Aiding Safe Studies In San Francisco's Bayview

San Francisco (CBS 5)  -- Dan Vojir has been on disability for the last four years. But he won’t let his personal struggles keep him from helping make life a little better for his neighbors.

Dan lives in a tough neighborhood. His four-block stretch of Third St. in San Francisco's Bayview District is home to six liquor stores. There have been five shootings in the area this year. The sound of sirens is all too common.

In that same neighborhood, children are trying to learn, and Dan is lending a hand. He is a resident of the 30-unit low-income housing complex known as Bayview Commons. The facility is home to families from all walks of life.

"The first feeling I got when I got here was that it was not a fortress,” Dan says. “It was trying desperately to be a safe place for people who were going to try to fix their lives up."

Dan and his partner moved to the complex three years ago. He was surprised to find that almost half of his neighbors were children. Quickly, the youngsters became more than neighbors to Dan. They became a family that got together in the apartment’s conference room.

Last year at the complex annual holiday party, Dan volunteered to read The Night Before Christmas to the kids. He got such a great response that it gave him an idea. Dan started "Story Time Adventure," a once-a-week gathering at the complex. It was a time for children to enjoy the wonders of reading.

"What I like to teach them is that there is a great big world out there,” Dan says.

Soon, story time turned into a nightly homework club.

"He helps us a lot to do homework when it’s complicated to do it, when your parents aren't around," says 12-year-old Davante Robinson.

Dan’s own disability, HIV, often leaves him tired at the end of the day. But that hasn’t prevented him from working with individuals like college student April Bryant, who suffers from cerebral palsy.

"Dan's helped her out 100-percent,” says Jean Anderson, April’s grandmother. “He's done wonders with my granddaughter. He’s been there for her, whatever time it is…Dan stays with her one on one."

Jean Anderson is raising four grandchildren at the Bayview Commons. She says Dan's commitment to the children is priceless to single parents and working families trying to make a better community for their kids.

"We have our own world in this building,” Anderson says. “I wish the outside world could be like the world we have inside this building.”

"It's not like I’m doing anything extra special,” Dan says. “I’m there and I’m available. Someone is in need of something...that’s really what life is all about."

For helping to build a safe community for the kids in his neighborhood, this week’s Jefferson Award goes to Dan Vojir of San Francisco.

By Kate Kelly