Helping Neighbors

PSU student learns invaluable lessons as she guides at-risk girls

Gail Franklin

Editor’s note:"Helping Neighbors" features an exceptional volunteer in Centre County each Monday. To nominate someone for a future story, e-mail cdtnews cdtnewstips@centredaily.com.

CDT/Christopher Weddle

Eliza Zimmerer, a Penn State student, volunteers with the Stormbreak girls group home in State College. Tuesday, June 30, 3009. CDT/Christopher Weddle

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In her pink and black spandex, Eliza Zimmerer was easily the brightest thing in the living room at a local girls’ group home on a recent morning, but it was the attitude of the young volunteer that really made the difference.

At 7:30 a.m. on a rainy day when eight teenage girls were struggling to pry their eyes open, Zimmerer greeted each resident by name before their scheduled power walk.

After some last-minute decisions to run back into the house to swap flip flops for sneakers, six girls chose to exercise with Zimmerer and came back soaked but giddy.

The 20-year-old Penn State junior has volunteered with the girls since she was matched with one of the residents in a tutoring program at State College Area High School in the fall of 2007.

That resident is no longer at Stormbreak, a home managed by the Centre County Youth Service Bureau, but Zimmerer’s role has expanded.

She visits the home to help make dinner, donates books and clothing, and took the girls on after-school walks three days a week for the past school year.

Last week, she moved the exercise days to the morning to help give the girls more structure during the summer break.

“The girls respond to her and she’s always a positive part of their day,” said Kristen Williams, a residential counselor at the program.

She has made it a point to be as consistent as possible, to listen to the girls, helping when she can and knowing when she can’t. Stormbreak serves girls in transition, and includes a therapeutic component.

“Being a teenage girl, it’s a really powerful time in your life. So much is going on, especially with school,” Zimmerer said. “Even though I was from a well-to-do family with supportive parents, I struggled with the normal teenage things.”

Zimmerer said a social worker at her high school helped her through many problems and she wants to mimic that positive influence.

“I really love these girls and I think they’re so smart and beautiful,” she said. “I care so much about them.”

“Sometimes I’m disappointed and frustrated” because of some of the things they’ve had to deal with in life or the choices they made, she admitted, “but the good days totally outweigh the harder ones.”

Zimmerer has received several awards this year for her volunteer service at the residential program.

She said she has watched residents when they are fearful, angry or open and positive, and has learned more about herself than she ever expected.

“It’s had such a powerful impact that I can’t even grasp it yet,” she said. “It’s totally shaped what I want to do and what matters to me.”

Zimmerer moved from Wisconsin to State College with her family after she graduated high school and her father took a job at Penn State.

She has chosen to study rehabilitation and human services in the College of Education and plans to become a teacher.

While she plans to take a semester off for an internship in Costa Rica this fall, she said her volunteer work at Stormbreak has taught her “more than any class or textbook.”