May 20, 2004

Volunteer of the Week: Anne Jablonski and Rachel Carrasquillo

Anne Jablonski and her daughter Rachel Carrasquillo give new meaning to the term “dynamic duo.” Although just 8-yearsold, Rachel—a third grader at Holy Spirit School—has spent the past two Decembers volunteering with her mother at the Family Giving Tree (FGT), a Silicon Valley nonprofit that collects, sorts and distributes gifts to children and families who otherwise would have nothing for the holidays. Recipients’ gift wishes are printed on tags and hung on “giving trees” in banks, supermarkets, office lobbies and other venues throughout the Bay Area.

Jablonski got involved with the FGT through Ernst & Young, which encourages volunteerism among its employees. Both Jablonski and her husband Ed Carrasquillo work at Ernst & Young. In 2002, the mother-daughter team worked in the FGT gift warehouse on the night E&Y signed up to help, but in 2003, Rachel wasn’t satisfied.
“She told me, ‘I want to go back and do it again!’ How can you deny that? So we went back again, on a Sunday,” Jablonski recalls.
“The whole process is amazing to me, that there’s a group of people organizing this whole effort,” Jablonski says of the FGT, which last year distributed approximately 48,500 gifts. “There are so many people coming in and out of the warehouse—volunteers from Silicon Valley companies and people just helping on their own.”

“I liked going to the ‘store’ and picking out the right gifts and wrapping them. I also liked sorting the presents,” Rachel says, when asked about her favorite FGT activities. The ‘store’ is an area of the warehouse where duplicate, extra or donated toys, games and clothes are organized by age level, size and type. If a particular recipient’s wish card and gift never make it back to the warehouse, volunteers can still fulfill the wish by substituting gifts from the ‘store.’

To Jablonski and her husband, it’s never too early to teach children that giving is as nice as receiving.
“I feel very blessed by what our family has, and I want to teach Rachel to appreciate it and to understand that not everyone has these things,” Jablonski says. “Each year, we try to find one or two things around the holidays where we can help others. We try to make Rachel aware of what other people’s needs are, not just her own.”

Another holiday-themed project both mother and daughter have done together is make dog treats for the Humane Society of Silicon Valley. The recipe was on the shelter’s Web site, says Jablonski, who helped Rachel and some young friends bake bone-shaped treats, wrap them and bring them to the Society’s Santa Clara location.

One of Rachel’s non-holiday community service activities, which she hopes to begin soon, will be entertaining residents of local retirement homes as a member of Sweet Harmony, a Los Gatos-based singing and dancing group.

—By Shari Kaplan