VOLUNTEER
LEADERSHIP
S C H O L A R S H I P A P P L I C A T I O N E S S A Y
MAJOR:
ACCOUNTING &
FINANCE
INITIATIVE:
IRS-CERTIFIED VITA
PROGRAM
TRUE VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP
is rarely measured by the number of hours logged
on a clipboard; it is measured in the palpable relief of a working parent who finally
understands their tax return. During my freshman year of college, I volunteered as an
IRS-certified tax preparer for the VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) program,
setting up temporary filing stations in public libraries across our rust-belt county. I sat
across from elderly residents on fixed incomes and single parents working multiple
retail jobs, helping them navigate complex federal tax codes to claim Earned Income Tax
Credits (EITC) they desperately needed.
By my junior year, I stepped up from a volunteer preparer to become the Student
Site Coordinator, managing a team of fifteen undergraduate volunteers and overseeing
the filing of over six hundred local returns that returned more than eight hundred
thousand dollars in federal refunds to our community. However, managing that site
exposed a staggering systemic reality: financial illiteracy is not merely an educational
gap; it is a predatory trap. I watched working-class families lose up to twenty percent of
their hard-earned refunds to predatory commercial tax-prep services charging
exorbitant fees for basic filings. That frustration transformed my volunteering from a
weekend extracurricular into an unwavering professional calling.
I am currently a junior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Accounting with a
concentration in Taxation. My professional objective is to become a Certified Public
