St. Charles Parish News: Volunteer wins LifeTime award from former President Obama

Receiving the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award isn’t going to change Shirley Parram-Sims or her work in St. Charles Parish.“I don’t do everything I do for attaboys. I love to help out,” Parram-Sims said. “It was an honor to be recognized for doing the work that I’m doing. I don’t need to be recognized, but it’s good that somebody does see what you do and they recognize you for that.”

Parram-Sims received the award on Jan. 29 at the Solid Rock Christian Fellowship in Kenner. She was nominated for the honor by Gloria Holden, chancellor of the Fellowship International Bible College in Metairie and of the Daughters of Esther Fellowship in Jefferson Parish.

It’s where Parram-Sims became a minister that guided much of efforts to help otheres.

“It was an honor because she was my teacher in Bible college and she could have honored anyone but she knew of my work I was doing in St. Charles Parish,” she said. “She just wanted to get me some recognition for that.”

This Ama volunteer is more recently recognized as the founder and head of Alpha Daughters of Zion, a nonprofit organization and shelter to aid women with domestic abuse in Luling.

But she does more in community service including serving on the board for Creative Family Solutions that provides youths, families and individuals with counseling, educational and other growth-related services; volunteering for Second Harvest with the mission of ending hunger at Mount Airy Baptist Church in Boutte, and chairing the National Congress of Black Women in Jefferson Parish.

As an ordained minister, she also she teaches and assists the church’s minister at First Baptist church of Paradis.

Parram-Sims is also a member of the St. Charles Parish Rotary Club, River Region Chamber of Commerce, and counsels female inmates at Nelson Coleman Correctional Center.

Having retired from Entergy Waterford 3 in 2004, she anticipated a quiet retirement with her husband, Frank. That was until something she couldn’t deny changed her path – God.

Parram-Sims said she couldn’t ignore the domestic violence she witnessed in the parish, which inspired her to establish Alpha Daughters of Zion.

“Even though I received the award for my service, I am still a humble servant,” she said. “I still do what I need to – whether rewarded or not. I just like helping, and particularly in domestic violence. I love helping ‘hurting women’ – that’s my calling.”