Veronica Campbell

When Veronica (Ronnie) Campbell emigrated from South Africa to Chico, Calif., in 1979, she wasn’t accustomed to volunteering. For her, it meant shuttling candy and magazines around to patients who needed a distraction.

But, when she volunteered at Enloe Hospital in Gift Services, she discovered that wasn’t the case.

“Chico introduced me to the volunteer opportunity at Enloe,” she said. “It’s what I’d been looking for, and I’ve been at it for the past 17 years.”

In her role in Gift Services, she directs visitors to find patients in the hospital, she transports medications, and she works in the gift shop. Most significantly, though, she’s able to offer support to patients’ family and friends.

Campbell, right, at the Enloe Volunteer Appreciation.

For example, she said, she once sat with a gravely-ill man while his wife – who was reluctant to leave him – went home for a quick shower. Upon returning, Campbell said, the wife expressed her gratitude her husband, who later died that night, hadn’t been alone.

As part of her responsibilities, Campbell is also integrally involved with Enloe’s fundraising. Currently, the major focus is the new cancer care clinic. Recently, she organized all volunteers to host a gala that raised $172,000 for the endeavor. She also led another celebration that funded breast cancer services for survivors, such as providing for needed medications or hysterectomies.

But, Campbell doesn’t need an event or specific cause to gather money for Enloe. By talking with her fellow volunteers, she raised $5,000 to support patient services.

Volunteering at Enloe is easy, and there are many avenues for interesting parties, she said. Individuals can fill out an application, and they’ll also receive education and training to maximize their abilities to make a difference with patients. Being able to make a difference for patients on a daily basis is extremely rewarding, Campbell said, and she encouraged others to get involved.

“I’ve been retired since I started volunteering with Enloe, and my life is extremely fulfilling,” she said. “It’s a way to help patients and their families on a daily basis, and it fills my heart with joy and wonder.”

Alexandra Pereira

Kids inspiring kids… What would Adventurous Lexa do?

When she was 11, Alexandra Pereira decided she wanted to do something inspiring.  “I decided that I would have a platform on the importance of volunteering,” said the now-15-year-old New Jersey teen.

Because she loved giving back at her local animal shelter, Alexandra wanted to convince even younger kids that volunteering is not just important, but super fun and exciting.

Alexandra visiting her old elementary school, Battle Hill Elementary, to read her book.

So with the help of her mom Brenda, this IJM Miss Northern NJ Jr. Teen 2016 wrote and self-published a book called Adventurous Lexa.  She also formed a Facebook club by the same name, a clearing house for local volunteer opportunities geared to inspire her peers to get involved.

“I knew I wanted to reach out to younger kids, but I didn’t want to just bore them with lectures,” said Alexandra. That’s where her alter ego Lexa hits the stage.  The book tells the story of a plucky girl who enlists the help of her friends to keep the local animal shelter from closing its doors.  How do they do it? Why, by having a pet fashion show, of course.

“I read to the kids and when they see the pictures of the cats and dogs dressed up in little outfits, they just love it,” she said. Her story has inspired even little ones to volunteer to do everything from helping at the local shelter to walk for a favorite charity or send Christmas cards to soldiers.

“Volunteering is just so much fun and it brings joy to the person who volunteers.  I don’t think kids always realize that,” said Alexandra, who recalls the fun of learning to make blankets for kids with cancer. “It’s not only giving back, but you make others happy and yourself too,” she said.

Volunteering is something you can do in your own backyard, or anywhere in the world, added the teen. On a recent family trip to Portugal, it was Alexandra’s idea to visit a local orphanage for the day. “Our whole family went and we donated some things and played with the kids,” she recalled. “Me and my mom were thinking that every time you go on a vacation, there is a chance to volunteer. It’s my passion.”

Odunola Ojewumi

Each year, nearly half a million students in America drop out of school before receiving a high school diploma. With young leaders like Odunola “Ola” Ojewumi, that number is sure to decline.

Odunola Ojewumi

Ola is a staunch advocate of public education. Serving as a YouthTrustee for America’s Promise Alliance, she helps see the vision of High School graduation for all young people across the nation. Ola also founded Project ASCEND, a non-profit aimed at raising money for college scholarships. While she uses education as a tool to inspire, is it all that Ola endured that continues to inspire us all.

Diagnosed with a rare heart disease, she received a heart and kidney transplant by age 11. Spending so much time in and out of the hospital, Ola was not going to allow any limitations define who she was. Her ability to not just survive, but thrive after such circumstance exemplifies Ola’s courage.

“I experienced all the disabilities that come along with living with chronic illness. People expected very little from me,” said Ola. “So, I decided to prove them wrong and pursue my dreams at all cost.”

Feeling a need to help others, Ola decided to dedicate her life to public service. Her foundation, Project ASCEND, provides college scholarship to low-income youth, disabled college students, and females in her hometown of a Washington D.C.. Her grant program also extends support to education programs in West Africa and Central America.

Ola knows that she is not alone in her fight. She is aware that many of her experiences are the same hardships other face. Even in the face of fears, Ola inspires us all to go after our dreams.

“Even if my illnesses take my life, I can at least reflect and remember that I left an imprint on this world.”

If you’re interested in finding opportunities to engage in your community through service, please check out All for Good for projects near you! 

Jackie Einstein Astrof

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, Jackie Einstein Astrof began her career as a healthcare administrator in New York City and earned her MBA. Astrof worked in the nonprofit sector during the nationwide financial crisis of the late 2000s, and saw the serious impact it had on nonprofit fundraising and the resultant need for nonprofits to undertake strategic re-assessments.

Astrof had long been active as a community volunteer, and in 2010, she began researching the idea of bringing alumni from Penn, her alma mater, together to provide volunteer assistance to nonprofits. The result was PennPAC (“PAC” stands for “Pro bono Alumni Consulting”), a 501 (c) 3 organization that Astrof launched in 2011 with the help of eight core volunteers. Since PennPAC was founded, hundreds of Penn alumni have provided more than $2.5 million in pro bono consulting to 40+ different nonprofits—especially organizations assisting underserved communities and children.

After beginning in New York City, where Astrof lives, PennPAC expanded to serve the Philadelphia area, and Astrof hopes to expand to new cities. PennPAC volunteers, ranging from recent graduates to retirees, typically work on team-based projects for three to five hours per week for eight to 10 weeks. To date, PennPAC volunteers have spent more than 15,000 hours working on these pro bono strategic consulting engagements. PennPAC also hosts one-night, high-impact events for volunteers with less time but just as much enthusiasm to help nonprofits thrive.

“We are able to utilize fantastic resources—the intellectual capital and professional skills of Penn alumni—and put them to great use in a way that’s manageable with the other things in our volunteers’ lives,” says Astrof.

PennPAC volunteer consultants have provided nonprofits with assistance in areas ranging from market research and branding to income analysis and social media strategies.

A key success for PennPAC was its project to assist BSCAH, the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger in New York City. By producing an updated set of marketing materials for the nonprofit, PennPAC helped improve BSCAH’s fundraising by 44 percent in the year following the engagement. PennPAC also completed a “replication analysis” for Children of Promise, a Brooklyn-based organization that helps the children of incarcerated parents break the cycle of intergenerational involvement in the criminal justice system. The analysis helped Children of Promise properly plan for a second site to expand this successful nonprofit’s services to a second location in another high-risk NYC neighborhood.

PennPAC has also provided important and effective assistance to New York’s The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project), a nonprofit that works to provide media literacy to underserved teens through educational programs. Recommendations made by the PennPAC team resulted in a 34 percent increase in revenue in the year following the project.

Astrof says her inspiration to serve the community comes from her family.

“From the time I was very young, volunteerism was emphasized in my family,” says Astrof. “Both my parents are educators and both are consistently active in community service.”

Astrof, who is a mother of two, estimates that she works 25 hours a week for PennPAC—though she put in many more hours when she started the organization.

“I’m proud of what we’ve been able to do for these organizations that help so many in the community,” says Astrof. “And it’s great to see how much room PennPAC has to grow. What we’ve done so far has been with very little marketing of ourselves. I know that with additional resources to expand our capacity, there’s a lot more we can do to help nonprofits thrive.”

Jennie Pless

Talking about sex isn’t always easy. Add in the facts that surround the transmission of HIV/AIDS, and that conversation is one most young people avoid.

Jennie Pless

Not Jennie Pless, 21, a recent graduate from Georgia College in the town of Milledgeville. Plessie, who starts a double Masters’ degree program at Widener University in Chester, PA this fall, spent 1300 hours over the past four years volunteering with Aids Now Grasps Every Living Soul (A.N.G.E.L.S.)  Although initially drawn to fulfilling her service requirements at Habitat for Humanity, a cause that remains close to her heart, when Pless discovered A.N.G.E.L.S. she wanted to be involved.

“I met the woman who started the program at Georgia College when her son passed away from AIDS almost 20 years ago,” she recalled.  “I have always been an open person, but I wasn’t really raised to talk openly about sex.  But it’s so important to raise awareness and get rid of stigmas surrounding HIV/AIDs – that it’s not a condition that just affects gay people or men or black people. It’s something we as young people need to know.”

It’s a critical mission.  About 1 in 4 (26 percent) of all new HIV infections occur among youth ages 13 to 24, according to the Center for Disease Control. And nearly half of the 20 million new sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) diagnosed each year are among young people aged 15–24 years. 

As a student herself, Pless found that sometimes the day-to-day campus setting could hamper free exchange about such a sensitive topic.  “I felt that we needed to get the message out there, to where students were after classes,” she said.  So began Thursday Night Downtown, an evening initiative that reached out to the bar and café scene in downtown Milledgeville. 

Since she came onboard as a member of A.N.G.E.L.S., Pless and her fellow volunteers have handed out 8,000 condoms, many of them at off campus events and settings.  The former A.N.G.E.L.S. president also coordinated taking the student group to the AIDS Walk in Atlanta every year and helped organize fundraisers on campus, such as raffles at basketball games and spirit nights at local restaurants.

Her time with A.N.G.E.L.S. changed Pless’ perspective and influenced what she wants to do in the future – get her degree in public health surrounding issues of sexual wellness. “It’s all about taking the time to be informed, to get to know people as individuals and not judge anyone based what they do or don’t do,” said Pless, who plans to volunteer with a similar organization at Widener.  And if there isn’t one?  Not a problem, said this can-do changemaker.  “I’ll start one!”

Kori Keller

After the loss of their 2 day old daughter in 2011, Kori Keller and her husband Jeff started the  Ramsey Keller Memorial, which pays for funeral services for infants in the state of Montana. The organization’s mission is to allow parents who suffer the trauma of loss to pay tribute to their children, without worrying about the cost of those services causing financial stress on top of the emotional pain. The organization has also become a support network for families dealing with that type of loss.

Kori Keller

The Ramsey Keller Memorial is an organization unlike any other in Montana. While financial assistance can’t take away the pain of losing a child, it does remove stress from a family that’s already at a breaking point after their loss.  The organization provided more than $92,000 to hurting families in need of funeral assistance in 2015. In addition to funding funeral services, the network of fellow infant loss families is of lasting and permanent support to the community. 

The Ramsey Keller Memorial is the only place of its kind in Montana that provides funeral assistance for families suffering the loss of an infant.

Keller’s loss of her beloved Ramsey inspired her to do something meaningful in her daughter’s memory.  A loss such as that would break many of us, but Keller turned her pain into a positive force for the community.  She has curated a network to help families that find themselves in that same tragic place.  She devotes uncountable hours to the cause and is unfailingly persistent in her calling.  Because of her devotion, many Montana families have one less concern in their own time of tragedy.

Grieving can be a long process, especially after losing a young child. Keller is helping families on their grief journeys in the state of Montana. If you would like to support this foundation please learn more on their website.

Damien Banks

In Charlottesville, Damien Banks is bringing basketball back. In the past six years, he’s dragged youths and young adults away from the siren call of video games and reignited the community love of neighborhood pick-up basketball games.

Now in its 8^th season, the Banks Collage Basketball Tournament brings together teams from a 100-mile radius. Currently, teams play to a championship game with anywhere between 400 and 600 spectators watching. It’s a way, Banks said, to revitalize the community.

Banks and his wife at the tournament.

“Basketball had been dying out. No one was playing pick-up games – just video games,” he said. “I used to play a lot of basketball back in the 1990s, but when the 2000s rolled around everyone stopped playing. We brought the vibe back.”

In fact, he said, several players have been recruited to play professionally for international teams.

But, volunteering to create the tournament didn’t just re-spark an interest the sport. It also helped the community turn over a new leaf, Banks said. At one point, community violence threatened to halt the tournament altogether – a thought that served as a wake-up call.

“I announced we weren’t going to do the tournament because of violence, and everyone who followed me on Facebook, including those involved in the violence, contacted me and said they would make sure everything calmed down,” he said. “Everyone came to a truce so we could have the basketball tournament. Nothing happened, and it’s been good.”

Banks wanted to impact the community outside basketball, as well, because doing something positive for the community should be done without question, he said. Every year, his group runs a school supply drive to collect all types of school supplies and clothes for children from families in the community that might be struggling financially.

Last year, he said, his network raised more than $400 in roughly two hours to pay for supplies and school clothes for a high school freshman who considered resorting to pool tournaments to pay for what he needed to attend classes.

Ultimately, Banks said, he wants the tournament to grow into a farm system for both students and professionals. The goal is to, eventually, start a kids’ league to help them get funding to attend private schools.

“We want people to advance through us,” Banks said.

Bria Shay Neff

Bria Neff hears voices.

The 9-year-old Sioux Falls resident is tuned into a frequency not everybody wants to hear, a channel powered by a great loss and need, a hue and cry rising up from far flung corners of the earth. “If I was queen of the world, I would give every animal a voice,” says the pint-sized artist, who does just that through her portraits of endangered and threatened species.

Bria has been painting penguins and wolves, gorillas and elephants since she was eight. And in less than a year, through Pigtails Art, the website her mom Amity Shay Neff set up, the sale of those paintings has raised more than $1,600 for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit that aims to rescue and protect animals around the world. Her efforts have garnered some 1,400 followers on her Facebook page, inspiring friends and fellow animal lovers in 43 countries to donate or take action of their own.

“Bria has an organic desire to save wildlife whilst spreading awareness about endangered species and habitat loss,” says her mom, who home schools all four of her children, who range in age from 6 to 14. “Once she realized how many endangered species there were in the world, there was no stopping her. She felt she had to do something about it, to set an example of environmental stewardship.”

This is a little girl who never played with dolls, drawn instead to beasties of all types. “She always liked ponies and had a vivid imagination,” says her mom. “She was partial to animals in play, even when she was very young.” Although she was aware that her daughter loved to draw, it wasn’t until she was in first grade that Bria’s single-mindedness really registered. “She came out of her room with a large drawing of a tiger,” Amity recalls. “I said it’s beautiful – where did you copy it from? And she very clearly said, I didn’t copy it, I drew it myself.”

Although the only life drawing she’s done is of the family puggle Yoda, Bria researches photographs in books and online of endangered critters and draws from what she sees in their faces, making her portraits surprisingly moving. Her favorite animal is the wolf, because of its dire status. “There are only 94 Mexican wolves and 45 Red wolves left in the world,” she says. “That’s really bad.” Currently engaged in painting a grizzly bear, her typical process takes about two weeks. Bria’s talent won the IFAW Animal Action Art Contest last year, when she was in second grade.

“We’d love her to train with an artist when she’s older, to follow her own organic path,” says Amity, who dubs her home school program the Learning Garden Arts Academy, with its emphasis on artistic expression and learning of all kinds. For this family, which includes Bria’s siblings Abby, 14, Riley, 11 and North, 6, that learning includes giving back to others.

“We do community service projects as a family,” says Amity. “All of our children are raised to think about others and see where there is a need and do something to help.

I feel the one thing anyone can gain from Bria’s animal art conservation is that we can all do something to make the world a better place. moreover, we have an obligation to be better and to do more.”

Her tender age isn’t a factor in what she can accomplish, according to Bria, who is also passionate about Dr. Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots Program and the Wolf Conservation Center in Salem, New York.

“All children have the power to save the animals,” she said. It’s as simple as that. To support Bria and her efforts to save the endangered species, visit PigtailsArt.com and learn about these beautiful creatures.