Sometimes mandatory activities can become life-changing experiences.

For senior Ali Moran, it was completing her service hours requirement for La Salle. 

Three years ago, after deciding she was going to find an organization to help, she found the Wichita Center for Family and Community, located in Milwaukie. Throughout her childhood, Moran had always passed the building, but never knew what it was. 

As the amount of time she spent serving there increased, so did her love for it. 

With the community being so welcoming, Moran kept going back. It got to the point where “I just kept going, even though I didn’t need the service hours, it was just something I enjoyed so much,” she said. 

Moran’s dedication to service led to La Salle nominating her for the Student of the Year award from the Clackamas County Rotary Club. Rotary International is one of the oldest and largest civic organizations in the world, and its Clackamas branch, founded in 1981, only occasionally gives out awards. However, this year it was presented to Moran on Thursday, April 23, along with three other high school seniors.

Moran does service twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and during the track season, she’s able to go once a week. 

The award means a lot to Moran, as she usually keeps her commitment to service private, and has never been recognized before. 

“It’s cool to see other people see the impact that it’s made on my community,” she said.

What first drew Moran to the Wichita Center was being able to connect with the people around her.

“I live in the same school district that these kids are going to, and it’s really cool to be able to interact with people that are facing different experiences than I have, but live in the same area as me,” she said.

Throughout her time at the Wichita center, Moran has gotten to know the other people who work there and the families that come in every week.

“You get to know their family situation or something that’s going on in their lives,” she said. 

Something Moran admires the most is how her fellow volunteers know what is going on in the lives of the people they serve, and how they are always asking questions to learn more about what people are going through.

When it comes to role models, Moran has always admired the women at the Wichita Center.

She sees those women “as a model of how to serve others” and is inspired by “how much empathy they show towards the families that we serve, and also the kindness that they have towards me and also towards the families,” she said.

Throughout Moran’s time at La Salle, the Wichita Center has been something she can lean on when she’s going through a hard time and is a continual source of joy.

There are two parts of the Wichita Center: the food pantry and the clothes closet. Moran typically works in the food pantry, where the most help is needed, and the tasks include filling shelves and making sure all items are out and displayed neatly. Additionally, she also helps go through donations given by people and businesses.

Moran refers to it as something similar to a “grocery store,” she said.

In order to access the food pantry, families are required to have a kid in the North Clackamas School District and can then qualify for the service based on different requirements. Afterward, families that come to the food pantry are given a shape code, such as a circle or rectangle, which corresponds to how many people are in the family. The pantry offers a wide array of food, from canned meats to vegetables.

Checking out usually looks like “scanning their cart to make sure they took the right amounts or helping them understand it better if they’re not understanding how exactly to go about it,” she said.

While working in the clothes closet, she is responsible for hanging up clothes and checking out the families once they’ve gathered their items. 

However, sometimes there are language barriers, she said.  

Luckily, Moran has taken Spanish at La Salle, which has allowed her to be able to “communicate with them in that way” she said, “using what I’ve learned in Spanish to be able to apply it.”

Moran and the other women who she volunteers with have a joke that they don’t notice that she’s there because she’s always quietly doing whatever the organization needs.

“I’ve been there for so long that it’s like I just find little tasks to do,” she said.

Moran’s favorite part of volunteering is getting to be around the families.

“The best part of it is just having conversations with the families in there and just getting to see the direct impact of it,”  she said.

Whenever Moran is volunteering, she prefers to go alone, as that’s how it’s always been when volunteering. She feels it is hard to encourage friends because “not everyone has the same desire to do service,” she said.

In recent years, however, she has been able to go to the Oregon Food Bank and serve with friends who have come on different occasions. Having her friends serve with her at the Oregon Food Bank was always a fun experience for her because she is able to “share my love of service with them,” she said.

At the Wichita Center, it’s a lot harder to get other people to come in and volunteer because of the more complicated application process, but Moran still encourages people to join, given how valuable she thinks the experience is.

“It makes you feel like when sometimes your own personal struggles are happening, but like you’re doing something for other people, it really brings more joy to your life,” she said.

When she’s not there, she’s missing the families, who have in some ways become an extension of her own, Moran said.

“They’ve become such a big part of my life now,” she said. “I always want to go back and see them and get to interact with them again.”

For college, Moran is planning to attend Creighton University, a Jesuit university, because of its dedication to service.

“Creighton really felt like home when I was there because they have such a huge service program,” she said. At Creighton, the service on its own is all student-led.

Moran is looking forward to being able to serve a different community and help address issues she is unfamiliar with, along with continuing her overall passion for service. 

“I enjoy it so much that I want to make it something that I can continue to do for the rest of my life,” Moran said.

While at Creighton, Moran plans to study political science and continue learning Spanish. Moran was accepted into their pre-law scholars program, which provides an opportunity for her to go onto their law program, where she hopes to pursue immigration law.

Furthermore, Moran is hoping to get a degree that helps her “be able to impact people’s lives on a greater level,” she said.

Immigration law called to her in direct response to the different perspectives she is exposed to at the Wichita Center, she said.

Moran refers to Creighton as “the perfect place for it because they have that Jesuit value within other programs,” she said, which ties back to her goal of having a greater impact on people’s lives. 

She added how she strives to be the positive moment in their day, a bright light to give them hope.  

“My hope is always to make a difference in any way I can, if that’s smiling or talking to them and having a conversation,” she said. 

Moran described the experience of volunteering as “worth every second,” she said. “Once you see the impact you make, it’s going to make it all worth it, and that two hours of your time is nothing compared to the impact you’re going to make.”

Correction: Wednesday, April 29, 2026

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that senior Ali Moran was a part of the Clackamas County Rotary Club. However, she was only nominated for their award by La Salle.