Volunteer of the week Mollie Eichenberg will be a senior at Niles High School.

Q: In what ways do you volunteer?

I am in several different clubs and we do a lot of volunteering through each club. I am in the Key Club. Every year for that we help out at the Hunter Ice Festival — that’s one of the big things we do. We also do different things at the school, like raise money for different organizations, for cancer research. We also helped place pinwheels for child abuse prevention awareness.

I’m also in National Honor Society, so I volunteer at Ballard and Eastside for that. We also do Toys for Tots.

For student council, we do a Stuff-A-Bus event and a blood drive. I help run the blood drive and also donate blood. We help out with pink week and breast cancer awareness.

There are lots of different things we do.

Q: How did you become interested in volunteering?

I started volunteering a lot in sixth grade at Oak Manor with their student council. We helped out with the Salvation Army and ever since then I’ve been involved in a lot of different clubs.

My parents have always been very involved in the community. Both of my parents are educators, so it is just something that has been instilled in me to help others. It is really important to me to see how they can make a difference in other people’s lives and that I can do that too. Just because I was in sixth grade didn’t mean I couldn’t help people out. I can still give my time and what I could to help others in need.

Q: What volunteer work do you enjoy the most?

Probably my favorite thing we do is the Stuff-A-Bus (at Martin’s Super Market) with student council. That’s because you see so many people there that are just coming to buy their groceries. They don’t necessarily have a lot of money, but they will pick up a couple extra items to donate. You hear people come in and say they’ve received food through this before, but they now have enough money to help out someone else. To me that is really cool to see the community come together and take a part in something good.

Q: Why is it important to volunteer?

No matter how small an amount you give it will still have an impact on someone. That small impact can have a chain reaction effect, so you may think you aren’t helping out in a great way, but for some people that couple cans of food is very important. If they don’t have money to buy food for themselves, those cans are huge for them — they know that people care. And, when you add all of it up, if 500 people buy one can, you can help a lot of people. That’s really important.

Do you know a volunteer worthy of recognition? Nominate him or her as the Volunteer of the Week by calling Craig Haupert at (269) 687-7720, or emailing him at craig.haupert@leaderpub.com