Liliana Arias
According to the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, as of late 2017, ten percent of the population of North Carolina, over a million people, the majority of those being Hispanic or Latino, were without any form of health care. Vidas de Esperanza, a nonprofit organization operating out of free clinics in Siler City and Durham, is determined to help counteract that deficit. Opening once a week on Saturdays and sporting bilingual staff, it provides free basic dental and medical care to their communities. Freshman Liliana Arias is there every week as a volunteer.
“I mostly take patients’ blood pressure and sugar and enter patients’ data into the system for the doctors,” Arias said. “I love helping out around there.”
Arias’ father, a Mexican-American immigrant, started the organization in 2004 in response to hardship in his hometown of Ixmiquilpan. It was years later when he decided to expand the Vidas vision beyond their original outreach plans and start focusing some of their efforts closer to home. Arias herself has been helping out since she was very young; she and the organization have matured side by side.
“I wanted to get involved [because] I really like helping people,” Arias said. “That’s really it. It’s not because my dad runs the place.”
Arias seeks to further her interests in medicine and pursue a medical career when she’s older, following in her father’s footsteps in improving quality of life for the overlooked and, as the Vidas website reads, “breaking down social and cultural barriers.”
Anisha McFadden
Saving the world is no easy feat, and yet, junior Anisha McFadden works with a group aiming to do exactly that.
Healthy Girls Save the World (HGSW) is a summer camp and program being instituted in many middle schools across the state that aims to teach good habits to the next generation of women. After an injury brought UNC basketball player Camille McGirt’s career to a halt, she decided to take a gap year in Washington, where the model for HGSW was inspired by her White House internship under the Obamas. She founded the non-profit with her sister Rachel the following summer (nearly seven years ago), garnering partial funding from her former college. Their website reads that “the mission of Healthy Girls Save The World is to provide transformational experiences and education on proper nutrition, the benefits of physical activity, and overall healthy lifestyles so that girls will be knowledgeable and enabled to make healthy choices in their lives.”
McFadden, a camper turned counselor, describes their goals similarly.
“Healthy Girls Save the World is a program where they encourage a lot of healthy lifestyle choices, like drinking water, meditation, working out, having extracurriculars,” McFadden said.
McFadden attended the camp twice during middle school and first started volunteering there over the summer before her ninth grade year, when she was still too young to be an official counselor. Returning every summer after, she’s since been promoted and enjoys the impact she gets to have on young girls, especially racial minorities like herself.
“I feel like a lot of our young, black girls or Hispanic girls or any underrepresented minority… many of them don’t have the right home background,” McFadden said. ”And they need that encouragement—a camp to go to where they see older girls who can be their role models.”
Mallory Storrie
Mallory Storrie has been dancing for more than 11 years at Dancer’s Workshop in Sanford. In this time, she has formed very close relationships with the other girls in her company. Being an only child, Storrie says she’s found “sisters” there. Among these is 10-year-old Ella, who has multiple immune disorders, including alopecia, which causes hair loss. Ella had lost significant portions of her hair before, but last year, she lost it completely and was told there was little chance of it ever growing back. This was not only a cosmetic concern, but a creative one as well.
“As a dancer, it’s really hard to portray something without your whole body,” Storrie said. “To a lot of people, your hair is something that really gives you a lot of character. That was very important to her.”
Storrie refused to watch her friend’s confidence in their shared art form suffer due to her condition and decided to help out in the only way she knew how: She cut 16 inches off of her hair and raised over $1,600 in donations to have a wig made for Ella.
“Now, she wears it and she loves it,” Storrie said. “And I told her, ‘Wear it when you want, don’t wear it when you want. This is for you, and you’re beautiful without it,’ but she deserves to have it. She’s a wonderful girl.”
Storrie is happy that Ella can now perform at her fullest.
“I’m not somebody who usually gets emotional about watching people dance, but if you watch her dance, it’ll make you cry,” Storrie said.
Morgan Simmons
There are few feelings in the world like that of a child opening presents. When you’re a kid, you want all kinds of crazy things, and the excitement that comes with the possibility of getting them is incomparable. Senior Morgan Simmons has always liked presents just as much as the next girl, but every year for over a decade, she’s refused them.
“When I was in first or second grade, I told my mom I didn’t want anything for my birthday,” Simmons said. “I still asked for presents, but I asked for donations to Toys for Tots.”
That was Simmons’ first birthday without gifts, but it wouldn’t be her last. She’s kept on the tradition of asking for donations to underprivileged children instead—and not just on that one day a year.
“It expanded from there,” Simmons said. “My sophomore year, I was in sports marketing, and I suggested that we take up Toys for Tots as our class project. I got so much support. There were kids in the class who joined and also asked their friends to. My junior year was when it was fully developed into a club.”
Simmons is the founder and current president of Northwood’s Toys for Tots club, which she believes is causing a lot of positive change. She originally wanted to get involved because of a need she saw in her hometown of Moncure.
“Moncure can be an underprivileged area, so I had a lot of friends that didn’t have nearly as much as I did,” Simmons said. “They were missing meals, having to stay home to take care of their siblings. Realizing how close to home it all was really impacted me.”
Simmons greatly enjoys the more interpersonal side to her service that comes with the distribution of toys.
“You can actually see where your change is occurring and it’s really nice,” Simmons said. “Toys for Tots grows every year, and it’s really making a difference.”
Get involved:
http://healthygirlssavetheworld.org
http://www.vidasnc.org
https://pittsboro-nc.toysfortots.org
http://www.locksoflove.org
– Compiled by Chase Miller
