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Meet David Brownell: May Volunteer of the Month

We’ve chosen longtime volunteer and exceptional after-school tutor David Brownell as our volunteer of the month! Read about our May Volunteer of the Month in his own wise words:

I have always enjoyed working with children. Becoming a parent gave me the chance to work with my own daughter and her classmates from daycare through elementary school. AtĀ Jeanā€™s daycare center, some of the caregivers were from theĀ ā€œFoster Grandparentā€ program, and I said to myself,Ā ā€œI want to do that some day.ā€ My involvement there led to five years on the board of that childcare center and to being co-chair for three years of a major fundraiser.Ā  Once Jean was in school, I became a hyperactive volunteer. That led to working for ten years for another parent in that weird world: the textbook industry. Read more about David.

In 2005, I began volunteering two afternoons a week in the after-school program at 826 Valencia. Iā€™ve had a great deal of fun working with the kids and a lot of pleasure in watching them grow up. Two girls Iā€™ve worked with since they were in fifth grade are heading off to college next fall. Iā€™m very proud of them, and of many other kids Iā€™ve worked with.

Iā€™ll add a few other facts about myself. Iā€™m about to go east to attend my fiftieth reunion at Harvard. I was there as an undergraduate, and again as a graduate student, earning a Ph.D. in English and American literature. After teaching awhile, I followed my wifeā€™s career to San Francisco. (She was a theatrical lighting designer, specializing in dance lighting.) I worked for some time as a freelance writer, publishing quite a few short books; then I worked as a freelance editor, dealing with whatever came along. I had fun beingĀ a copy editor for Red Herring Magazine during the dot-com boom: everyone should be part of a boom once in a lifetime (but only once).

Getting back to children, my grandson is heading toward his third birthday. I look forward to seeing him reach the age of the kids Iā€™ve worked with at 826 Valencia.