At the age of 14, Deborah Jennings wanted to serve her community in Southwest Atlanta and started Deborah's Pantry.  During her high school years, she went door-to-door with some of her fellow classmates after school asking the community if they would donate food for her food pantry.  She would catch the late night bus home from school with a bag full of grocery she had collected every night.  On Sundays, she would gather all the donated food items and, along with her mother, prepare food to serve to those who didn't have!  She also collected some of the food items for Hosea Feed the Hungry & Homeless.  This was the beginning of Deborah's community service initiative.

​
As Deborah got older, she volunteered with Hosea Feed the Hungry to support its annual dinners for the homeless. Deborah also wanted to get local youth involved with community service  to educate and empower them to align their passions with volunteer service to create positive change in their communities and co-founded with her son the Each One Reach One program. Examples of successful community service projects thus far include a "letter writing campaign" with 1,480 letters written to soldiers stationed overseas; "Christmas Gift Baskets" were made for mothers at a homeless shelter; the "Because we Care" Shoebox Project involved the creation of 1,000 boxes of toiletry items for the homeless and the current "Pocket Change Drive," to help a single mother who has gone from Welfare to Work and was being groomed to purchase her first home. Under Deborah's leadership, the EORO program has partnered with Levy Restaurants, Legends, and Sodexo to raise money for the scholarship fund.  E1R1 mans a concession stand at every event at the Georgia Dome, Georgia Tech, Centennial Olympic Park, and Georgia International Convention Center with all monies raised going directly to the scholarship fund.  Deborah not only organizes these fundraisers, but she volunteers at every single event – that's a lot of hours.
 

Deborah volunteers with several organizations including Hosea Feed the Hungry, Atlanta Community Food Bank, Genesis Shelter, Veterans Empowerment Organization, and Meals on Wheels, to name a few.  There are seven days in a week — of those seven she spends six of them giving back to the community.  Deborah currently serves as a mentor to seven girls.  She has orchestrated and led a successful scholarship campaign providing more than 1,427 scholarships to some financially strapped college students.  I suppose her most successful leadership role is being a leader by example.  She wouldn't ask anyone to do anything that she wouldn't do herself.