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LEAH VERRI
VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR 2006 AWARD
Before Habitat Lehigh Valley, Leah had volunteered for several years at another Habitat affiliate in Melbourne, Florida. One of the many problems she solved there was extremely out-of-date information for churches and synagogues. With patience and perseverance she contacted dozens of church secretaries and got the congregational mailing list back in shape.
Leah first came to the Habitat office on Tenth Street in the year 2000. She quickly took charge of the process of entering volunteer information into the database. Leah has spent hours ensuring that the organization's current volunteer database is up-to-date. She has scanned through every volunteer's waiver of liability that our organization has on file, checking to see if has been signed within the last three years. Leah has reviewed the giving history of Habitat's donors, saving Habitat money on mailing expenses, by updating our mailing list so we do not send newsletters to inactive volunteers or donors. Leah is a tireless volunteer who helps support Habitat's mission.
Up until several months ago, Leah volunteered one day a week at Habitat and one day at another nonprofit agency. We were the lucky ones when she decided to put all her efforts into Habitat, increasing her volunteer days from one to two. And what with the growing interest in volunteering for Habitat not only is Leah busy but she has several other volunteers busy maintaining our volunteer information as well. And that points out one of her many great strengths as a volunteer – she has the ability to attract other great volunteers and inspire them to help Habitat achieve its goals.
Anyone who has worked with Leah knows that she is scrupulously attentive to detail, and extremely thorough in everything she does. She knows how important it is to our prospective homeowners that their sweat equity hours be logged correctly. She also knows the importance of having good procedures set down in writing, so that others can step in and do the job with the same high quality she always does. Leah frequently makes excellent suggestions about how to improve our procedures so that we can get accurate information about volunteer skills, hours and affiliations at a moment's notice. This was especially helpful during the Aaron Street blitz when we had to keep detailed records of how many Lutherans and how many Thrivent members worked and for how long. This enabled us to report accurately to Thrivent Financial on a monthly basis.
As Liaison to the Volunteer Committee, Leah is a faithful member who provides an invaluable connection for us with the office. It's because of her attention to detail and knowledge of the data base that we are able to send out the invitations to all of you here tonight and are able to recognize the service you all give to the Affiliate in the awards presented.
Leah also study's all of the new volunteer applications and channels candidates with skills useful to the Affiliate to the appropriate committees or areas of need. She plays a very important role as the first person to look at these applications and recognize when a need we have can be filled by one of these new volunteers.
She is someone we can totally rely on for information and has proven to be an inspiration to many of us. She exhibits great patience and understanding when dealing not only with new volunteers in the office but also with the committee when we make changes to our requests for information, or challenge her to get information that is very difficult to determine.
Not only is Leah a wonderful volunteer, she is a great storyteller and world traveler as well. Last year (check on this) she traveled to St. Louis (?) where she boarded a riverboat heading down the Mississippi River. Another time she cruised from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Lisbon, Portugal. And just last week she returned from a cruise that took her from San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale, passing through the Panama Canal. Staff and office volunteers have been lucky to share in her travels vicariously through her photographs and stories about her trips. Welcome home Leah, it's good to have you back!
Leah, words can't thank you enough for all your efforts on behalf of the Habitat mission, and above all for your passion and integrity in everything you do. We sincerely hope this award will help say it for us;
CONGRATULATIONS!
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