Five years ago, when Christopher Cooley heard of the devastating tsunami in Japan, and then the destructive tornadoes in Hempfield later that same month, he wanted to help. He organized 50 students he taught at Franklin Regional Middle School — both to volunteer at the Red Cross in Westmoreland County and to fold origami cranes to send to a company in Seattle that would then donate $1 per crane to help Japanese victims.
Discussing the volunteer sessions with his students afterward, he asked them to raise their hands if they’d participated in a service project before — and was shocked to see only one hand go up.
“They had never been able to do service work because of busy schedules,” he said. “Parents are so busy filling up their kids’ schedules — with academics but also with athletics.”
Mr. Cooley, a math teacher, decided to create a group at the school focused on volunteer service. Called Serving Other Souls and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the group now encompasses 140 students, about 20 percent of the student body.
He is one of five finalists for Outstanding Volunteer of the Year Award for the Jefferson Awards, a national prize for public service that started in 1972. Locally, the program is administered by the Post-Gazette with sponsorship from Highmark and BNY Mellon.
PG Charities will give $1,000 on behalf of Mr. Cooley to go toward Serving Other Souls.
The winner of the outstanding volunteer will be announced at an invitation-only award ceremony at the Heinz History Center on May 5. The outstanding volunteer will represent Western Pennsylvania at the national Jefferson Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., this summer.
Serving Other Souls, or SOS, undertakes four major volunteer projects per year.
In the fall, they collect, sort and distribute enough food for a full Thanksgiving dinner for 150 families. They transition in winter to a clothing drive, gathering enough to open a “storefront” in two shelters, allowing homeless people to pick out jackets, boots and other gear.
A new project for next year will be an “empathy bowl,” in which students work with art teachers to make a ceramic bowl, which are then put up for sale.
In the spring, the group volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House and undertakes its largest event — the Miles of Smiles 5K at Boyce Park, which raises money to help families in the Murrysville area afflicted with cancer. The race, which will take place May 21, aims to raise $40,000 this year to assist four families. More information is available at www.sosmilesofsmiles5k.org.
The projects require major logistical planning and coordination — Mr. Cooley, 43, who has a wife and two children of his own, estimates he spends 40 hours beyond his regular work week on SOS business during busy weeks, and 20 hours on non-busy weeks. His reward is not only helping members of the community but also teaching the students lessons they wouldn’t learn otherwise.
Denis Marney, of Penn Hills, decided to nominate Mr. Cooley for the award after volunteering at several events. “The kids — they seem excited about it and everything,” he said. “It gives them good exposure to how the other half lives.”
Mr. Cooley believes that the relatively homogeneous world that his students live in limits their interactions with those who are different from them, hindering their ability to develop empathy. And he believes that empathy is the key to preventing bullying, which can be devastating in the middle school years.
To develop empathy, he encourages the students to interact as much as possible with those they are serving — discussing questions they can ask the homeless, for example, or what they can say to the families of sick children at the Ronald McDonald House. “The kids have no idea that there is this need unless they see it,” he said.
For the students who are most involved, he can often see a change in them as they gather more experiences and more responsibility. “They are much more willing to do the kind thing,” he said. “If someone does something wrong, they are less critical.”
Mr. Cooley is hoping to expand the program to other schools and encourages any school districts that are interested to contact him.
Anya Sostek: asostek@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1308.
First Published: April 26, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
