Jamie Blake, West Virginia Wesleyan College

Jamie Blake, a third year student at West Virginia Wesleyan College, understands how people work together to get things done in rural communities because she has lived the experience firsthand. She has spent more than 600 hours in the last three years volunteering as a Wesleyan Service Scholar at an after school and tutoring program; raising awareness about local hunger and poverty; coordinating massive food drives for local hunger relief; and building a new local nonprofit organization committed to serving at-risk youth through targeted mentoring and summer community camps. Her knowledge of the challenges that children and youth face combined with her real-life organizing experiences make her uniquely qualified to serve children effectively as an educator someday. She has ‘worn every hat’ by coordinating volunteers, serving others in relationships one-on-one, mobilizing people to action, and creating awareness of the challenges that youth face. She will undoubtedly live a life of civic engagement as an invested community member, committed to making the world a better place one child at a time.