Ashley Kostelnik joined the American Red Cross of Northeast Indiana in September 2010 and began having an immediate impact on the organization and the Greater Fort Wayne community!

As a Community Preparedness Associate, Ashley is tasked with increasing our reach throughout the community by promoting and conducting Community Disaster Education and representing the American Red Cross at health fairs, parades and other community events.  To fulfill our mission and to achieve these goals, Ashley oversees our Community Outreach Team (“COT”) and is responsible for working with a corps of more than 600 volunteers throughout seven different counties in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio to schedule them for events and to make sure that every opportunity to reach more clients is met. 

Although Ashley could simply book volunteers for events and be done with her duties, she has gone above and beyond to make sure she is personally available at dozens of events, either as a liaison for volunteers or volunteering herself as one of the event volunteers – whether it is for events that are in her work plan or volunteering on her own time for other Red Cross events to support our mission.

Furthermore, Ashley has taken a series of courses to become a disaster responder for single-family disasters and is a member of the Disaster Services Human Resources Team that is available for national disaster deployment.  Additionally, Ashley has made her commitment to the Red Cross even deeper by becoming a Disaster Services instructor and by working towards taking advantage of every opportunity to fulfill the mission of the organization.  For example, Ashley was integral in the pursuit of the 2011 MLK Day of Service Grant from the Indiana Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to see her dream of a Disaster Preparedness-based project come true.

Through her hard work and coordination with the organization’s grant writer, the American Red Cross of Northeast Indiana received a $2,500 grant to host its own MLK National Day of Service (“MLK Day”).  After a brief orientation on MLK Day, more than 80 volunteers received training on this initiative and were then transported to twelve different zones within the 46802 and 46806 zip codes, which were identified by the City of Fort Wayne as experiencing the most fires.

The volunteers canvassed these areas for three hours and 2,752 door hangers (exceeding the goal of reaching at least 2,500 communities) were distributed within the community, serving an estimated 6,500 people within these areas.  Additionally, MLK Day volunteers had at least 300 individual conversations with households in the community, installed 100 smoke detectors, and also distributed an additional 225 door hangers that were translated into Burmese for our linguistically isolated community.

Ashley’s work has created a lasting impact in the community and a legacy for other volunteers (including other AmeriCorps and VISTAs) to live up to!