Photo:  Photo by www.visual-technology.com

Salina Bakshi receives the President’s Volunteer Service Award from USA Freedom Corps Acting Director Kathy Wills Wright for serving more than 4,000 hours in her community and around the world. Salina is a junior at Columbia University. She became involved in People to People International in 1999, and after traveling with the ambassador program and attending the Global Youth Forum, she co-founded and was co-president of the Greater Princeton Student Chapter of People to People International. She spear-headed many successful projects during her term, including raising more than $6000 for an organization that clears minefields and promotes landmine awareness as well as organized several drives that yielded 5000 pairs of shoes and more than 3000 bars of soap. She has organized cultural events for elementary students and planned volunteer activities for Japanese exchange students. But the work she says she has enjoyed most is all of her health-based service. She spent a summer in Ghana to provide health education outreach and workshops; she serves as a volunteer for Project HEALTH, where she works at a pediatric AIDS clinic in Harlem and she is involved with Global Justice, a group that works with health and human rights.

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