education

John West has served Volunteer Mid-South for more than six years.  He does everything from reading to children who live in inner-city neighborhoods to playing bingo with the elderly to creating crafts with ill children. West has been essential in the programming of Volunteer Mid-South.  He is the Chairperson of the Leadership Council and trains incoming volunteers.  These new volunteers learn how to tutor elementary school students, which directly impact the rates of illiteracy and poverty in the community. 

Planting the seeds of community is something for which 17 year-old Anna Wherry has a passion.  In addition to attending high school and volunteering with the Baltimore Medical System, Anna has been working to make life in the United States easier for a group of Bhutanese refugees. Anna has worked to introduce urban farming techniques to members of a refugee community in Baltimore, whose citizens suffer from insufficient access to food. After meeting Khada Nanda Upret, a Nepali refugee from Bhutan, Anna discovered that many Bhutanese refugees grew up surviving on their crops. 

Carly and Molly Houlahan have learned how to overcome problems and use their tribulations to inspire change with their honey selling business Hive for Lives.  After experiencing the loss of their grandfather to esophageal cancer at young ages, Carly and Molly Houlahan, at the ages of 9 and 11, started a honey company where profits go to the research of cancer cures.

Liz Cochran is truly concerned with the “matters of the heart.”  This 21 year-old beauty has not only found success in the arts and beauty pageants, but she has also used her Miss Alabama platform to increase cardiovascular awareness and disease prevention through her organization With Every Beat. Liz began her mission of informing the young and old about the importance of cardiovascular help when her young dance instructor died due to a heart condition.  This tragedy became very personal for Liz provoking her to do something.

Our past can sometimes be the greatest gift we can give to the future. Few people recognize this as much as Barbara Price Boles. She has dedicated her life to the preservation of history in Yorktown, Virginia, and has inspired others to take a greater interest in their heritage, and in their communities. Ms. Boles has dedicated more time serving as Regent of the Comte De Grasse Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), than she did as a registered nurse.