Hello there, my name is Morgan Wilmes and I'm with the Sumter High Junior Civitans Club in SC. I'm currently in my senior year and hoping to end it off with a few more educationally exciting experiences! A few things about me! When I am given the chance, I invest in creative and analytical outlets with art, writing, and reading, while also enjoying the complexity of patterns and designs with knitting and graphic design. I am also fond of all things animals and books, spending ample amounts of time at the library and with various animals. If I could choose one thing in this world that could be saved, it would be the environment and the animals within it.

Now, before Junior Civitans, I was one of those people that didn't know the existence of the club until a friend joined after covid, and encouraged me to join as well. She believed I would enjoy it immensely. I was hesitant, as I was working a job and overwhelmed with a course load unusual to me, as it was my junior year of being an International Baccalaureate student. However, despite only knowing about it's existence near the end of my junior year and graciously being allowed to join late because of my advisor, Junior Civitans has managed to continuously impact my life through incredible ways.

In my free time, I was already volunteering, seeing as I had the assistance of the National Honor Society and the International Baccalaureate Program CAS, but Junior Civitans allowed for me to immerse myself in volunteer opportunities far different than what I was already experiencing. In addition to volunteering with people and organizations for the community, the club has offered me the ability to volunteer in the environment in multiple ways on multiple occasions. While my other volunteer organizations have opportunities with the community, Junior Civitans offers environmentally impactful ones, ranging from that of park clean ups to shoreline restorations, keeping care of the environment so it can take care of us, it's community! I've learned a lot about the people I've shared experiences with in our projects, and yet, there is one main thing that both shocks and thrills me. All of us come together on these projects, despite most of us being complete strangers and just meeting each other for the first time, from different backgrounds and different lives, and work together, for a community we're all a part of. Junior Civitans has opened up so many wonderful opportunties for friends and strangers in my community to come together and form bonds over the concern and care that is put into the environment and people in it that it brings me to tears thinking of it. It's wonderful to see, that no matter how different we are, how far apart people are in this world, there is still a universal bond composed of care and compassion for those around us.

I want to go to this All In Summit to meet more people driven by that same care and compassion, to meet those who have dedicated their lives to being a Civitan, and to immerse myself in an experience filled with opportunity. All donations are going to the Civitan International Research Center, a center dedicated to improving the well-being and quality of life of individuals and families affected by intellectual and developmental disabilities through research and treatment. Your donations also allow me the ability to visit the Research Center myself and see the amazing work they do. Please support me in reaching my goal for this amazing organization! From the bottom of my heart, thank you in advance.