Hot Doggin’ It — For Aly Olson, 13, a life of giving started with serving just one meal.

PROFILE
Name: Aly Olson
Grade: Seventh
Chapter: Southwest Polk County
Fast Fact : Olson volunteers at a homeless shelter, where she’s been dubbed “the hotdog girl” because she likes to dish up the dogs.

Read the interview with Aly and her mom

Anyone who thinks kids can’t make a big impact through volunteering never met Aly Olson. The 13-year-old Thrivent Financial for Lutherans member from Des Moines, Iowa, has a resumé of volunteer work stretching longer than that of most people three times her age.

Aly began serving meals at a homeless shelter when she was in second grade and has been hooked on giving of her time and treasures ever since.

“I saw how much one meal to one homeless person can do, and how that can brighten a person’s day,” Aly says. “I really found how amazing and cool it is to volunteer.”

Since then, Aly has led her peers at church and school in several volunteer efforts, including a garage/bake sale to benefit a dance teammate who needed a heart transplant and a soda can drive to raise funds for the victims of the Asian tsunami. Funds raised at both events were supplemented by the Southwest Polk County Chapter of Thrivent Financial. The garage/bake sale raised $2,132, which was supplemented with $1,500. The soda can drive raised $286, which was supplemented with $100. Aly is also a Sunday school assistant and acolyte at her church, St. Mark Lutheran in West Des Moines.

And what does Aly say to kids who think they’re too young to make a difference? “It’s incredible how one act of kindness and volunteering can change somebody’s life,” she says. “Just try it with an open mind, and be positive and really hopeful.” 

As part of the interview process for the Summer 2006 article, In Recognition in Thrivent magazine, MSP editorial assistant Sarah Asp, spoke with Aly Olson and her mom, Carol, about what volunteering means to them. In November 2005 Aly was crowned Miss National Preteen in part due to her volunteering. Carol Olson is the manager of Lutheran Community Services for the East-Central Iowa Region of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. In speaking with both Carol and Aly, it is evident that the Olson family has passed down a legacy of volunteering. Following is an excerpt of the interview.

Q: Aly, your volunteer activities are very impressive. How do you find the time?
Aly: I don’t really find the time; I make the time to volunteer. One of my favorite things, which really has become kind of a tradition, is volunteering at the homeless shelter. We do that through our church, and I think it’s really fun. Volunteering doesn’t take a lot of time if you just put in some hours here and there. It adds up, and it really can help a lot of people.

Q: Why do you volunteer? Why is it so important?
Aly: I volunteer because it’s giving something of yourself to people who need help. The benefits of it are amazing. It makes you feel very accomplished and proud and like you’ve really done something. Volunteering was part of the criteria for the Miss National Preteen Pageant, but I was volunteering long before the pageant. At my state pageant, I won a volunteering award and that was exciting. At Nationals, I placed very highly in the volunteering section. I think it gives you something more when people see you can adjust to different environments; you can be comfortable with different people; you like to help people and give of yourself; and you want to try to help people who are going through struggles to get through those struggles. I just want to make the world better.
 
Q: Do you have a favorite way to volunteer?
Aly:  One of my favorite volunteer activities is at the homeless shelter. I also really enjoyed volunteering for the Easter Seals benefit concert. That was just awesome because it was fun to meet other Thrivent Financial for Lutherans volunteers and members and to work with those people to put on this fabulous show. We handed out tickets and order forms, and we raised the awareness of Easter Seals and people with disabilities. But we also raised awareness of Thrivent Financial. It was just really fun.

Q: Tell us more about the Easter Seals event:
Aly: Michael Martin Murphy came to perform. But the coolest part was the Wild West show in the second half. We used shotguns and had horse riders, and I was able to participate. I rode atop a stage coach, and it was so exciting because the horses were galloping. There was a man a few feet above my head shooting a gun off. There wasn’t much to hold on to, but it was very exciting.
Carol: It was held Sept. 17, 2005, in Dayton, Iowa, a small community that is kind of a rodeo community. It was the second year that we’ve done the event through the Regional Financial Offices volunteer project, so Thrivent Financial underwrote all of the expenses of the concert. That means 100 percent of ticket sales went to benefit Easter Seals.
Aly: We promoted the concert by going to the Dayton rodeo, and we also participated in the Dayton rodeo parade. We handed out flyers, and we had a booth for people to come and talk to us.
Carol: Michael Martin Murphy is a member of Thrivent Financial, also. He sang the song “Wild Fire,” back in the 80s, and now he’s a cowboy singer. So it was that western crowd we were attracting, but also kind of an Americana theme with a Wild West sort of theme.
Aly: It was an awesome show!

Q: Who inspires you to give back?
Aly: The people at my church inspire me; they volunteer a lot. I started volunteering by serving meals at the homeless shelter. I saw how much one meal to one homeless person can help, and how that can brighten a person’s day. I really found how amazing and cool it is to volunteer. My mom also inspires me because she volunteers a lot through Thrivent Financial.  With her job, she puts in a lot of hours to help people who are also volunteering. It’s just what we do, so it’s really cool.

Q: How do kids your age react to your volunteering? How have you motivated them?
Aly: It’s hard to say. But my school has held many food drives, and the participation from the kids is amazing. People bring in boxes and boxes of food. We sponsored a Toys for Tots program through our school, and it’s great how many people brought in toys. Lots of people didn’t understand at first, but I would tell them how you’re making someone’s holiday special or somebody’s life special and really helping them out with the food or the fun toys.
Carol: In Aly’s sixth-grade confirmation class—that was a year ago when there was the tsunami—they talked about helping through her church group. Aly came home and said “You know, Mom, I would like us to do something more about it.” I told her that her class could probably do a fund-raiser, and if they get some other families involved, Thrivent Financial might even supplement it. So, she thought of the pop can idea.
Aly: The pop can drive was something that was really easy to do. We just put up some signs and put some notices in our church bulletin. We had so many pop cans and bottles in our classroom at church. Literally half the room was taken up with plastic garbage bags.  Everybody was so excited by the idea that our little fifth- and sixth-grade group of kids in Iowa could be helping out people who were affected by the tsunami on the other side of the world. We raised $300, and Thrivent Financial matched the funds that we sent to the relief effort.

Q: What would you tell kids who say ‘I’m too young to make a difference?’
Aly: I would tell them that they can’t make that judgment until they’ve actually tried to do something.  If you just try it, you can really see how much one thing can do. It is  amazing how one act of kindness and of volunteering can change somebody’s life and really help them through that. Just try it with an open mind, be positive and be really hopeful. 

Q: Are you currently volunteering anywhere?
Aly: Right now I’m serving as a Sunday school assistant, helping my mom with her Sunday school class. And I’m an acolyte for my church, too.  Just recently I auditioned for the Miss Iowa talent show. If I get in the show, I will perform for it and that money they raise will go to charity. I was in the charity talent show last year and just auditioned to be in the show again this year, which will go toward Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Q: Carol, how have you tried to foster a spirit of volunteerism in your home?
Carol: By encouraging my kids to jump into anything, even things that aren’t real familiar to them. Whether they’re ringing the bell for the Salvation Army or helping out at a Race for the Cure, I go with them and stay there with them. But I always let them do it themselves. I stay in the background to support them, but I want them to be in the front doing the activity.  When we go to the homeless shelter, and they’re serving the meal, we try to find some aspect of preparing and serving the meal that they really like.

Q: Aly, what part of serving do you like?
Aly: I am known as the hotdog girl because I always serve the hotdogs. Our church always serves chilidogs. And I always dish up the hotdogs, where I get to see the people and talk to them. It’s always interesting to see who comes up for the most hotdogs! For me, I can really see how it helps people and can really see how these people need the meals at the homeless shelter.

Q: What are some of your favorite examples of when you and Aly volunteered together?
Carol: The homeless shelter because we’ve been doing it for so long. Aly’s been doing it since second grade, and she’s now in seventh grade. Also, I enjoy when we do benefits for individuals and families we know.  We had benefit for a 13-year-old girl who had a heart transplant and is a friend of our family. Those are meaningful because you know the family and you know the family desperately needs assistance. It’s a personal experience; you can immediately see the results of what you’re doing and the appreciation on their faces. Other activities are incredibly worthwhile, like the Tsunami victims, but we weren’t able to meet the victims.

Q: What is the best way for parents to get their kids excited about volunteering?
Carol: Start with something easy and that seems simple, something that the kids can be in charge of as much as they can. Having kids raise or collect a bunch of pop cans is something they can take ownership of. Every kid has something they like to do. Some kids like getting in front of the church or school body or 4-H club and talking to them about an activity. Some kids really like to make signs; they’re artsy, and they like graphic design. Other kids love getting on the Internet and doing e-mail notification to a lot of people. Give them a role in that fund-raiser that lines up with what they like to do.
Aly: I absolutely agree. I know that I served meals for my sister’s dance team for Iowa Cubs baseball games. If a kid really likes baseball, that would be interesting to them. That’s a good way to see the game and also volunteer. Also, to have a bake sale if you have a person who loves to bake.

Q: As a manager of Lutheran community services for Thrivent Financial, do you use any of the same volunteering strategies at home?
Carol:  Entirely. Since we work with volunteers, we have to work evenings and weekends. That is when our volunteers are available. And you have to be able to talk the talk and walk the walk in order to be credible with your volunteers. If we’re training our volunteer leaders and we can give them concrete examples of things that we’ve done ourselves, and if they can sense that we’re passionate about that, hopefully they’ll catch a part of that passion and catch a part of that excitement.  I don’t think you’d be real credible as a volunteer trainer if you didn’t actually volunteer.

Q. What’s next, Aly?
Aly: I plan on volunteering with my new title—Miss National Preteen. I feel strongly about diversity, so I plan to attend some workshops and talk to kids about accepting people who are different from you, whether it’s different race, different religion, etc. I also plan on volunteering with my title and raising awareness about volunteering.

—Sarah Asp