“We were one big family. It wasn’t about where you were from, your race or anything like that. It was about helping people out.” - Timothy Alabi ’09

Timothy Alabi ’09 and Hammed Alabi ’07

Brothers Timothy ’09 and Hammed ’07 Alabi of Riverdale, Md., both learned a greater appreciation for life when they traveled with a group of Albright students to New Orleans last year to help rebuild the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged city. Planning to return again this semester, they say they can’t wait to get back.

“The unity of the people down there really lifted me up,” says Timothy, a business administration major. “We were one big family. It wasn’t about where you were from, race or anything like that. It was about helping people out.”

Helping people out was exactly what they did. They gutted homes, cleaned up mold, helped a homeless shelter build a garden…”anything we could do, we did,” says Timothy.

Hammed, a criminology major, says he wanted to go to New Orleans because the government wasn’t doing its part to aid the Gulf Coast region. “I felt like it was my duty to support my fellow Americans, my people, since I had the opportunity.”After working day in and day out for a week, witnessing indescribable destruction and feeling completely humbled by the experience, both Timothy and Hammed were saddened to leave.

“After leaving New Orleans I had a sense of guilt. I felt like I was abandoning my people…like I was going back to an almost perfect family, when some people in New Orleans didn’t know if they would ever see their families again,” says Hammed. For Timothy, “it felt like home. I just wanted to help as much as possible.”

Both learned valuable life lessons.

“There are people in our country who have huge hearts who really do care about others,” says Hammed. “Everyone needs help sometimes.”

Erica Rubin ’08 and Erin Jagielski ’07

Erica Rubin ’08 and Erin Jagielski ’07 were volunteers long before joining the Albright family.

Rubin, an education major from Lansdale, Pa., has served on the American Red Cross Penn-NJ Blood Region Board of Directors since she was 16, and is a founding board member of Spark the Wave, an organization that empowers teens to be better volunteers.

Jagielski, who hails from Reading, Pa., and is studying business adminis-tration and communications, has helped to promote events for the American Cancer Society since she was in high school.

This passion is what led them to their jobs as co-advisers of the Albright Volunteer Center. The center’s mission is to make sure that volunteer opportunities are available for Shirk Scholars who must contribute 25 hours of volunteer time per week as part of their scholarship, as well as for the greater Albright community.

Clearly, they’re doing a fine job. Karen Evans, director of the Albright Volunteer Center, says students, faculty and staff volunteered approximately 10,000 hours during the 2005-2006 academic year.

Jagielski isn’t surprised by that figure. “A lot of it has to do with being at Albright,” she says. “In classes the professors really drive home that we should get involved, do something extra and make a difference.”

Rubin knows that it’s possible to make a difference. “They say today’s youth are the leaders of tomorrow, but they really are leaders today. People my age and younger really can change the world.”

“They say today’s youth are the leaders of tomorrow, but they really are leaders today.” – Erica Rubin ’08