Editor’s note: Each day this week The Dispatch profiled a community volunteer as part of National Volunteer Week. National Volunteer Week, April 10-16, is about recognizing volunteers and encouraging others to make a difference in the community.
On Wednesday, Clara Ortega and a group of over 20 young volunteers gathered at Loaves and Fishes to prepare a healthy meal which they served to 97 people.
The meal was an event for National Volunteer Week and Global Youth Service Day, which Ortega has worked with Volunteer Columbus director Renee Sanders to put together. It’s the second year in a row that Ortega has worked to get young people engaged in volunteering through her work at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library, where she has worked for two years. Ortega, 23, is the adult and teen services coordinator.
Last year, Ortega put together a volunteer fair at Mississippi University for Women, giving nonprofits a chance to recruit students from campus. The day also included volunteer and educational projects on topics like environmental projects to online safety. Her efforts are all to get people between the ages of 5 and 25 involved in volunteering and community service.
The volunteers at Loaves and Fishes Wednesday were mostly from West Lowndes schools, the Mayor’s Youth Council and Mississippi University for Women, Ortega said. Ortega had arranged for the group to spend Tuesday night working with Wilson Beck, the chef at Zachary’s, learning how to prepare and serve the healthy meal. In addition to serving 146 meals — which included seconds and meals for the volunteers themselves — the volunteers had a story time with the children at Loaves and Fishes. The volunteers read to the children, supervised a craft for them to do and gave their parents information about literacy and the importance of learning to read at an early age.
The project combined two of Ortega’s volunteer interests: hunger and literacy. Raised in California, she had always heard that Mississippi’s literacy rates were among the lowest in the nation but had never really thought of it as a problem until she moved to Columbus and saw the results firsthand.
“I think it’s important to get (kids) reading before kindergarten so that once they’re there, they can just keep building on those skills instead of trying to catch up with the rest of (their class),” she said.
Ortega didn’t begin thinking of hunger as a problem until a few years ago when she was teaching music lessons to a family of five children. One day she was cleaning out her pantry and thought she’d give the family some of her food. She was shocked to see that one of the children was excited to get corn. The family simply didn’t have much money to get a lot of variety of food, she said. Ortega said the family, which had a house and two cars, seemed completely normal on the outside.
“Hunger has many faces, and it’s not always easy to see who needs (help),” she said.
Next generation
Ortega and Sanders’ efforts to coordinate a service week for youth this year are projected to get over 500 youth involved in volunteers efforts, Ortega said.
“Half of the world’s population is under the age of 25,” Ortega said. “So pretty soon all of us are going to be adults and out here in the community. And I feel if we don’t have that heart or need to serve — it kind of worries me. I want to instill that in our youth.”
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