When Rachelle Duroseau received the Champion of Service award from Gov. Rick Scott, she didn’t have much advance warning that she was up for the distinction.
“I did not know I was nominated. It was a surprise to me,” said Duroseau, who volunteers for the Children’s Home Society of Florida and lives in Wesley Chapel.
(Courtesy of Children’s Home Society of Florida)
She had just a few days to prepare for the presentation at the governor’s cabinet meeting Feb. 5 in Tampa.
Those few days gave her enough time to have her mother and father, Javeline and Serge, present, along with the supervisors who had nominated her.
Duroseau is a volunteer coordinator at the Children’s Home Society, which provides care and resources for abused, neglected and abandoned children.
As part of the Gulf Coast division, she works at the Joshua House in Lutz. Her main duties include managing volunteers and working on larger campaigns, which include an annual back-to-school drive and a toy drive during the holiday season.
If that sounds like a full-time job, it is.
Duroseau works a 40-hour-a-week schedule. She’s in the Americorps VISTA program, a national service program designed to help fight poverty. She receives a living allowance through an Americorps grant.
Since the money she receives is set at the poverty line and works out to around $1,000 a month, the Nazareth College graduate isn’t doing it for the money. She simply sees people suffering and can’t let it continue without doing something about it.
“It honestly doesn’t even feel like service to me. It just feels like a natural thing that needs to be done,” Duroseau said. “I don’t even feel like I’m doing anything special or out of the ordinary.”
But the 26-year-old’s volunteer resume is anything but ordinary.
She said her parents taught her the importance of helping others when she was young, and she’s been following that path.
Duroseau has a long history of service to others.
Before coming to Children’s Home, she took care of hospice patients, traveled to India to help women and orphans, and worked with homeless shelters and foot clinics to provide foot hygiene to the homeless, including efforts with at-risk youth, Habitat For Humanity and emergency shelters.
The volunteer’s experiences appealed to volunteer program manager Meghan Pfleiderer when she interviewed Duroseau for the position at Children’s Home.
Duroseau’s college studies in sociology and community-based youth development were a plus, as well.
The volunteer’s demeanor is another big asset, Pfleiderer said, especially when dealing with volunteers. It’s important to make them feel rewarded and appreciated, since they’re such a big part of the organization. They might have five to seven volunteers for their regular day-to-day operations, but utilize 125 or more for large projects. And Duroseau is able to handle them and their efforts effectively.
“The personality that Rachelle brings to the table is perfect for that sort of relationship, and engaging somebody in service that is truly just 100 percent from the good of their heart,” Pfleiderer said.
Those healthy relationships have translated into tangible results for Children’s Home. They had a successful back-to-school drive just a couple of months after Duroseau began working there last May. And their holiday toy drive, with an ambitious objective of helping between 400 children and 500 children enjoy presents at that time of year, met its goal.
“It couldn’t have been done without Rachelle,” said Michelle Smith, administrative supervisor. She’s not sure how everything got done before Duroseau came on board, but now that she’s here, Smith wanted to make sure she was staying.
Americorps volunteers are only in their positions for one year, though they can extend it another year if both parties agree.
Smith didn’t want to wait until the end of her term to find out if they would get to keep Duroseau.
“I have been asking for the past six months if she was going to renew,” she admitted.
Much to the relief of her supervisors, Duroseau did want to stay.
“The fact that she wanted to do a second year just made us all so happy,” Pfleiderer said.
Duroseau is happy as well, and eager to continue working on projects and advancing the Children’s Home’s many goals throughout the year.
With so many who need assistance, Duroseau believes she’s in the right position to do her part to help.
“I do want to play as active a role as I can to alleviate suffering,” she said. “Even if it’s a small contribution I can make, it makes me feel good to be able to do that.”
Published April 1, 2015
