On Wednesday afternoons, Weiting Zhang volunteers at a book club-but this isn't your average book club. The L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit dedicated to homeless outreach, hosts a weekly book club for homeless women.
Just three years ago, this might be the last place the Heinz College graduate student thought she'd be spending her time. In China-where Zhang calls Guangzhou, the country's 3rd-largest city, home-there is not, she says, a culture of volunteerism. In 2007, she relocated to Pittsburgh to join her husband, Zipei Tu (CMU'08) with their 10-month-old daughter in tow. Through her church, the Pittsburgh Chinese Church of Oakland, she connected with the L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry, and soon she was hooked on volunteering.
Before she joined the book club, she was a grant research intern for the ministry. She quickly expanded her involvement to include job fairs for the homeless and clothing drives. Unbeknownst to her, the ministry nominated her through the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a Jefferson Award for outstanding public service. The Jeffersons are known as Nobel Prize prizes for public service and are given on the local and national levels.
When Zhang received a letter from the Post-Gazette, she almost threw it away. "I thought that it was an advertisement!" she laughed. Of course, it wasn't an advertisement-she had won the Jefferson. She says she was honored and inspired and dreams of opening an organization like L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry in China when her family returns there.
-Shannon Deep (CMU'10, HNZ'11)
