZELLI serves the community’s less fortunate through partnerships with the hospitality industry. She’s been a key organizer and volunteer behind local charity efforts such as the Charleston Food + Wine Festival.

AL BYRD does every imaginable task that could be asked of a volunteer at Trident Medical Center and still manages to make everyone around him feel good. Among his assignments is assembling document packages for 700-1,000 incoming patients each week. He also delivers medical samples to labs and transports people to and from the parking lot.

DR. LOUIS COSTA is founder, director and chief surgeon at Southeastern Facial Plastic/Cosmetic Surgery Center in Charleston. Costa traveled to Nicaragua twice on medical mission trips. Last year, he was honorary co-chairman for the World Journey of Smiles gala for Operation Smile, a national nonprofit created to improve the lives of young adults with cleft palates by providing free reconstructive surgery.

GINNY DEERIN is founder and CEO of the 8-year-old Wings for Kids after-school program that teaches kids emotional intelligence. The lesson she teaches are sometimes left out of a normal school day but just as important to development and growth.

LAUREEN DEIBERT started a project to entertain elderly residents at an assisted-living facility, and that project grew into a nonprofit with more than 40 volunteers who lend a neighborly hand to Lowcountry seniors.

JAMES C. EDWARDS JR.,has shared his gift of song for six decades. The retired Charleston County school teacher and principal and founder of the Choraliers Music Club has sung at weddings, funerals, inaugurations, inductions, parties and formal dinners. He sang for the nation on NBC’s “Today” show and for the Lowcountry at its Bicentennial celebration.

BILL ELLIS is president and his wife, Bell, is treasurer of the Charleston Farms Neighborhood Association. The couple has been working tirelessly for more than a decade to improve the neighborhood, which is plagued by drugs, prostitution and other crime.

ERNESTINE FELDER, a spry woman, was at the forefront of the Charleston civil rights movement years ago. She has accumulated numerous awards and recognitions, including the Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor awarded by the governor. The retired schoolteacher often spends her days volunteering at local senior centers.

THE REV. AL FINLEY is known as “The Bread Guy.” Six days a week, Finley leaves his Berkeley County home to collect and deliver day-old bread and pastries to seniors, shut-ins, families and group homes. Most of the items are donated from area supermarkets or diners. On average, he’ll drive 125miles or more a day, making stops from St. Stephen to North Charleston.

GAYLE FRAMPTON is chairwoman of the North Charleston Citizens Advisory Council, a liaison between the mayor’s office and the 50 or so civic clubs that make up the state’s third-largest city. She has never been one to say, “Let other people do it.” If it needs to get done, she gets it accomplished.

PAUL FRANKLIN founded the South Carolina Aging In Place Coalition, which consists of about 75 organizations dedicated to helping seniors plan for aging. An offshoot of the coalition, ITNCharleston Trident, matches a network of mostly volunteer drivers with seniors looking for transportation.

MARY FRENCH, a.k.a. “The Dictionary Lady,” started The Dictionary Project to share with children the power of words by giving them free dictionaries. In five years she accomplished her first goal of giving a dictionary to every public school third-grader in the state. Now, she’s striving to give dictionaries to every third-grader in the U.S. and to increase project participation throughout the world. The organization has distributed more than 5 million dictionaries.

THE REV. DICK GIFFEN works nonstop to provide elderly people with transportation, financial resources and a voice in civic affairs. He helped create the Shepherd’s Center of East Cooper; Grocery GoFor; Senior Wheels; and the Independent Transportation Network, a national affiliate he helped bring to the Lowcountry.

JEAN GUERRY, a Berkeley County history buff, came up with the idea three years ago that Berkeley County build a statue to Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion since he was from the county and is buried there. Today, her idea is a reality as a nearly life-size statue greets visitors to the new Berkeley County Office Building.

ANN HENNING is a retired pediatric nurse and teacher who organized a volunteer program at the Medical University of South Carolina that trains and provides volunteers to its Special Care Nursery, where preemies stay for weeks or months to gain the size and strength they should have gained in the womb.

TERESA HOLLMAN is an everyday saint. She doesn’t organize any massive campaign or charity. She simply helps anyone who asks. Her family, her pastor, her children’s school, her community. If someone needs a hand, hers is the one who reaches out to them. She steps up to offer rides, go for groceries, come by for company, bake a cake, serve a dinner, scrub the floor or pull out the crayons for the kids.

CORI JANNEY is a full-time volunteer at Goose Creek’s Sedgefield Intermediate School who has dedicated 40 hours a week for the past 13 years to performing behind-the-scenes tasks such as running the school’s copy machine and answering phones.

DAVE JONES put together and coaches a local Special Olympics swim team where he spends three to four nights a week and weekends working with teenagers and young adults to help them pursue their athletic dreams and have fun.

SHAARON LENOX is a founding member of the north chapter of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of the Divine Redeemer Church, a group that raises $120,000 annually to benefit the poor and elderly.

STEPHANIE LEWIS is a lawyer who helped organize a free legal clinic at Crisis Ministries that already has handled more than 100 cases for homeless residents, including custody claims, Social Security disability claims, child support payments and landlord-tenant disputes.

CAROL LINVILLE is the founder of Pet Helpers, a nonprofit whose mission is to end the killing of all adoptable animals by providing a safe environment for them until they are adopted.

JOSEPH LYSAGHT manages bell ringers throughout Charleston County for the Salvation Army’s red kettle fundraising campaign. He’s been a board member with the organization for a decade and chairman for three of those years. Lysaght also contributes many hours to the annual Angel Tree and Debi’s Kids programs, collecting and distributing food and toys for needy families.

MELVIN MARKS, Vietnam-era veteran and volunteer at Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Charleston, has made more than 32,000identification cards for veterans in the last three years.

PATTI MASONIS, a S.C. Highway Patrol employee who has twice battled breast cancer, devotes much of her spare time to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the disease through research, education and health services. She spends a week of her vacation stuffing race packets, making hundreds of phone calls to recruit volunteers or completing any task assigned to her.

JACK MCGOVERN is president of His Way Ministry, a group of about 30volunteers who mentor newly released prisoners and help them get back on their feet after years, sometimes decades, in jail. On Friday evenings, the ministry meets at Star Gospel Mission with ex-convicts to provide ongoing help.

CHRIS MITCHELL is youth pastor at Rutledge Memorial Baptist Church in West Ashley and long-time volunteer with the Special Olympics, where he coaches teams, picks up athletes for practice, stays with them during out-of-town visits and coordinates logistics. He also coaches a swim.

NETTLES supervises the Kiwanis Club’s Terrific Kids program at 11 schools in the Charleston area. All told, the program recognizes 3,000children a month. Teachers said the program instills self-esteem and improves students’ test scores.

ROGER NICOLINI, a retiree from Long Island, N.Y., formed a group of United Methodist Relief Center volunteers in 2000 called the Good Guys that today are credited with repairing 100 or more homes for people of limited means.

WALTER A. NOTTON, a retiree from Pennsylvania, has been a volunteer with East Cooper Meals on Wheels for 15 years, serving as a board member and interim executive director during some of that time. His specialty is using the skills he learned as a former transportation official with the aluminum company Alcoa to plan the routes for Meals on Wheels delivery volunteers.

SISTER JEAN MARIE O’SHEA has spent nearly 60 years of service to her faith and her community as an elementary school teacher, religious education tutor and caretaker of homeless children. O’Shea works today at Blessed Sacrament Church in West Ashley in the elderly care ministry.

JANN O’TOOLE is a volunteer with Trident Literacy Association who helps four immigrants from the former Soviet Union learn the language of their adopted home. O’Toole not only teaches these senior citizens, she is their friend, adviser and confidante as well.

BETTEE PACELEO created Community Mission to help inmates in Colleton County after their release. Soon, she expanded the mission to feed and cloth the elderly and poor in this rural area. The mission and its volunteers also serve free Christmas dinners to more than 1,200 people in the National Guard Armory.

MARY PRINGLE is a volunteer at Center for Birds of Prey where she rescues injured birds and counts hawks from a perch high above the Lowcountry. She’s also a project leader for the “Island Turtle Team” on the Isle of Palms, where she trains folks to find turtle nests and identify any that might be in a precarious spot.

Alfonso Riley pastors God’s House of Worship in North Charleston. In 2006, the church sponsored a “Unity in the Community” neighborhood march on Dorchester Road and a five-day tent revival in North Charleston’s Accabee neighborhood, where Riley was born and raised.

BELINDA ROBERTS serves hot meals and raises money for North Charleston’s TriCounty Family Ministries as part of the Hat Divas, a group of women who boast flamboyant head wear but also exude a deep commitment to helping the less fortunate.

BETTY AND CARL SAULISBURY have volunteered since 1981 at Roper Hospital in downtown Charleston. They’re fixtures at the information desk, answering phones, directing visitors to patients, cheering up nurses.

CHERRY SEABROOK counsels cancer patients and encourages women to get mammogram screenings. She works with local hospitals and cancer organizations, and also hosts meetings of Second Chance and Rise Sister Rise cancer support groups in her home.

GARY STAMPER prefers not to be in the limelight, yet his community service in the background often forms the glue that binds the community together. From odd jobs at his church and Mount Pleasant schools to neighborhood functions and trimming trails at a nearby park, the MeadWestvaco maintenance engineer is most comfortable helping others.