Betty Applegate

In the 1960s, there was a well-known area in Bloomington, IN known as “Pigeon Hill.” Many of the families in this area struggled to make ends meet while working at the local feed mill. Old photos reveal an array of shacks made of scavenged materials clustered on the hill, many with floors made of linoleum over dirt.

In 1968, a local church rummage sale resulted in a substantial amount of unsold merchandise, and the local church organization, now known as Monroe County United Ministries (MCUM), recognized a way to help the high number of low-income families in the community. The group approached Betty Applegate and Sally Cook, who took it upon themselves to create the Opportunity House resale store.
    
Betty and a committed group of women turned a small, rundown grocery store into a nonprofit dedicated to providing used merchandise of reasonable quality at rock-bottom prices to low-income families and others. Almost immediately, Opportunity House became a huge success, filling a need for those who were trying to make ends meet. During its first year of operation, Opportunity House raised $6,000, and by the second year, the funds raised rose to $17,000. By the fifth year, they raised $24,000.

As co-director, Betty spent countless hours recruiting, training and managing volunteers, working with the Board, fundraising, outreaching, and marketing. She also worked countless hours preparing items for sale, including sorting, mending, ironing, pricing and displaying used clothing and household items.

She committed herself to this multi-faceted role from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and although she no longer has the leadership role she once did, Betty continues to volunteer with Opportunity House to this day at age 89.

Though the majority of Betty’s service has been dedicated to the Opportunity House, her impact on the Bloomington community goes far beyond her contributions to the organization.  She has served the community in several service organizations for 45 years.

For 17 years, she served Alpha Chi Omega Sorority in positions as Chapter Advisor and Board President. She is a long-standing member and former President of Tri-Kappa, and a 50-year member of a Bloomington Chapter of PEO and Eastern Star, where she served as President. She was an active member on the Monroe County Library Board of Directors, founded and served as Director of the Bloomington Foster Home, and served as Director of Methodist Youth for First Methodist Church.

Betty has dedicated more than 40 years of volunteer leadership and engagement to the Bloomington community. She continues to positively changed lives and passes on the commitment to volunteer service to many.

Maryam Farooq

Maryam Farooq was never bullied at school, but she saw classmates endure teasing and insults. She lamented the crushing effect bullying had on her friends.

So Maryam, of Queens, N.Y., decided to act. In 2011, as an eighth grader, she founded a school chapter of No Place for Hate, a program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League that aims to fight bullying and create safer learning environments by promoting unity and respect. This year, when Maryam entered high school, she founded a chapter at her new school.She successfully secured a grant from the ADL to train 20 students as peer trainers. She has also traveled to several other schools to speak about the dangers of bullying and host anti-bias workshops.

“Some people don’t understand there are extreme consequences to school bullying,” says Farooq. “I observed it for years in school. And then friends who were victims of bullying began to tell me how depressed the experience of being bullied made them. They felt so low about themselves that they wished they could stay home rather than face more of it. Now, think about the fact that suicide is the third highest cause of death among youth. There are many reasons for that, but an unsafe school environment is one that we can and must address.”

Maryam says No Place for Hate appealed to her because, while it provides literature and guidance, the program lets students decide how to deal with bullying at their schools.

“Our No Place for Hate committees are free to brainstorm,” she says. “In middle school, we held No Place for Hate awareness days. … We held an all-school assembly hosted completely by students. And we persuaded teachers of art, English, history and math, to integrate discussing the problem of bullying into their class lessons for an entire week.”

At Maryam’s new high school, the No Place for Hate committee is just getting organized, but it has already held after-school “Snack and Chat” events to talk about bullying and let students know there is help.

Derrius Quarles

When he graduated from high school in 2009, Chicago’s Derrius Quarles set off for Morehouse College in Atlanta after winning more than $1.1 million in scholarships and grants. In national media, he was deemed the “million-dollar scholar.”Not satisfied with his own success, Quarles, in his junior year of college, founded a company, wrote a book, and launched a website—all aimed at helping current high school students find and win college scholarships. In just one year, his company, Million Dollar Scholar, has assisted more than 10,000 high school students online and helped students receive more than $950,000 in scholarships and grants.

Quarles is an unlikely subject of such a story. When he was four years’ old, his father was murdered. Taken from his mother by the state of Illinois, Quarles spent 11 years in south Chicago’s foster care system, and was told throughout childhood that he would amount to nothing. Quarles says he had a life-changing experience as a high school freshman when a biology teacher told him he had great potential that he was wasting and who encouraged him to work harder to get ahead.

“That’s when I decided to turn things around,” says Quarles. “I boosted my low grade point average by taking advanced-placement courses, and started researching college scholarships. It wasn’t easy. The students with the highest GPAs got direct institutional aid. Others had to look for outside help. There are giant books with names like ‘Go to College for Free’ that tell you little, or that are outdated, and there are profit-making websites that are just fake. Eventually, with guidance from advisors, I was able to find the genuine scholarship opportunities out there, and get tips on how to win them.”

In his final two years of high school, Quarles researched, applied for, and won scholarships and grants from Coca-Cola, Dell, Gates Millennium, Horatio Alger, Nordstrom, and other benefactors. The totals amounted to multiple “full-ride” scholarships. In 2013, Quarles will graduate cum laude from Morehouse with a degree in sociology—and debt-free.

“Given my background, my goal when I got to college was to go into a business with a strong community mission,” says Quarles, who speaks at schools to inspire students. “Million Dollar Scholar—one component of which is my book ‘Winning the Scholarship Race’— is my first venture. Who knows what the future holds. Right now, I’m just deeply moved and excited about what the company has done in its first year—when we were mostly in a learning process. Now we have measurable results, and I think the next two years will be amazing as we refine and build our online platform for helping students.

“I know for a fact I wouldn’t have been able to go to college without many people helping me—pouring into my life’s cup. They were my inspiration to help my own community, and then the larger community—people from all backgrounds—to gain access to the indispensable benefits of a college education and to leave school without the burden of debt.”

Larry Galuppo

Larry Galuppo’s long-term commitment to mentoring his Little Brother Landon exemplifies the enriching intergenerational relationships that can form as part of Big Brothers Big Sisters, a program that carefully pairs children (“Littles”) with screened volunteer mentors (“Bigs”) and monitors and supports these one-to-one mentoring matches throughout their course.

Galuppo is a retired Navy Commander, serving both active duty and reserve duty. In November 2003, Galuppo registered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Desert (BBBSD) after discovering that a retirement built around playing golf was less satisfying than he expected. Galuppo became a Big Brother Mentor to his Little Brother Landon in 2003 when Landon was seven and he was 66.

Now, Galuppo is 76 and Landon is 17, graduating high school and the pair are celebrating their tenth anniversary year as a match in the BBBSD program. The two have developed a family-like bond in the course of learning life lessons from each other. Landon has been inspired to overcome a learning disability and is college bound because of the sincere weekly support of his adult mentor, Galuppo. In turn, Galuppo has been rewarded by his own growth while participating in his Little Brother’s over all development.

Galuppo’s commitment lasting ten years, is BBBSD’s longest such mentoring relationship in the history of the 15 year-old nonprofit organization. According to Galuppo “the beauty of being a volunteer in this program is their motto is Make a Difference in the Life of a Child, and I add on to that, A Child Making the Difference in the Life of an Adult.” As a Senior Mentor for BBBSD, Galuppo serves as a volunteer spokesperson inspiring others to volunteer and to become donors to support the mentoring work in the desert.

Jean Kamrath

Columbus, Neb., is a small city where, for young people, the largest social event of the year is the high school prom. It’s also a city with high poverty rates, and each year hundreds of girls pass on going to the prom because of the cost of formal dresses.

In 2007, Jean Kamrath, a nurse at Columbus High School, started working to break down this social barrier. She launched Closet Extravaganza, a program that has provided free prom dresses – and often shoes, handbags and makeup – to more than 650 girls who otherwise couldn’t have afforded to attend their proms.

“I’m not trying to cure cancer or solve any other great problems, but I’m grateful that in my community, I can help girls in their formative, adolescent years feel socially included,” says Kamrath, who has worked at Columbus High School for 24 years.

Closet Extravaganza all began with one girl, Tammy, who stopped in Kamrath’s office regularly to have her blood sugar checked.

Jean Kamrath, left, and her daughter, Molly, stand among donated dresses.

“During one visit, I asked Tammy casually if she was going to the prom,” says Kamrath. “She looked very sad and told me it was too expensive. For some reason, I asked, ‘Would you go if you had a dress?’ and her face changed and she said, ‘Of course!’ So I called my youngest daughter, Molly, at college, and she said I could give Tammy any of her dresses. We found a nice, white satin dress, which I brought to school. Tammy tried it on in my office, flashed a smile as wide as Texas and said, ‘I’m actually going to the prom!’”

Kamrath then worked behind the scenes to get the girl a free ticket.

“Before I knew it, Tammy was back in my office with three friends, asking if I could find dresses for them as well,” says Kamrath. “I got back on the phone to Molly, who enlisted the help of her Gamma Phi Beta sorority sisters. They were incredible. Molly came home that weekend with a carload of dresses that her friends had donated. I realized then that we were running a program.”

Columbus High School agreed to let Kamrath use its media center for a day to distribute dresses. Kamrath sent letters to the city’s two other high schools. By the time of the first Closet Extravaganza event, Kamrath, Molly and Molly’s friends had gathered 200 dresses. Sixty girls showed up to shop for free, and all found dresses.

The program has grown steadily since. Because all Columbus high schools hold junior/senior proms, Kamrath holds Closet Extravaganza every two years to build up enough stock. Kamrath is now collecting dresses to distribute in February.

After its successful debut in 2007, Kamrath has been invited to appear on local radio to promote the program, and the Columbus Women’s Club has provided donations, including free shopping bags and subsidized prom tickets for girls from low-income families. In 2009, Mary Kay cosmetics came on board as a sponsor, providing free makeup kits to every Closet Extravaganza shopper. In Extravaganza’s biggest year, 2011, 250 girls found dresses from more than 700 that had been donated.

“It’s been a rewarding experience for me,” says Kamrath. “It helps these girls on many levels. First, they get to step out of poverty for a night and look and feel – and be treated – like princesses. But beyond that, it teaches them that they can achieve more, work for greater things in their lives, and live their dreams. I’ve seen it have that effect, and it keeps me excited about going to school each day.”

Northeastern Minnesota Synod “Journey” Volunteers

In the summer of 2012, 375 Minnesota high school students, accompanied by 100 adult supervisors and two organizers from the Northeastern Minnesota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, traveled to the hurricane-ravaged shores of Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, to aid residents whose homes had been damaged or destroyed and to clean hurricane debris from the area’s beaches, inland waterways, and forests.

The three-day “servant event” was actually a detour on a longer bus trip to New Orleans, where the students took part in the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering.

“The Youth Gathering is held every three years in a different city,” says Marty Hancer, senior pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Princeton, MN, and a co-organizer of the trip. “In Northeastern Minnesota, we decided many years ago that the we would build a community service element into each trip to the Youth Gathering. We call it the NMS Journey, and this year we chose the Gulf Coast of Mississippi as our ‘servant event’ destination.

Volunteers arrived to discover that many of the coastal residents they met, who were already cash-strapped from the damage to their property, were facing further charges from the government unless they removed debris from their property or made essential—and expensive—repairs to what remained of their homes. Both the students and adult coordinators rushed into action to help whomever they could.

“The students truly humbled me,” says Hancer. “So often kids get a bad rap. These kids wanted to help, and they were determined. They scraped muck with their hands, hammered open walls that were infested with cockroaches, and none of it seemed to even bother them because they knew the work had to be done.”

Hancer adds that outside groups were invaluable in helping plan the ‘servant event.’

“Holly Gibbs of HandsOn Mississippi did an absolutely amazing job of identifying critical work that each of our students could take part in,” he says. “The Audubon society and other conservation groups also helped us identify beach and inland areas that were still badly polluted with debris.”

Co-organizer Catherine Anderson, who is coordinator of the NMS Youth Ministry, says she believes the student volunteers take home valuable life lessons from “servant events.”

“They give, but what they bring home is just as great,” says Anderson. “Many of our students have never traveled outside their home counties before. An NMS Journey connects them with the larger world in life-changing ways. They come home seeing everything differently. They see problems in their own neighborhoods for the first time. And the want to keep serving—back in their own backyards.”