wellington volunteer
CAROLYN BROWN
Retired Educator Enjoys Giving Her Time To The Village And Other Organizations Story by Matthew Auerbach Photos by Abner Pedraza
For Carolyn Brown, the act of volunteering doesn’t come from some lofty ideal or a deep, personal place. It’s simply a matter of common sense and doing what her mother told her to do. “My mother always said, ‘Carolyn, you should always find the time to stop and give back to the community.’ So for me, I’m doing what I know to be the right thing,” she said. If you’ve been to the Wellington Municipal Complex anytime in the past two years, you’ve probably met Brown, this month’s nominee for Wellington The Magazine’s Volunteer of the Year Award. She’s the official greeter. Brown has been living in Wellington with daughters Crystal, a pharmacist, and Jalynsey, a probation officer, since 2003. She calls her arrival here “a dream come true.” While she truly loves the village, a big reason for that is purely geographical in nature. “I’d been commuting to work from the Glades to West Palm Beach for 12 years,” she said. “The drive was a big challenge. It was great to finally move closer.” Besides her job with the village — “I
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enjoy greeting visitors as they come in for information and service,” she said — Brown gives of her time to many organizations. As a retired school administrator and teacher who got her master’s degree at Nova Southeastern University, she takes particular pride in serving as a student mentor in the Take Stock in Children program. “I get to visit my student weekly at her school,” Brown said. “As I arrive, she’s already waiting. My primary focus is her education as related to her grades and helping her grow to become the best human being she can be.” Brown’s love of education is also well served through her position as a board member of the Friends of the Palm Beach County Library System. “I enjoy planning and carrying out fundraisers so that money is available to assist our local libraries in providing activities for the communities,” she said.
volunteer projects that benefit our communities,” she said. “I provide toiletry items to the local homeless resource center. We collect school supplies and give them out to local children. We are currently working on a start-up gardening project, and the vegetables grown will be given back to the community. We will be teaching our girls group about responsibility and ownership as well as leadership. So as you can see, I’m extremely involved with volunteerism.” Of course, it’s not all work and no play for Brown. Partaking in all Wellington has to offer is a family affair for her.
Perhaps nothing defines the reasons why volunteering means so much to Brown more than her work with her sorority sisters from college.
“Now that I’m retired, I get the opportunity to spend more time with my daughters,” she said. “We attend concerts at the village amphitheater, movie nights, the food trucks on Thursday evenings and bingo on Wednesdays, and we are always serving our church. I’ve also attended several events involving show horses. Just being there was an experience of a lifetime — great performances, and the atmosphere was amazing.”
“As a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, West Palm Beach Chapter, I’m involved with many
A lifetime of volunteering has made Brown somewhat of an expert on the subject, and she’s more than