In 2003, the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation founded the President’s Volunteer Service Award to recognize the important role of volunteers in America’s strength and national identity. This award honors individuals whose service positively impacts communities in every corner of the nation and inspires those around them to take action too.
This Award honors the volunteers who are using their time and talents to solve some of the toughest challenges facing our nation. Now, more than ever, literacy is one of the toughest challenges facing our nation. Pared with learning to read, making true, meaningful connections to text is the key to unlocking the power of reading.
This year, we are honored to celebrate 6 volunteers who are making these meaningful connections happen. Feel free to watch the video of our ceremony for these incredible volunteers, as well as read more about each of them, below!
Anika Mehra is being awarded the Bronze Award in recognition of 103 hours supporting our Page Turners program. At last count, Anika has reviewed 24 books for our Page Turners program from her home in the Bay Area. Thanks to her thoughtful reviews, six of the titles have already been selected and added to Words Alive’s curriculum. As an example about how thoughtful Anika is she wrote this about the novel Stef Soto: Taco Queen by Jennifer Torres:
“This book inspired me to think deeply about real-world issues, such as how many immigrants who come to the US constantly have to face an uphill battle since they are not only in a new country, likely learning a new language and culture, but also having to face different social, emotional, and even economic barriers.”
Caleb Samson is being awarded the Bronze Award in recognition of 107 hours supporting the development of Words Alive’s curriculum in 2020. Caleb joined the Words Alive team as a curriculum writer and displayed a real talent for creating quality guides for both teachers and families. Every question or prompt he creates is thoughtful, purposeful, and fun – all of which is so important to our programming. He is excellent at writing curriculum for all ages – teens and toddlers alike, which is quite a skill! As an example, Caleb wrote curriculum so Words Alive could integrate Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay into our curriculum. The book, a National Book Award Finalist, was released less than a year ago.
Zoe Wong is being awarded the Bronze Award in recognition of 160 hours supporting Words Alive in better telling our story. Zoe started volunteering for us early in the pandemic to support our social media work. She had great ideas to contribute at our monthly social media strategy meetings and never hesitated to take initiative on those ideas and propel our online content forward. Zoe took on additional responsibilities to help us tell our story by connecting the Words Alive community in a virtual world. She has interviewed over a dozen members of the Words Alive community capturing and sharing their stories in video, blog posts, and through social media. In addition, Zoe leads a group of more than 10 volunteers to tell Words Alive stories through our blog and newsletters.
Teoman Yazar is being awarded the Bronze Award in recognition of 70 hours supporting our Page Turners program. At age 11, Teoman is our youngest volunteer being recognized with this award. We are so inspired by how committed he is to connecting other youth with the power of reading. Teoman has read 976 pages for Page Turners including The Whispers by Greg Howard, The Voting Booth by Brandy Colbert, The Wave by Todd Strasser, and The First Rule of Punk by Celia Perez. After reading The Whispers, Teoman shared that:
“[the book] taught me to think about what has happened and not just ignore everything bad that happens.”
Noshin Akhtar, is being awarded the Silver Award in recognition of your 91 service hours supporting Page Turners. Another Bay Area volunteer, and at just 15 years old, Noshin has reviewed 35 books for us in the past year. Titles on that list include First Rule of Punk by Celia Perez, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From by Jennifer de Leon, Jackpot by Nic Stone, and The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline.
Noshin began volunteering with Words Alive as part of the #CaliforniansForAll Summer of Service statewide initiative in 2020. She was searching for a way to help people while staying safe at home – and gravitated towards an opportunity to use her love of reading to do so.
Noshin’s insight into dozens of books is helping us identify the best titles to connect other teens with stories that reflect their lived experiences. I’d like to share with you powerful insight Noshin shared with us after she read Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhhà Lai.
“I tried to put myself in Hà's shoes and imagine myself as a 10-year old never feeling emotionally secure with only my mother and brothers to help and support me regardless of the rare kindness shown by the people of my new country, but soon realized that unless I'm cast out into another world with the offer of peace and comfort but still not finding it, I could never understand the genuine pain these immigrant children had to suffer from daily in a new and strange environment.”
Noshin shared with us that when she found Words Alive and the Page Turners program she instinctively knew she needed to join our book-loving community. In fact, she called it the “perfect opportunity for an over enthusiastic bookworm” like her. And we are certainly lucky to have Noshin in our book-loving community.
Annika Schafer is being recognized with the Gold Award in recognition of an extraordinary 416 hours leading and growing our Page Turners program. Annika has been a stellar volunteer for Words Alive for many years now, hosting book drives, writing curriculum, and even helping us with the behind-the-scenes infrastructure needed to produce our curriculum. In 2020 she stepped up for Words Alive in a major way. When the pandemic hit, Annika asked us how she could help Words Alive respond.
From her home in San Diego, and then her pandemic home-away-from-home in Upstate New York, Annika stepped up to volunteer to lead our Page Turners program.
She quadrupled the Page Turners volunteer base and expanded the program’s reach internationally.
She built an entirely new database and communications structure to help the program scale.
She designed and implemented strategies to recruit and celebrate our Page Turners community.
In this work, Annika managed relationships with Fortune 500 corporations and service groups from Brooklyn to Irvine.
Annika paved the way for Page Turners to be a volunteer-led program. She built the infrastructure to guide volunteers to contribute nearly 4,900 hours in support of the program. Said another way, every 1 volunteer hour Annika invested it resulted in volunteers contributing another 12 hours.
She has since trained a new cohort of volunteers to lead Page Turners and is stepping into her next volunteer role with Words Alive – hopefully helping us grow again. We are overjoyed to have Annika in our community – and are a stronger organization for her service.
Again, Congratulations to Annika, Noshin, Teoman, Zoe, Caleb, and Anika! We appreciate everything you have done for Words Alive. If you are inspired by these volunteers and want to join our team, click here.