New community volunteers emerge
In the next Heart & Soul Minutes video, hear from Star Poole, Community Heart & Soul Volunteer and School Board member in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Star has been a resident of Lycoming County for seven years. She moved from Darby after having to rebuild because of a fire. She is an AmeriCorps Alumni with a passion for civic and community engagement. Star is the mother of five beautiful children. She serves on the boards of the Beloved Community Council and the Heart of Williamsport and is a trained facilitator for North Central Pennsylvania’s Alternatives to Violence Project. She was elected to a four-year term on the Williamsport Area School District Board of Directors in 2019.
“I started as a Community Heart & Soul volunteer and I was offered an opportunity to tell my story and everything just blossomed from there. I feel like I know most of the city now just from not being afraid to engage in my community. I work with so many local organizations and my main goal in all of them is to take what I learned from Community Heart & Soul and apply it in my everyday life and apply it in my community.”
—Star Poole, Community Heart & Soul Volunteer and School Board member in Williamsport, Pennsylvania
About Community Heart & Soul
Founded by Lyman Orton, proprietor of The Vermont Country Store, Community Heart & Soul is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to establish and promote a community practice that engages all residents within a community in determining what matters most to the people who live there and uses their ideas and aspirations as the blueprint for a better future. The Community Heart & Soul model has been field-tested in over 90 communities across the U.S. Orton established Community Heart & Soul after serving on his town’s planning commission and growing frustrated that decisions being made that would shape the town’s future were without guidance from the majority of the residents.
