Our AIM Foundation
Lauren Schumacher
Johanna Zeilman
Nancy Williams
Nicole Alexandra Perez
Susan Wells
Team Coach
Karin Rosain
Sometimes volunteering locally can affect change half way around the world.
As a public relations expert, Karin Rosain became involved with Lahash International assisting the Portland, Oregon based organization with their strategic communications needs. That relationship would not only change Karin’s life, but it would also impact the lives of orphans living in East Africa.
For the past five years Karin has become more deeply involved with Lahash, an organization that assists in advocating and caring for vulnerable people in neglected regions of Africa. Karin served as event director for Lahash’s first-ever fundraising banquet that raised more than $14,000 for repairs to an orphanage in Uganda. The funds allowed the orphanage to install solar power, new latrines and a new roof for several of the dormitories.
In January 2010, Karin launched a grassroots advocacy and fundraising initiative through Lahash called Project 34.8. She trained to run a 34.8 mile (56K) ultra-marathon to raise $4,800 to pay for the school fees of 12 Sudanese orphans. Karin completed the Two Oceans Ultra-Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa on April 3, 2010 and raised more than $5,500. While in Africa for the race, Karin used an 8-week sabbatical provided by her employer, Waggener Edstrom, to spend a month volunteering with Lahash s partners in Uganda and Sudan. She lived and worked at Amazing Grace Orphanage and St. Bartholomew's Orphanage, gathering stories for several advocacy projects, as well as providing tutoring and mentoring secondary school students.
Sarah Nadarajan
High school students have notoriously developed a reputation for using their parents as an unlimited ATM machine, seemingly unaware of any financial discipline.
Sarah Nadarajan dispels this stereotype. The West Salem High School student not only assists in running a credit union on the school campus, but she is project manager for a group of students who wrote a book to teach financial literacy to elementary students.
Students of West Salem High School graduate with skills beyond the core competencies of reading, writing and arithmetic. Thanks to collaboration with MaPS Credit Union many are graduating with business management skills and solid financial understanding. Under the guidance and mentoring of Credit Union employees, students operate and manage the school branch. The Titan branch of MaPS Credit Union provides a real life lab for business students and provides the entire student body an opportunity to develop important financial skills including developing a savings programs and learning to utilize banking services.
Sarah and a group of peers sought to expand the financial literacy program to include younger, area students. Sarah was instrumental in developing a creative Financial Literacy project for Chapman Hill Elementary School. She and a team of students wrote and self-published a book entitled “Billy’s Bike” to read to 2nd graders about the basic financial concept of savings. The team organized field trips for the four second grade classes to visit the Titan branch at the West Salem High School campus. The elementary students completed some age appropriate financial worksheets, toured the branch, counted real money and worked in the computer lab to complete online financial literacy games. The program reinforces math skills and the teachers are optimistic that applying math skills to real life situations will translate to improved math testing scores.
Sarah led a group who applied for a grant to fund the publishing of “Billy’s Bike” and won first place in a DECA competition for marketing students, documenting the growth of the entire financial literacy program.