Orange County Animal Shelter
After undergoing the basic training procedures, I started to volunteer at my local animal shelter in June 2022. Every weekend I took the adoptable shelter dogs on morning and noon walks around the building and on trails and socializing with the adoptable cats and kittens. Soon, I became a special events volunteer, transporting and handling dogs and being responsible for adoption papers at adoption events at businesses, medical centers, and cafes in the NC piedmont region.
Town of Chapel Hill Parks & Recreation
In summer 2021, I started to volunteer at a long-term Parks & Recreation project where every month, community members come together to clean up Booker Creek, a trail in Chapel Hill. Our jobs were mainly to cut down invasive privet in the woods, make a big pile of privet along the side of trails for truck pick-up, collect litter, and plant native tree saplings. By this time, those three years of volunteering have really made me an eagle-eyed privet chopper.
When I first started volunteering, I wrote a story about this project as a reporter for Scholastic Kids Press, featuring the lead organizer Jeanette Bench and my younger brother, who comes to volunteer with me sometimes. Jeanette remembers me from back then and never fails to ask me how I’m doing every month I go to volunteer.
Over the years, I witnessed this project gather new faces (including my friends, who I pulled in to help) and move to different creeks after one trail was finished. Currently, we are on Bolin Creek.
Local Youth Sports Team
My younger brother and many of my friends do synchronized skating. One day, there was an opportunity to raise money for the team by volunteering at a food booth at NC State University football games, so my dad and I decided to help out.
Our responsibilities were to take orders at the kiosk/register, package popcorn into boxes, heat pizza up, take inventory of drinks and candies, etc. We were immediately thrown into a hectic rush-hour as football fans came one after the other to order. I learned to think then act quickly and multitask under pressure.
Chapel Hill Public Library
Since August 2022, I was a special event volunteer for my local library. This meant that I helped with the library’s community and outreach events. For example, on October 22, 2022, I helped the library event coordinator set up tables and stations on the trail outside the library for an outdoors event teaching young kids about bugs. During the event, I guided children and families to different areas and afterwards, I cleaned the event up.
Teresa Fang 