Children brighten her day

Volunteer Focus: Alayna Galos, children at Holy Spirit extension

Daniela Contreras

Alayna’s bright smile makes the students in her care feel comfortable.

Because of her interest in helping children, Alayna Galos decided to volunteer at Holy Spirit. ”I decided to volunteer because I always looked up to the higher grades when I was younger,” she said. “So, when it finally came to me being an upperclassman at the school, I wanted to play a large role.”

This was not Galos’s first time volunteering, however. Before she started working with the students at Holy Spirit, she had also helped the Food Bank of Solano with packing canned food for donations, along with her siblings, but it is spending time with the children that has been the jewel in her crown.

“Some experience I took from volunteering was mostly how to work with children and also make lots of good memories with them,” she said. Galos had to do a lot, but she enjoyed working with the kids. “My favorite tasks of volunteering was just becoming a leader and assisting kids from needing help with schoolwork to opening a bag of chips for them.”

Even though she no longer attends Holy Spirit, Galos continues to make the commitment to her community, “I took that opportunity to my advantage and made it into something I can enjoy and make other people’s lives easier,” she said.

She hopes that her experience with children at Holy Spirit will be good preparation for her future career as a nurse, possibly in pediatrics. Her next adventure will hopefully focus on coaching the fifth grade volleyball team at school, and that will add another level of success to Galos’s volunteer opportunities.

Volunteering has helped her see the importance of serving the community and she recommends other students to find their own niche in the world of volunteering. “Go out there and do your best, because every little thing can go a long way,” she said.