Ella Zilli - an extraordinary teen making an impact on her world

Links:
OBON Society

Ella is a high school senior who is comfortable taking on multiple projects at once.

Not only does she excel in track, she has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten, led a drive that donated over 1,000 pounds of peanut butter and jelly to the food bank, and has been president of a number of clubs.

Her most recent project was working at the Sea Turtle Conservancy in Panama.

She is employed at the OBON Society, which returns items lost in the war to their families in Japan.

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Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:06] Jan: Finding outstanding leadership in our youth is like finding a rare gem. Today's guest began her leadership roles in kindergarten when she became a Girl Scout. You'll get to hear about the hours of community service you've done in your last twelve years. Things like collecting over one thousand pounds of peanut butter and jelly for the food bank, becoming president of several clubs, and spurring on various impactful projects, as well as work at the Sea Turtle Conservancy in Panama. Let's listen to her inspiring share. Hello, listeners. Welcome to Women of the Northwest, where I interview ordinary women and girls living extraordinary lives. I'm your host, Jan Johnson.

[00:52] Jan: Today I'm interviewing Ella Zilli. Welcome.

[00:56] Ella: Thank you.

[00:58] Jan: Nice to have you be a part of this interview process and just to share the things that you've done. You are a senior this year, correct?

[01:07] Ella: Yes.

[01:07] Jan: Have you always lived in Astoria?

[01:09] Ella: Yes.

[01:09] Jan: Okay, so you've grown up here and just know people have gone through the schools and everything? Yeah. Done a lot of leadership things. Have you started that when you were in grade school or when did you start thinking about doing leadership or any kind of things that you felt like you could take a step in?

[01:29] Ella: Probably when I got more serious about Girl Scouts. That was the first thing I'd say that gave me real leadership opportunities.

[01:37] Jan: How old were you when you started Girl Scouts?

[01:40] Ella: Five or six. I was in first grade.

[01:41] Jan: Okay.

[01:42] Ella: But I think I got serious about it and more aware of what it was when I was fifth or 6th grade, around middle school time.

[01:49] Jan: So you stuck it out for a while.

[01:50] Ella: Yeah, I'm still enrolled.

[01:53] Jan: That is amazing. I have two friends who are as even as adults, still get together with their Girl Scout friends and they're like, in their lifelong friends. What's your favorite things about Girl Scouts?

[02:09] Ella: I went to a lot of camps over the years. The most recent one I went to, I think, was my freshman year, and it was actually an Outdoor Leadership Program. And it was, I think, like ten or eleven days. And they taught us different leadership skills, and we got to be like sort of almost like counselors in training. And we did stuff with the younger girls that were there, and that was down at Camp Clearwox in Florence, Oregon.

[02:33] Jan: Oh, okay. And how many girls of your age?

[02:39] Ella: Well, my troupe currently has three people.

[02:43] Jan: Okay.

[02:43] Ella: But it's going to disband because one of them just graduated. And so you have to have three people to have a troop. And one, I have two, but I believe the other girl who is still in it and I are going to just be Juliet's, what they call it this year, where you're still registered as a Girl Scout but not in a troop.

[03:03] Jan: And have you taught younger troops?

[03:05] Ella: Oh, yeah, in a variety of things. We've done lots of assistance with the cookie rally over time and then different cookie sales. We've partnered with younger girls working at store booths and things like that.

[03:22] Jan: So you've done a few fundraisers in your life? Yes. What other kind of things has that led you to, like, in other clubs?

[03:32] Ella: Well, now I'm in Key Club. And I'm the president this year of the Astoria High School Key Club.

[03:37] Jan: Okay.

[03:38] Ella: And I've been doing that since my freshman year. I was the secretary last year. But we are working towards coming up with a fundraiser currently something that will benefit the food bank. We're just getting dates sorted out, but last year we did a 50 50 raffle at a softball game and we donated the money to the food bank. And our winner actually donated the money back. So we donated all the money to the food bank. We're looking into doing something like that again.

[04:04] Jan: What motivates you to want to keep doing that, things like that?

[04:09] Ella: I don't know. That's kind of a hard question. It's just something that I've always done and I feel like it's important to get involved and I've just always been part of it since I was younger. It's sort of like how I grew up.

[04:20] Jan: Yeah. And do your parents do fundraising?

[04:22] Ella: Yes. My mom is part of the ESA in Naselle, which is like a volunteer service organization. And then she was my Girl Scout leader for a long time. So I definitely grew up with that in my life. Now I definitely take it on my own, but it's something I just like doing. I think it's fun.

[04:39] Jan: Well, don't you think, too, that it's just rewarding to see that the effort that you've put into something helps your community in different ways? Yeah.

[04:50] Ella: Yeah. You're actually making a difference.

[04:53] Jan: Well, when you were younger, you did something with peanut butter. What was that story?

[04:57] Ella: Yeah, in the 8th grade for my Girl Scout Silver Award, I did a peanut butter and jelly drive. And so for the Silver Award, it has to be a 50 hours service project.

[05:09] Jan: That's huge.

[05:10] Ella: Yes. It was intense. And I remember I did it during spring of my 8th grade year and I was doing track at the time and I just remember being very hectic. But I worked with eight schools in Astoria and Tillamook counties and to do like. School food drives and I had like flyers and stuff to send home and then I collected I had a student at each school that I knew collect everything for me. And their parent sort of helped me get it all together. But it definitely took a lot of people.

[05:43] Jan: How old were you then?

[05:44] Ella: 13. Yeah.

[05:46] Jan: How did you find the connection? People at the different schools?

[05:50] Ella: They were mostly Girl Scouts.

[05:52] Jan: Oh, I see. Okay.

[05:53] Ella: And Girl Scout troop leaders that either I knew or my mom knew the grownups. And yes, we ended up also doing some daytime food drives at Safeway in Tillamook and here, and I worked a few. And then I also had some girls in a different troupe who wanted to help out, do some food drives at, I think, the Seaside Safeway. And I ended up donating over a thousand pounds of peanut butter and jelly.

[06:22] Jan: That is a lot of peanut butter and jelly.

[06:25] Ella: Yes, I remember we took it in the back of our pickup truck to the food bank and it was barely fit.

[06:33] Jan: Wow, that is impressive. And then as a 13 year old that's just yeah, we have a bunch of sponsored kids that are in Central America where but we've gone in to visit them a number of times and one of the girls that was on the trip was an eleven year old and she decided one of the things that they do is they help mom start small businesses. And one of these groups of mothers wanted to start a chocolate business and they needed to grind the chocolate. They have these little kind of like a three inch disc that they do for cocoa and whatever for celebrations, but they had to get up like at three in the morning, go to the next town and do use their grinder and all this kind of stuff. So this girl decided that she was going to raise enough money for them to have a grinder. Wow. So she went back and she contacted all of her friends for her birthdays and Christmas and whatever and said, hey, I just want you to donate to this thing. And then she got her whole middle school all involved in collecting money and whatever to do this and she ended up having enough money to go back down there and buy their machine form.

[07:43] Ella: That's amazing.

[07:43] Jan: And then this group of mothers were so successful with it that they needed a building, so she decided, oh, I'm going to make the building happen. And so she did kind of the same thing with fundraising and whatever like that and built the year that I was there with her. They were doing the ribbon cutting on it was a cinder block building and it was like $5,000, but wow. But it was impressive. It's just neat because you don't have to be an adult to make an impact. No, yeah, right.

[08:18] Ella: I definitely needed some adult help when I was doing it.

[08:21] Jan: Well, sure, I knew her, she had help as well, but it's just she started making oh, I know what it was. She was making pumpkin bread. Lots and lots of pumpkin bread to solve everybody and did that, but yeah, you don't have to be a certain age to be able to make an effect on me. So tell me about what sports you're involved in.

[08:43] Ella: I run cross country and then I run distance events in track and field.

[08:49] Jan: Yeah, running is what you do.

[08:51] Ella: Yeah, I've tried other sports. I did ballet for a short time and I did swim for one season my freshman year.

[08:59] Jan: Tried it?

[08:60] Ella: I tried it, did it with some friends. But yeah, I've been running since 6th grade.

[09:05] Jan: What are you going to do next year? What's your plan?

[09:07] Ella: College. I'm currently applying to quite a few schools and I haven't exactly narrowed it down.

[09:14] Jan: It takes a while to narrow things down. What do you have in mind that you'd like to major in?

[09:21] Ella: Exercise science or kinesiology, something along those lines? I want to be a physical therapist. Oh, long term goal. Yeah.

[09:29] Jan: So you're starting with that. That's awesome. Yeah. How about when you did with Key Club and you went to the district convention? What was that like?

[09:37] Ella: Oh, that was last spring. It was basically leadership convention for things.

[09:44] Jan: Like a past go on here.

[09:45] Ella: Yeah, it was any Key Club member could attend, but it was a lot of, like, club officers. And I went with our past president last year, Dusty Nafaji, and I was a secretary at the time. And it was just the two of us. We're the only two who wanted to go, so it was very small. And we went with our advisor, Ms. Turner, and we had a great time. It was two days, I think in three days, maybe two nights. We stayed there for two nights in Portland, and they had lots of different workshops about different, like, things that could be beneficial to you or things that could be for your community. And so I went to ones that were very different from each other. I went to one about how to write good college essays.

[10:28] Jan: That was probably good.

[10:30] Ella: Yes, it was. And then I went to another one, which I'm sort of trying to take into Key Club this year, which was about helping to end food scarcity. And that was our district service project last year. And it is our district service project again this year because it's just so important.

[10:44] Jan: Right.

[10:45] Ella: So after going to that workshop, I was very inspired to try and get our club involved in some volunteering related to the food bank. And last year we did a supply drive and donated it to Classic Community Action for Homeless People. We need, like, little care kits, and we actually ended up making quite a few, and it took a while to pack them all. And then we did the 50 50 raffle. But this year we're hoping to do another, like 50 50 raffle to donate some money to the food bank.

[11:17] Jan: How many members are in your Key Club?

[11:20] Ella: Well, we only had two meetings this year. Today was actually our second meeting.

[11:23] Jan: The site is still September.

[11:25] Ella: Yeah, today was our second meeting. We had about 20 last time, and I'd say maybe like 15 come today, which is pretty good because last year we had a really large number show up. At the beginning of the year, we had about 30.

[11:41] Jan: Probably drifted off.

[11:42] Ella: Yes, we ended the year with six. So we got hit kind of hard there. But this year I am hoping that we will have more people stick around. But it's looking promising so far, and we have lots of good ideas.

[11:57] Jan: Yeah. What do you think? What are good qualifications or things that people need to be a good leader?

[12:07] Ella: Just motivation. I feel like anyone can do it. Anyone can help or make a difference. If you want to, you just have to want to.

[12:16] Jan: Well, and I think from doing all the interviews that I've done here, I think the thing that happens for people to be like just that step out with a little bit more is that they take a step to do something. It's like I have people say, well, how do you do all that stuff? Or how do you it's like, I don't know, I just get an idea and I do it. Right.

[12:39] Ella: You just start. You just start one step at a time.

[12:42] Jan: Yes, you just start and then you start thinking, well, what would it take to do that? And what do I need to organize to do that? And then I try and find a buddy that's going to be on the same page as maybe helps you do that. Yeah, because otherwise things don't get done, you know, or there's so much, so much good that could have been done that isn't because people aren't thinking about outside of there. Yeah, definitely their realm.

[13:09] Ella: It's very easy to get distracted, especially this year. There's a lot going on with colleges and all that. But that's why I'm kind of glad I have Key Club because it gives me an outlet to really have a designated time period every week to focus on community service and different projects we want to do.

[13:26] Jan: Right. That's me. Good, because I think what you've done since you were a young child, really, once you've done that, it's just a habit of doing things for others. And you look at things and see the possibilities, that's the kind of adult you're going to be. And if you end up with kids and that will be what you train your kids to do because that's who you are. It'll spread out other people that are year round. Tell me about you're working for the Oban Society. Tell me about that.

[13:57] Ella: So I am an office assistant for the Oban Society, and they are a nonprofit organization that connects artifacts and items that were taken by American soldiers from Japanese soldiers in World War II back to the families in Japan. So they get donations of different items that were usually passed down a few generations, and somebody's grandkid wants to give it back. And they do all the connection between they find the family in Japan and then they send it back. And a lot of times it's flags that Japanese soldiers would take with them into battle, that American soldiers took for. Souvenirs right. And now a lot of people want to return them to their rightful owner.

[14:45] Jan: How do people find out about it? Is this a national organization or is it just a local one?

[14:50] Ella: It's based in Astoria and everything is done out of Astoria, but they have received items from all over the US and even different countries.

[15:02] Jan: Really?

[15:02] Ella: Yeah.

[15:03] Jan: I assume they have a website. Right. Okay. So I'll link that in the show notes because who knows, that's listening. That might have something that they would want to do that to connect with that too. I think that would be a rewarding thing as well. Just having that history, that connection to.

[15:20] Ella: The history and the work I do is mostly just to help with communications. Like, I get mail, I send emails, sort things. But they do a lot of good work and it's a really good organization to support, so I am very lucky to be working for them. It's a very rewarding job.

[15:42] Jan: I would think it would be compared.

[15:44] Ella: To a lot of other things I could be doing right now.

[15:46] Jan: Exactly, yeah. And you're a Spanish Club member?

[15:50] Ella: I am, yeah.

[15:51] Jan: How's your Spanish?

[15:54] Ella: Not amazing. I took three years of Spanish at the high school and I'm currently not enrolled in Spanish. They didn't have a Spanish Four class this year. I'm hoping to take a Spanish class at the college come winter term when I'm not in Cross country, but Spanish Club is hopefully going to start in the next couple of weeks. I'm the president of that as well. I just talked to Mr. Parks, who's our club advisor today, about getting it going for the year in Spanish Club. I have been in since my freshman year. And freshman year it was all in person, super fun, lots of fun. And then COVID happened, and then COVID, and it was completely online and membership went from like 40 to ten and I stuck it out. And then at the end of my sophomore year, I was voted president. But I never did anything last year because a large part of Spanish Club is food, right. We have it during lunch. We eat chips and salsa, we play board games and learn about different Spanish speaking countries and cultures and holidays. We have slideshow, presentations, but all that is with food. And so last year we just didn't get the mass mandate off until May, right. So it was far too late. But this year we are hopefully going to have it all year. So I'm really excited about that.

[17:14] Jan: Yes. Let's get some menus going and then do you have some Hispanic members as well? Yeah.

[17:23] Ella: Everyone's welcome.

[17:25] Jan: Yeah, it makes it a lot more fun. I had a couple of years of Spanish in high school, which was a long time ago, but I brushed up with Duolingo and went through all that. I thought it was a great way to learn, and I know enough now that when I go to Guatemala, I can at least understand what they're saying because they speak slow Spanish and I can at least get my idea across to them with a few missing words. But yeah, it's nice to have another language, isn't it?

[17:55] Ella: Yeah, I did my best. I went to Panama this summer.

[17:58] Jan: Oh, yeah?

[17:58] Ella: And Costa Rica.

[17:59] Jan: Oh, tell me about that.

[18:01] Ella: I went through Girl Scouts.

[18:04] Jan: I think everybody needs to be a Girl Scout. They just don't know what they're missing.

[18:08] Ella: I went through Girls scouts partnered with Outward Bound Costa Rica.

[18:11] Jan: Okay.

[18:12] Ella: Adventure School. And we went to Costa Rica. And then I was under the impression that we were going to be in Costa Rica for the majority of the trip. Yeah, that was not true. We left the next day to go to Panama after we got there, and we spent, I believe it was nine days on an indigenous island, living on a dock with an indigenous community. And we did different things to help them. We cleaned up the ocean a little bit near their island. We went snorkeling and picked up trash.

[18:46] Jan: Snorkeling’s the best, isn't it? Yeah.

[18:49] Ella: And the Spanish came in handy, definitely, because I wasn't really able to communicate with the adults because they talked really fast, but there were lots of kids around and they would always come over and want to play with us, and they have a smaller vocabulary, so I was able to talk to them, and that was very rewarding. And that's what made me want to continue Spanish this year.

[19:09] Jan: Yeah.

[19:09] Ella: Because I had kind of made up my mind that I wasn't going to continue Spanish anymore, but now I'm looking to try and do it again.

[19:15] Jan: But when you see there's a purpose for it, that makes all the difference in the world.

[19:19] Ella: Yeah. That trip was amazing.

[19:22] Jan: Yes. Oh, gosh. Then you did something with turtles, too.

[19:26] Ella: I did. So that was the second part of Panama. We were in Bocas DelToro Province for nine days, and then we went to mainland Panama, and we were still in the very northeastern edge of the country. And we were at Sunset Ponza sea turtle conservancy place. And we were there for two days. And we did different types of volunteer work helping sea turtles. We moved a lot of sand because they are in between the ocean and the river and very, very skinny place. So when the storms come and stuff, they need protection from flooding on the riverside.

[20:07] Jan: Okay.

[20:08] Ella: And then we also worked with sea turtles, and I released a baby sea turtle. I was there on my birthday on the trip, and I released the sea turtle on my birthday, so that was my favorite thing.

[20:23] Jan: So much fun. Yeah.

[20:24] Ella: But that was where we got most of our community service hours for that trip because I think they said we got somewhere. I don't remember, it was between twelve and 15 during the two weeks we were there because we did night patrol walks, and one night we walked for 4 hours on the beach looking for mother's sea turtles that were giving birth so that we could collect the eggs and put them in the hatchery for protection.

[20:46] Jan: Okay.

[20:47] Ella: Yeah, they do a lot of good work.

[20:49] Jan: Wow. That was what an experience. Not everybody has that kind of experience.

[20:53] Ella: No, it was amazing.

[20:54] Jan: And the weather was nice, decently.

[20:57] Ella: It was actually surprisingly rainy.

[21:00] Jan: Oh, really?

[21:01] Ella: A lot like here. Especially when we were in mainland Panama and Costa Rica. It was cooler temperature.

[21:08] Jan: What time of year was it?

[21:09] Ella: It was June. Their winter.

[21:12] Jan: Yes.

[21:13] Ella: But yeah, it was lots of rain. The islands were beautiful, though. That area was very sunny. And we got scuba diving certified and yes, very fun.

[21:23] Jan: So fun. Yeah. Wow. All these little things that you've done, they're all going to add up to just who you are and where you'll be spurred off to. Trying different things, too. Yeah. Well, this is really fun. Thank you, Ellen. I can't wait to see four years from now what you're doing and what are the things you've been involved with. I'm sure Astoria is happy to have you. There things that you've been involved with. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

[21:53] Ella: Yeah, thank you.

[21:59] Jan: So I guess you don't have to be an adult to make an impact on your community. Hopefully this episode has given some courage to take a step towards a greater world. Have someone in mind that might enjoy listening to this episode. It's easy to share. Click the three dots for a drop down menu, including a link to share or copy the link. I've got some more great episodes coming up, so be sure to tune in again next week. As always, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.