Flo Griffin, manager of finance and administration in Public Safety, donates blood, time and money to the Red Cross and numerous organizations serving children. She was also a beneficiary of the Red Cross’ work during Hurricane Floyd, when she had to stay in a Red Cross shelter in Darby. “Experiencing that first-hand gave me a heightened sense of awareness” of what the Red Cross does, she said. She has since received a pin for donating more than four gallons of blood, and is well on the way to her fifth. She challenges Penn employees to “give up that can of soda” once a day and use the dollar to contribute to charity. “I never realized what a dollar a day can do,” she said.

Nancy Rauch, assistant director of applications development in Information Systems and Computing, lends her energies to the Sierra Club, one of the oldest environmental organizations in the country. For the past four years she has been involved with Sierra Club-sponsored day hikes, canoe trips and whale watching excursions for inner city children. Those trips, she said, “make a big difference in their lives.” She currently serves on the Southeastern Pennsylvania Sierra Club Executive Committee as acting chair of its conservation committee.

Kenwyn Smith, Ph.D., associate professor of organizational behavior in the School of Social Work and faculty master of Ware College House, co-founded MANNA in 1990. MANNA’s 650 volunteers deliver 1,000 hot, nutritional meals each day to people with AIDS in the greater Philadelphia area. The program has received volunteer assistance from such organizations as the Penn Faculty Club, which donated the program’s very first meals, and individuals at a drug rehabilitation center who Smith said “get a tremendous boost from helping those more needy than themselves.”

If you haven’t yet, there’s still time for you to contribute! Contact your volunteer coordinator or call 898-1733.