Leading 750+ Youth to Serve with Heart

Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Shailen Fofaria. Read his story, and nominate an outstanding volunteer or family as a Daily Point of Light.

True leadership is defined by consistency and empowerment: a commitment to showing up, and lifting others as you climb. For high schooler Shailen Fofaria, service is a fundamental part of his daily life. As the Student Board Chair of Youth Ambassadors of Service, Shailen dedicates 30 to 40 hours each month to volunteering. Peers, educators and nonprofit partners have come to deeply rely on him because he champions a leadership style that listens first and always follows through.

During his tenure, Shailen has spearheaded two major initiatives that have trained over 750 students to support underserved populations in their communities. His hands-on approach spans leading the organization’s Student Leadership team, advising the Board and acting as the primary liaison for critical community partnerships. Beyond organizing supply drives and mentoring programs, Shailen has single-handedly taken charge of fund development. Over the past four years, his dedicated grant-writing efforts have raised more than $50,000 for operational sustainability.

This blend of strategic execution and deep compassion has earned Shailen distinct regional and national recognition. He stands as the youngest-ever recipient of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Triangle Young Philanthropist Award, celebrating his sophisticated approach to nonprofit development. Additionally, his thousands of hours of dedication have been recognized with the prestigious Gold Presidential Volunteer Service Award. Read on to hear more of Shailen’s inspiring story.

Tell us about your volunteer role.

Youth Ambassadors of Service, which we call YAS, is a completely youth-founded, youth-led and youth-focused organization, so of course we bring the youth flair to it. YAS has been a part of my life for the past four years. We’re a nonprofit that works to mobilize students to create real impactful change in their communities past just one-time volunteerism. We know students have the desire to volunteer and make an impact, and sometimes they just need the resources and the knowledge, especially from their peers. That’s where we step in.

My first couple of years I got to know the nonprofit really well. I served as our grant writer for the first two years, as well as participating in our program. Not only was I able to continue to do my work with causes that were important to me, like food insecurity and youth advocacy, but I was also in the background and learning what it means to run a nonprofit. These past two years I’ve gotten to take on a more senior leadership role, and get to run our day-to-day programs, do a lot of mentorship—which is the most special part to me—and just continue to build out my repertoire of nonprofit management. It’s amazing to get to impact my community in the way that I get to do every day.

What inspired you to get started with this initiative?

In the summer after my eighth-grade year, I joined a webinar. My mom had told me, “You need to find something to do this summer and in high school, so why don’t you join this service webinar and see what kind of opportunities you can find?” Of course, I grumbled and I groaned, and I decided, “I’ll just join for a little bit, not too long. She’s at work, she won’t know, so let me just check it out for a little bit.”

I joined, and I met our amazing executive director, Sonali, who I now work with, and we hit it off. Her big thing was, “We can make service fun, just check us out and see if you like it.” So I did some more research. I went to an event. It was one of our early events in 2022, and I got the opportunity to learn more about the organization, and just fell in love. From there, everything that I did, I did because I wanted to, and not because someone else made me, which was really special. That’s how I knew I wanted to work in the sector that I had chosen.

Why is service so important to you?

When I grew up, my dad had told me from the beginning, “Service heals the soul.” That was his big thing. When you are dealing with everything around you, when you’re dealing with hardship outside, when you don’t feel satisfied, you don’t feel fulfilled, service will always get you to where you need to be. I had grown up on that mantra. When I found YAS, that was the initial thing. Service was what I was looking for.

As you grow up, people find the things they’re interested in. My brother was really interested in homelessness and animal care; others are interested in medicine. I just had this idea of serving in general in mind. So, when I learned about Youth Ambassadors of Service, and I learned about a nonprofit that helps with youth advocacy in this space, they tell students, “You have a voice, let’s use it to make this real impactful change.”

It can be in any cause area; you don’t have to specialize in just food insecurity, or housing insecurity, or clothing insecurity, you can do it in whichever fashion. I fell in love because youth advocacy was one issue that was important to me. It can reflect so many other issues. You don’t necessarily just have to affect one demographic or population of people, and so that has spilled into other nonprofit and philanthropic work that I’ve done, and other advocacy work that I’ve done. It was a catalyst for all that.

What’s been the most rewarding part of your work?

It might be a little cliché, but I think it would have to be the students that I’ve gotten to meet along the way. A lot of them, especially from the beginning, are learning alongside like-minded students. It really does change the way you think, and it changes the kind of person you are. At the beginning, that was the coolest part.

Now, as a more senior person in this space and within the nonprofit, getting to mentor and give advice to these other students is so incredibly invaluable. Sonali—I keep mentioning her name—but she has been such an incredible mentor to me, and to be able to pass that down to students who I was just in their place two or three years ago, or who strive for the things that I’ve had the amazing opportunity to do, being able to work with them and say, “Hey, we have the same dreams, and I can help you get to your next step, and we can do it together.”

What’s the point of knowledge if it’s not to be shared? Getting to mentor students and learn about everyone’s different journey, and see why they like to serve, is my favorite part of it all.

What have you learned through your experiences as a volunteer?

Number one: my dad was right; service does heal the soul. You will never get back from volunteering or the opportunity to mentor students and feel down. These things are things I look forward to. I’ve spent hundreds of hours working, and most of the time it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like I came to help someone else, and it left me feeling more fulfilled.

Number two is that everybody carves their own path, and they all come from different backgrounds, and it’s so amazing to just understand where everyone is coming from. I know through YAS we serve a wide demographic of people, and sometimes it seems that service can be inaccessible because it’s something you have to have the luxury of time for, or the luxury of resources. But we have had so many students that may not have had the same financial means that come through the program and feel so deeply about serving that they make it work, and we try to meet them in the middle and make it work for them as well.

The third thing, which is one of the biggest things to me, is that service is incorporated into every aspect of our life. I feel like a lot of students, when they start to understand the impact that they can make, they understand how it affects everything around them, and it gives them a new perspective of thinking. Through my work at YAS and my grant writing, I learned the term “lived experiences,” because grant makers love to put that phrase into these grants. Lived experiences and understanding people and situations from a different perspective has been incredibly cool to me. When I go into these new spaces and I meet new people, I’m able to think what the community has done for them, and how they help their own community in their own way.

Why is it important for others to get involved with causes they care about?

Everything is intertwined and everything has a way of coming back to you. Somebody poured into your cup when you were younger, somebody poured into someone else’s cup that then poured into you when you were at a formative age, or when you were trying to learn or navigate a new space. I believe it’s up to us as people to then go pour into other people’s cups.

Any advice for people who want to start volunteering?

My biggest piece of advice would be just to get started. You’ll find your niche in some way. The coolest thing about volunteering is, like I said before, you can never do it wrong. Number two, the only way to find exactly a cause you love or a nonprofit you really want to work with is to go and try it out, have that experiment. There are so many opportunities in people’s cities or just in people’s resources, but also reach out to those in your network. You might be surprised at who you know, in their free time, volunteers at an animal shelter or at a food bank because that’s something important to them. Tag along, see what you like. Volunteering is always more fun when you do it with other people you love, too, which I think sometimes people don’t think about. It doesn’t have to be that you just have to go and do this alone—bring a couple of friends, go with your family, make that difference and feel the warmth and that fulfillment together.

What do you want people to learn from your story?

Number one, for all the youth out there, use youth to your advantage. People love to hear the ideas of youth. People love to include new perspectives and lived experiences into their work and into their new way of thinking. Use that as a youth, really make your difference, and the world is your oyster with the incredible opportunities that we’re given now. There’s almost nothing you can’t do, or nothing you can’t set out to do.

Number two, I know I’ve said this, but service really does heal the soul. I hope people do really understand that serving others and pouring back into people’s buckets and into people’s cups is just one of the reasons that all of us were put here on this earth.

Do you want to make a difference in your community like Shailen? Find local volunteer opportunities.