If anyone told her 15 years ago that she would be where she is today, Kimberly Cambra would have laughed.
A hilarious suggestion, surely.
But here she is, living in Doylestown and leading CB Cares Education Foundation, an organization that helps children make good choices. “We make great kids,” she says.
And CB Cares is celebrating its 25th anniversary. It started out in 1996 as Central Bucks Healthier Communities with Dr. N. Robert Laws, former CBSD superintendent, Richard Reif, retired CEO of Doylestown Hospital, mindful of the need as drug use was growing in the area. It was founded with the idea that meeting positive goals would help students be diverted from risky behavior.
The founders formed a board of directors that included Beverly Haberle, who was executive director of the Bucks County Council On Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (later The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania). She saw CB Cares as a community catalyst to help control young people’s use of drugs, Cambra said recently.
“It was a formidable board of directors,” Cambra said. Representatives of all the local social service nonprofits, all astute, all knowledgeable, all community leaders, were on the board. That was the group who interviewed her for the CB Cares job.
Hers was the final interview in a field of candidates and she did not have the usual credentials, no social science degree, not much experience working with children – she was a marketing person, fresh from doing hospitality jobs. “I could tell you how to set a table,” she joked.
But when you meet Kimberly Cambra, right off you see that she has a dynamic personality, that she can convince people to support her cause, whatever that cause is. And she is not easily turned away.
She has not disappointed and she has become more dedicated to her role every year.
CB Cares today offers the Boomerang Youth Recognition Awards, a districtwide monthly program that recognizes and honors young people for exemplifying and living by one of the chosen Developmental Assets for the school year, personal assets like demonstrating empathy, becoming motivated to achieve, taking responsibility, reading for pleasure and being a positive influence on others.
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