What would our year be without our volunteers? Each and every day, our advocates on the ground work tirelessly to ensure lawmakers are prioritizing kids and community members are being educated on issues impacting our youngest citizens. In 2019 alone, we mobilized 446 volunteers in targeted communities around the country and 330,000 online supporters. Now that’s something to cheer about! The best part is 2020 is looking even better.
As we gear up to enter the new year with a stronger, bigger and more powerful supporter base, we wanted to highlight a few of our new volunteers from 2019 who went above and beyond. These advocates, along with our many others, participated in tabling events, candidate events and met with various lawmakers to advocate on behalf of kids. Want to meet who we’re talking about? Check them out below!
Patrick Karemera from Iowa
Patrick Karemera became a volunteer with Save the Children Action Network (SCAN) in July this year. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrick is very familiar with Save the Children’s work in Africa and around the world. During his time at SCAN, he has volunteered to march in a parade, attended two Democratic presidential candidate events and presented on his experience growing up with children impacted by war zones during our Stop the War on Children week of action.
Jaime Odister from Michigan
Jaime began volunteering with SCAN this summer. She is an active member of Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children (AEYC), a proud SCAN partner, and has gotten involved in advocacy for kids this year, signing community members up for SCAN at summer events and even crowd canvassing at the Democratic presidential debate in Detroit.
Margaret Campbell from New Hampshire
Margaret was motivated to become a SCAN volunteer because of her strong belief that all children deserve to be safe, healthy and educated. Since she’s joined SCAN, she has become an integral part of our group of volunteers in New Hampshire, especially when it comes to our High 5 For Kids campaign. She’s organized two presidential candidate debate watch parties, tabled and canvassed door-to-door urging voters to support candidates who will invest in kids, and successfully bird dogged candidates for president and governor of New Hampshire.
James Escamilla from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque
James studies Political Science and International Studies at the University of New Mexico. He joined the Student Ambassador Program in the spring of 2019, and since then, has worked to start a Save the Children Action Network club at his school. James is a passionate advocate and is always thinking about ways to recruit additional Student Ambassadors and club members. He is using the Student Ambassador Program to connect his college course work to real-life advocacy campaigns for kids.
Vanessa Byers from Tennessee
Vanessa joined SCAN earlier this year after attending our national Advocacy Summit. In fact, that experience was so powerful for Vanessa – specifically advocating on Capitol Hill – that it’s one of her favorite memories since joining our team of volunteers. She says SCAN has helped her develop many skills including leadership, perfecting elevator pitches, using Twitter for good and most importantly, how to use her voice intentionally. “One of my goals was to learn about advocacy,” she says. “I had a desire to start using my voice for the good of others, but didn’t know where to start. When [I was] invited me to learn about SCAN, it was an answer to the seed planted in my heart.”