Rocsi Diaz

For helping kids stay in school and reaching out to her community in various ways, television personality Rocsi Diaz received a Daily Point of Light Award in Los Angeles. The ceremony was part of the One America campaign, led by Points of Light and Chase, to unite people in volunteer service. As we also celebrate National Volunteer Week, read Diaz’s story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

Known for her charismatic personality and winning smile, Rocsi Diaz has become popular with millions of television viewers as co-host of “Entertainment Tonight” and formerly of BET’s “106 & Park.” Behind the camera, and the smile, is a deep commitment to social and humanitarian causes.

Diaz spends much of her time volunteering for a wide variety of organizations and even launched her own foundation, RocStar, to help rebuild and repair public schools in New Orleans after the area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Along with other popular figures such as basketball legend Magic Johnson and actor Hugh Jackman, Diaz is an active participant in Get Schooled, an organization that uses the media and celebrity ambassadors to help inspire and empower kids nationwide to finish high school and go to college.

Diaz, who grew up in New Orleans, launched the RocStar Foundation after learning that thousands of children in the city were unable to return to public schools that had been damaged or destroyed by Katrina.

“There were many charities helping in New Orleans after the hurricane, but it wasn’t always clear to me how the money would be used,” says Diaz. “I wanted to start an organization and guarantee that all the money raised would go to helping schools.”

Working through RocStar, Diaz and celebrity friends raised more than $250,000 for the foundation’s first project: rebuilding Diaz’s alma mater, West Jefferson High School, which had served as many as 6,000 students before it was destroyed by the storm. Diaz contributed everything from money and moral support to physical labor as the school was rebuilt.

“It was amazing going back, along with (NBA star) Alonzo Mourning, to help my old school,” says Diaz. “I cried. I just like knowing that the place where I have so many good memories is still up and running and will be providing good memories for new generations of kids.”

The RocStar Foundation later gave college scholarships to some West Jefferson students and has subsequently funded repairs to several other New Orleans schools.

In 2011, Diaz got involved with Get Schooled when the group’s foundation partnered with New York City to create the Wake Up! NYC campaign to fight truancy and chronic absenteeism in the public schools. Diaz and other celebrities recorded personal “wake-up calls” for students. When the program was launched, 6,500 students with attendance problems in 25 target schools began to receive the calls each morning.

“It’s cool,” says Diaz. “They hear me saying, ‘Wake up, get out of bed and get to school on time!’ The kids love getting a wake-up call from their favorite celebrity. They tweet me and say, ‘Was that really you?’”

Through Get Schooled, Diaz has also traveled to cities throughout the country to speak to thousands of middle school and high school students about the importance of education. In Los Angeles, at an event sponsored by Get Schooled and the chamber of commerce, she spoke to thousands of graduating high school seniors and their parents about how to apply for state grants for college.

“Education is by far the most important issue,” says Diaz, who has visited troops through the USO and supports animal rights and women’s health organizations. “I want to do everything I can to encourage youth to stay in school and go to college. If we put enough energy into it, I think there’s no limit to what we can accomplish.”

Michelle Sollicito

Today Points of Light Chairman Neil Bush will present Michelle Sollicito of Marietta, Ga., with a Daily Point of Light Award – during a 25th anniversary celebration of President George H. W. Bush’s presidency in College Station, Texas. President and Barbara Bush will be on hand to recognize the longtime volunteer. As we also look ahead to National Volunteer Week, April 6-12, read Sollicito’s story and nominate someone you know as a Daily Point of Light.

When a snowstorm swept across Atlanta in January, leaving thousands of motorists stuck in their cars for hours, longtime community volunteer Michelle Sollicito did what came naturally.

Sollicito, a web developer and old hand at using social media for community organizing, worked quickly with two other volunteers to launch the Facebook group SnowedOutAtlanta. It featured an interactive map, created by fellow volunteer Jelena Crawford, that enabled stranded commuters to post their exact positions via mobile phone, allowing them to connect to online users who could help.

The Facebook page went live at 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 28, the day of the storm. By midnight, more than 29,000 people had joined the group and more than 400 had been rescued or helped by other SnowedOutAtlanta users.

“The requests for help were varied,” says Sollicito. “Shortly after we were online, it was getting dark. People had already been stranded in their cars for hours. Some needed baby formula or diapers or medication, others needed their batteries charged, and some simply needed a warm place to spend the night.”

By the next day, 53,000 people had joined the group, and Facebook contacted Sollicito to tell her that the group was growing too rapidly for its servers to handle. The social networking site asked her to break SnowedOutAtlanta into smaller groups, which she did – dividing Atlanta from north to south, east to west, and adding suburbs.

SnowedOutAtlanta provided information about companies that were providing emergency shelter, such as Home Depot, and about citizens who were opening their homes up to those in need. It also let people know where they could get gasoline, have their car batteries charged or receive other essential services.

Sollicito and her family took in a man who had been stranded in traffic for 12 hours. He stayed the night.

“Neither he nor his wife could pick up their kids from school,” says Sollicito. “He finally learned that the school principal had driven the kids home. Many teachers and principals stayed at their schools until past midnight to make sure kids got home safely.”

By the time a second snowstorm hit Atlanta on Feb. 11, representatives of the state legislature, mayor’s office and utility companies, along with emergency responders, had joined Sollicito’s Facebook group. This time, thousands of Atlanta-area residents got help via SnowedOutAtlanta. For her life-saving efforts, Sollicito was honored by the Cobb County School District and presented an award at an Atlanta Hawks basketball game.

“It felt overwhelming,” says Sollicito. “Some in the media have tried to make me into a superhero. That’s a bit unreal because I couldn’t have done anything without the 50,000 friends who responded. I simply empowered them. Thousands of people have contacted me. Some have offered me gifts. I tell them to ‘pay it forward’ instead – to help others in the community.”

SnowedOutAtlanta was not Sollicito’s first experience in community service or her first use of social media outreach. Seven years ago, after her two children were born, she launched Marietta Moms – originally a website and now a Facebook group with more than 250 members – to connect mothers in Marietta and allow them to share information and resources online. According to Sollicito, Marietta Moms has a special mission to help low-income mothers, by helping them find jobs, affordable goods, entertainment and educational opportunities for their kids.

“I grew up with a single mom who worked three jobs,” says Sollicito, who volunteers daily as a reader in school classrooms. “I know what it’s like to be poor. It’s not your fault. I’m very lucky to have a successful career today, and I am committed to helping those who are struggling.”

Stacey Hoaglund

Stacey Hoaglund of Cooper City , Florida is dedicated to increasing awareness of the Autism Spectrum Disorder. She creates a culture and awareness that it takes a village. Her inexhaustible energy allows her to engage parents through trainings and support groups, and equip them with the tools they need to advocate for the educational and medical needs of their children.

In addition, Hoaglund provides training for organizations such as the YMCA and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which enables them to offer more of their services to children with autism. She has created recreational programs for autistic children that include field day events, sensory friendly movie days, surfing, and golfing. She has initiated autism resolutions with school boards and commissioners, coordinated art-project exhibitions at the state level, and written countless articles for publications such as the Autism Notebook.

Hoaglund possesses the gift of bringing people together for a greater cause. She empowers everyone she touches through a positive and collaborative approach; encouraging the input and participation of all community members, as they come to realize they each have something wonderful to bring to the fight for autism. Hoaglund’s passion is infectious and all inspiring. Those who know Hoaglund define her service as extraordinary in that she has dedicated her life to serving various autism causes. Inspired from her personal challenges of raising a son diagnosed with autism in 1997, her passion in bringing awareness is limitless, which keeps her at the forefront of the movement.

Kristen Lee

In 2011, Kristen Lee of Lewisville, Texas learned her father had a rare cancer, head and neck Neuroblastoma. Instead of crying and feeling sorry for her family, Lee, just 12-years old at the time, decided she wanted to do something beneficial for cancer patients.

As a result, she worked with her mother to organize and hold a garage sale. Right away, Lee started emailing friends and family to donate their gently used items for a sale in her backyard. Within days, friends and family began leaving donations on her porch, resulting in mounds and mounds of items for the sale.

Lee used the items to hold her first garage sale. She collected over $5,000 during her first sale. The second year, Lee enlisted three of her best friends to join her in the soon to be annual endeavor, and they raised over $8,000. Additionally, this past year they organized a third garage sale, bringing in $15,000. All the proceeds went to the American Cancer Society in a shoebox, which they earmarked for cancer research. This August, Lee and her friends are planning to hold their fourth annual sale and have a fundraising goal of $20,000.

Now, the entire community comes out in full force to help Lee with her garage sale. A garage sale that started as a small sale in her parent’s garage has now blossomed to a huge community annual event that needs storage units for all the donations. People now donate to Lee throughout the year, and it is an expected and annual event.

Each year, more and more people are diagnosed with cancer. In Lee’s neighborhood alone, she knows over 11 families with someone battling cancer, which is why she is choosing to dedicate her time to helping the research department of the American Cancer Society. In addition, Lee led a team at her local Relay for Life event, an annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. She and her team raised $15,000, totaling her donation to over $45,000 to the American Cancer Society in three years. Lee’s donations go towards cancer research, wigs, and transportation for patients getting to and from treatments.

Lee has always been one to want to help others. It started when she held a lemonade stand for a family whose house burned down. Then another year, a family friend’s husband died of cancer and she had held a lemonade stand to raise money for the family. Although those sales only raised $100, the looks on the recipients’ faces and the tears in their eyes that a little girl would do this, let Lee know that she loved to help people.

Rebecca Duda

Since becoming an eight-grade teacher in 2004, Rebecca Duda of Dracut, Massachusetts continues to demonstrate through her service to students what it means to be a lifelong learner.

Duda, an educator for Dracut Public Schools at Lakeview Junior High School, serves well beyond her duties as a teacher. She acts as an advisor and coordinator for several student clubs and programs including the National History Club, Model United Nations, Geography Club, and the school talent show. When available, she partakes in professional development opportunities including programs with the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute and the George Washington Institute at Mount Vernon. She has received several honors for her dedication to education including the Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award in 2009, the Outstanding History Club Advisor Award from the National History Club in 2011, and recognition for Student Excellence in Cultural Heritage by the Lowell National Park Service in 2011.

In addition to Duda’s many professional development opportunities and advisory roles, she is creative in her approach to teaching history in the classroom. Duda has brought the Holocaust to a vivid reality through a speaker, a Holocaust survivor. John Adams became a real person via the Boston Public Library. World War II was a living dramatization presented by Veteran’s Day speakers.

As far as community service, Duda has engaged students to assist with restoring Dracut’s oldest burial ground, the Claypit Cemetery. Working in conjunction with the Civil War Preservation Trust, Duda organized and supervised students in raising money to help protect land at Harper’s Ferry, a vital Civil War battle site. She led her history club students in a fundraiser to collect donations for the Lawrence Civil War Memorial Guard to help restore the Needham Memorial. All of these endeavors have proven success not just in funds raised, but also in demonstrating to her students the importance of preserving local history.

Many of Duda’s colleagues find it impossible to describe the number of extra hours and dedication that she has given to Lakeview Junior High School, and its students and community. However, they do agree that Duda embodies all the qualities and characteristics of a talented, knowledgeable, and wonderful teacher and human being.

Danielle Lindquist

Danielle Lindquist of Cary, North Carolina has spent the past 23 years, falling in love with animals. During high school, she volunteered every weekend at our local animal shelter if she was not already working at the local pet store. This passion carried her on to college, where she chose veterinary medicine as her career. Lindquist has worked every weekend, holiday and break since she was sixteen at her job as a veterinary assistant, caring for patients overnight during emergency shifts, cleaning kennels and consoling grieving clients.

Lindquist has always had a heart bigger than her chest could carry, leading her to start C.A.R.E. NC (Canine Assisted Rehabilitation for the Elderly of North Carolina) during her senior year as a pre-veterinary student at North Carolina State University. The C.A.R.E. NC program is a non-profit that dedicates its mission to improving the adoptability of shelter dogs, and training them to become therapeutic visitors for local assisted living facilities.

Along with a veterinarian, an animal behaviorist and professional dog trainer, Lindquist set up a working partnership among them with a common goal to gives pre-veterinary students the opportunity to work with shelter dogs that are waiting for a new home, and bring them to local assisted living facilities every week to meet the residents. These residents, many of whom had to give up their own dog when moving in to an assisted living facility, get the opportunity to be loved by a dog again.

Lindquist has dedicated the past two years to transforming shelter dogs into therapeutic visitors for local seniors. In this way, she and the C.A.R.E. NC team are able to fulfill a two-fold mission of increasing the likelihood of adoption for shelter dogs while motivating senior citizens through the healing power of pets.

Tess Reiman

When Tess Reiman of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida discovered she was too young to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity to build houses, she was determined to identify other ways to help families in need served by the organization.

Reiman began researching other ways she could help Habitat for Humanity families. Soon, she learned through BookSpring’s Reading is Fundamental (RIF) program that 61 percent of low-income families have no age-appropriate books at all in their homes for their children. In addition, she learned that many of the children do not have books for their new Habitat for Humanity homes.

As a result, Reiman started Project Storybook in the summer of 2012 to provide a basket of new books to children when they move into their Habitat for Humanity home. In a little over a year, she had raised enough money to present approximately 200 new books to roughly 40 Habitat families on their move-in day.

Today, Reiman has grown Project Storybook from a donation of books to one preschooler through Beaches Habitat for Humanity in Atlantic Beach, Florida to partnerships with Habitat of St Augustine and Habitat Orlando. Additionally, Reiman is tirelessly working to secure books for less than suggested retail prices so that her fundraising dollars go farther leading her to collaborate with First Book, a non-profit organization based out of Washington D.C. that works towards getting new “age appropriate” books into the hands of children from low-income families.