Jenna Delgado is a fourth-year UVA student and is in her third year of coaching basketball as a Madison House volunteer. Jenna has spent most of her life volunteering. As a kid, she worked with her mom to pack lunches for kids in the summer so that everyone in her community in Atlanta, Georgia, would be sure to have something to eat during the day. In middle school, Jenna started coaching basketball, something that has continued as a passion and interest of hers.

But she never thought back then that she’d attend the same college as her mom and volunteer with the same organization.

“I said, let’s go visit Charlottesville and just take a look,” Jenna’s’ mom, Tracy Delgado, recalled.

While on their visit to UVA, Jenna and her mom had lunch on The Corner with then-executive director Tim Freilich and Julie Hohenstein, then a member and co-chair of the board of directors at Madison House. What Tim and Julie had to share that day was quite compelling. After that it was easy for Jenna to choose UVA and Madison House.

“Madison House is the reason I chose UVA,” Jenna said. Volunteering at Madison House was quite familiar to her. Tracy’s stories of service at Madison House when she was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia had more of an impact on Jenna than Tracy realized.

Tracy was a HELP Line (434-924-TALK) volunteer beginning the second semester of her first year and by her fourth year was program director, leading a team of student volunteers in their semester-long training. HELP Line volunteers are a committed team covering phone lines 24/7, offering support not only to UVA students but to people in the community. HELP Line continues to operate as a free and confidential resource serving the local community and students at the University of Virginia. It is a student-run and student-operated program, staffed entirely by anonymous volunteers.

“Some of our calls were referrals to other community resources, backed up by local psychologists, but often the caller just needed to talk and to have someone listen,” Tracy said.

It wasn’t a surprise to Tracy that Jenna embraced both UVA and Madison House. “Jenna has always been into volunteering. She earned a community service award in high school and since before she could drive, she would walk to games so she could coach middle school kids playing basketball.”

Jenna said coaching basketball during the pandemic gave her the connection to kids she was hoping to have. “We were outside all winter. It was freezing and we were all wearing masks, but the kids just wanted to be together and play basketball, so we all showed up to do that.” After graduation, Jenna is headed to Washington, D.C., for a year with Teach for America and hopefully, more coaching.

As a first-year student who didn’t know anyone at UVA, Jenna quickly found a like-minded friend group, and she immediately recruited those friends to also volunteer at Madison House. Tracy and Jenna agree that Madison House is a special place where you can find volunteer opportunities to match your interests, cultivate friendships, and contribute to the community.