Real People. Real Impact.

George Cornick

2023 · Uganda

AF

Where there was need, George Cornick showed up.

In Kampala, George Cornick didn't find one cause to serve — he found every cause that needed him. He mentored youth and helped form a step dancing group at the Refuge of Hope refugee center, mobilized embassy volunteers to renovate facilities for children with cancer, and organized relief drives for Afghan refugees and Ugandans during an Ebola outbreak. His gift was seeing the person in front of him, whatever the crisis.

Jerry Case

2023 · Ireland

EUR

2,000 bicycles. A whole country mobilized.

For a Ukrainian refugee navigating a new country, a bicycle can mean the difference between isolation and independence — getting to school, to work, to a semblance of ordinary life. EFM Jerry Case understood this, and in Dublin he turned a shared love of cycling into something remarkable: the Good Bike Project, which has refurbished more than 2,000 bicycles and distributed them to displaced Ukrainians across nearly every county in Ireland.

Daniela Garcia

2023 · El Salvador

WHA

Building safety — and futures — for the most vulnerable girls.

When Daniela Garcia arrived in San Salvador in 2021, she found children at Mi Casa orphanage who needed more than the orphanage could hold. She rallied the embassy and local community to fund a building expansion, and then went further — creating a new safe home specifically for pregnant teen orphans, many of them abuse survivors, and building the counseling and support programs to help them become mothers.

Mandy Brown

2023 · Qatar

NEA

Teaching skills. Restoring agency. One refugee at a time.

When Afghan refugees arrived in Doha by the tens of thousands, Mandy Brown didn't wait for an organization to tell her what to do — she organized one. As a founding force of the “Doha Do-Gooders,” she spent her own money purchasing supplies to teach Afghan women and children marketable skills and creative arts, giving them tools for livelihood and expression in an uncertain new chapter.

Connie Pearson

2024 · Israel

NEA

In the hardest season, she fed, helped, and never stopped.

Connie Pearson came to Jerusalem to build bridges between communities. After October 7, 2023, she became a lifeline for people on every side of the crisis — cooking meals for embassy staff and IDF soldiers and displaced Gazan families, helping evacuate U.S. citizens, and ensuring that children, families, and an orphanage had what they needed to survive what came next.

Meredith Wiedemer

2022 · Moldova

EUR

$200,000 raised. 38,000 refugees served. A center built to last.

As 460,000+ Ukrainian refugees crossed into Moldova, EFM Meredith Wiedemer helped lead a Donation Center that supplied 38,000 refugees with essentials — then opened the Sunflower Center for long-term children's programming, mothers' psychosocial support, and employment for Ukrainian women, raising over $200,000 along the way.

Debra Stock

2022 · Doha, Qatar

NEA

58,000 Afghan refugees arrived. A school built from scratch.

Arriving at her first post just as 58,000 Afghan refugees flowed into Doha, EFM Debra Stock organized the “Doha Do-Gooders” — receiving lines, clothing, hygiene, fundraisers, even 300 soccer balls — and created and furnished a school for the refugee children where she also taught.

William “Ed” O'Bryan & Alesia Krupenikava

2023 · Turkmenistan

SCA

350 girls. Three global semifinalists. One country's first programmers.

In a country where women's professional opportunities are tightly constrained, William “Ed” O'Bryan and Alesia Krupenikava asked a simple question: what if girls here learned to build technology? Together they launched Technovation Girls across Turkmenistan — and since 2021, more than 350 Turkmen girls have designed working mobile and AI applications, with three teams advancing to the semifinals of a global competition against more than 1,000 teams worldwide.

Kristin Factor

2024 · India

SCA

25 girls. Walls covered in possibility.

The walls of the Sharanam Shelter for Girls in Mumbai tell a story now. They didn't before Kristin Factor arrived. Working from her own initiative and her own funds, this EFM built an art education program from scratch for 25 orphaned girls — and transformed the shelter's walls into a canvas for their creativity, potential, and resilience.

Garrett Fraino

2024 · Brazil

WHA

Better systems. Better teachers. Better futures for Rio's youth.

When Garrett Fraino arrived at Mais Caminhos — a free activities and English program for youth in Rio's favelas — he didn't just show up to tutor students. He looked at the whole organization and started fixing what wasn't working: rewriting the teaching guide, redesigning teacher training, building an attendance system, and launching a new hospitality and tourism program to give older students a credential they could take into the workforce.

Shirley Helm

2025 · Tajikistan

SCA

4,000 hours. The first Deaf Tajiks in the FLEX exchange. A legacy that signs.

Shirley Helm arrived in Dushanbe as a Foreign Service Management Specialist. She left as the person who changed what was possible for Tajikistan's deaf community. Over more than 4,000 volunteer hours, she built an ASL education program from nothing — and two of her students became the first Deaf Tajiks ever accepted into the U.S. FLEX exchange program. She personally escorted them to America.

J. Carlos Valles

2022 · Port-au-Prince, Haiti

WHA

1,000+ hours teaching carpentry. Dignity, livelihoods, and a lasting trade.

At the St. Luke's Foundation Carpenter Training Center in Port-au-Prince, EFM J. Carlos Valles has volunteered over 1,000 hours teaching at-risk young men to work with machinery and tools — producing furniture and affordable coffins that allow Haiti's urban poor to bury their loved ones with dignity.

Robert & Kimberly Gudenkauf

2023 · Mongolia

EAP

$40,000 raised. 80 volunteers. Mongolia's first push for animal rights.

Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital city on earth, and for animals in its shelters, winter is a death sentence — unless someone intervenes. Kimberly and Robert Gudenkauf intervened in every way they could, raising more than $40,000 to rebuild shelter infrastructure, building a volunteer network of 80 people, and ultimately advocating for legislation that would create Mongolia's first animal rights law.

Andrew Richley

2024 · Montenegro

EUR

300 trees. 250 crates a month. A food forest built to last.

Andrew Richley is an arborist and forester by training. When he arrived in Montenegro, he found a city with the land for something extraordinary — and the hunger to justify it. He established the Urbana Bašta Podgorica Food Forest, one of the largest urban gardens in Europe, planting more than 300 trees and building a harvest operation that now donates more than 250 crates of food to local food banks every month.

David Bargueño

2025 · Brazil

WHA

The first embassy to show up. A community renamed a room in their honor.

Fifteen minutes from downtown Brasília sits a recycling center that most of the diplomatic community had never heard of. FSO David Barguéño spent a year changing that — building a partnership with the largest cooperative of recyclable trash pickers in Latin America, mobilizing the Embassy and American School into a yearlong campaign, and delivering tools that made real differences in 2,500 families' lives. At the end of International Volunteer Day, the cooperative renamed their multipurpose room Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall.

Samantha Bunch

2025 · Kenya

AF

Two tons of plastic into housing. One volunteer, everywhere at once.

Samantha Bunch looked at the plastic waste accumulating in Nairobi and saw building materials. Her Eco-Brick Initiative diverted over two tons of plastic waste into low-cost housing materials — a model addressing environmental and housing challenges at once. But Bunch's service extended to empowering teenage mothers, supporting an orphanage, and showing up to help when hundreds of Khartoum evacuees arrived suddenly in Nairobi.

Justin Wimpey

2022 · Madagascar

AF

97% of Madagascar cooks with charcoal. He engineered a better pot.

Recognizing that 97% of Madagascar's population cooks with charcoal, EFM Justin Wimpey designed an affordable, locally produced pressure cooker — the “Cocotte Minute Gasy” — and helped stand up a women-led business to manufacture and distribute it, reducing deforestation and freeing women from hours of daily exposure to toxic cooking fumes.

Wiley Skaret

2025 · Colombia

WHA

$100,000 raised. Nine scholarships. Music as a vehicle for justice.

Wiley Skaret is a concert pianist. He is also the founder of James 1 — a U.S. 501(c)(3) that provides university scholarships to the children of Colombian National Police officers killed in the line of duty. He built the coalition through concert halls and police headquarters alike, turning a personal conviction into a global effort that has raised more than $100,000 and put nine children of fallen officers through university.

Julie Fischer

2025 · Democratic Republic of Congo

AF

Crisis leader. Art therapist. Governance reformer. One extraordinary EFM.

When the Ordered Departure from U.S. Embassy Kinshasa was announced in January 2025, Julie Fischer stepped into an informal leadership role for more than 200 evacuees — keeping people calm, coordinating with AAFSW's Evacuee Support Network, and ensuring supplies and support were ready on arrival. In Kinshasa, her service was just as wide: art therapy for at-risk women, governance reforms at the American School, English tutoring, and conservation work for African bird species.

Denis Rajic, Michele Rajic Tang, Vicki Daniel & Ellin R. Lobb

2022 · Shanghai, China

EAP

When Shanghai locked down, they built the supply chain that fed the Consulate.

When Shanghai's harsh 2022 COVID-19 lockdown left residents without access to food, this four-person volunteer team built — from scratch — a wholesale delivery network that fed U.S. direct-hire staff, families, and local employees of Consulate General Shanghai, and is now a model for other Missions.