40 years of helping community

The award on the shelf may have her name on it, but Myla Dutton will be the first to tell you (as well as the second and maybe third) that the plaque is a group award 40 years in the making.

Last week, the Utah County Health Department honored Dutton, the executive director of Community Action Services Provo, with its Friend of Public Health award because of her agency's work with several homeless and low-income family outreach programs. Community Action Services is celebrating its 40th anniversary in Provo this year.

"I truly believe ... that the award is in recognition of the many years of service given by this agency," Dutton said. "I've just had the honor to lead and just to be a part of a really fabulous staff and a huge number of volunteers. While my name is on it, I am just simply representing all the work done here."

Community Action Services' largest program is running the local food bank; the center sorts and distributes about 2 million pounds of food annually. Dutton said there is a real need for a food bank in Utah, which ranks fifth in the nation in incidence of child hunger.

"We don't have a lot of malnutrition or starvation like you see on the television in other parts of the world, but we really do have thousands of families that struggle to have enough food on the table every day. The mom will go without breakfast and without lunch so that she can make sure her children can eat."

In addition to the food bank, Community Action Services also sponsors home-buying classes and mortgage counseling, youth and elderly outreach programs and financial planning for low-income families.

The agency serves about 18,000 central Utah residents each year through its offices in Provo and satellite locations throughout Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties.

Most of those who receive help, Dutton said, are hard-working families in low-income jobs.

Dutton, who has been with Community Action Services for 28 years and its director for 16 of those years, oversees a staff of about 40 — most of whom are individual case workers. Most of the day-to-day work is handled by volunteers, who sort food, serve as youth mentors and fill important holes that staff members can't cover.

"Volunteers are hugely important," Dutton said. "We get hundreds of BYU students and UVSC students that are a wonderful help. We get some students that do special projects for us; projects to improve our efficiency and other things that are very helpful but that we just don't have time to do on our own."

Dutton said the Health Department has been a strong supporter of her agency's efforts and called the award "really a huge honor."