Jessica Zollinger
Class of 2012
By: Megan Griffin, 2016
The other week, I had the privilege of talking to Jessica Zollinger, from the Periclean class of 2012. Since graduating, she has pursued a graduate degree at the UNC School of Social Work.
Jessica attributes Periclean for a lot of her postgraduate decisions and successes.
When she first started at Elon, she had no idea what she wanted to do or what direction she wanted to follow in her life. Jessica ended up majoring in Human Services and Public Health, which is a decision she directly attributes to Periclean. After graduation, her majors and Periclean led her to UNC Chapel Hill, where she completed a Masters degree in Social Work in 2014. Jessica now works at the Orange County Department of Social Services, where she is an Adoption Social Worker for children in the foster care system.
Jessica said that Periclean was probably the number one most impactful organization that she was involved with at Elon. It was all encompassing because it was an academic and extracurricular organization. One of the Class’ partners, the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) embodied an amazing model of community social work, that was often referenced in Jessica’s graduate program. Specifically, CRHP’s model of doing “with” someone and not “for” them is also a main tenet of the social work profession.
In the CRHP program, “women are chosen from their villages to learn about medical interventions, counseling skills, etc. to take back to their villages and teach their peers.” This model empowers others to serve their communities, instead of telling people what to do and how to do it. Jessica mentioned that the UNC School of Social Work has also partnered with CRHP!
This article discusses the partnership in more detail.
When asked about her travels to India, Jessica said she travelled there in the summer of 2010.
“I mainly worked with the adolescent girls program in order to get a feel for who CRHP was as an organization.”
She stayed at the CRHP campus for three weeks, which gave her an opportunity to get to know the adolescent girls in the program. The program itself invited adolescent girls to the CRHP campus to teach them about empowerment, self-esteem, and various other lessons. Jessica observed that at the beginning of the program,
“The girls shy at first, but by the end they really came out of their shells.”
During her time in India, Jessica also worked with medical teams, learned about water safety and was able to go to the farm at CRHP. The farm was for individuals who have leprosy, HIV/AIDS, etc. and was an unconventional rehabilitation center. The individuals would work on the farm and serve the vegetables on the CRHP campus. After being in India for three weeks, Jessica realized how vast the country is.
“India is so huge, you can be in a super urban area and then very soon after be in a rural area.” This recognition helped to explain the needs of the country to the rest of her class.
Jessica believes that there is so much value in traveling to the country of focus as a Periclean.
“I think it’s really critical in making decisions. Going to India so early on in the process was a huge jumpstart.” She believes that their Class would have had a really hard time thinking about their impact if they hadn’t met their partners in person.
Being involved in Periclean also impacted Jessica’s personal life.
“I grew up in a small midwestern town that was wonderful, but was pretty sheltered. Having this experience and learning about other cultures, religion, government was something that exposed to me the fact that there was a whole world out there. The lens through which I view the world has changed because of Periclean. I now pay more attention to what is going on in the world. The opportunity to focus on global issues for three years has definitely been a huge influence in my life.”
The way she views philanthropy has also changed.
Before her involvement in Periclean she felt that if she could give money or her time once or twice, then that would be enough. She now recognizes that real philanthropy is investing in people’s lives over a period of time. “Making a commitment to give your time and finances after vetting the organizations and using this as a platform to educate others is real philanthropy.” Jessica believe that her Class has committed to this by creating the CRHP Fellowship. Her Class really wanted to focus on how their efforts could be sustainable and they seek to do this by having an expectation that each member of the class donate to the Fellowship each month.
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