From strolling the Red Carpet with Emma Stone to winning a $25,000 grant for the local food bank, one Charlottesville native stands out wherever she goes.
Third-year College student Nicole Muller founded a local chapter of Neighbors-4-Neighbors her junior year at Western Albemarle High School, and has since brought it to Grounds. The organization coordinates efforts to collect food for Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.
“Nicole has mobilized a response unmatched by anyone else,” said Michael McKee, Blue Ridge Area Food Bank CEO. “What is remarkable about Nicole is her young age. To see a young person recognize a need and follow through is rare and encouraging to us.”
The organization began with a collection from just the 13 houses in her small neighborhood, but it has since expanded to a contracted independent organization on Grounds and now spans the entire Charlottesville area with fundraisers at 16 different schools. The CIO has even received attention from national organizations, Muller said.
Starting with just a few emails, Muller’s initiative expanded quickly, generating positive feedback along the way.
“You can help in ways that you wouldn’t really expect and it’s not as hard as everyone thinks,” Muller said. “I was afraid at first people would not be willing to help out, but as soon as you tell them how easy it is and how much it means to [those] who they are helping, most people can’t just say no.”
Although the bulk of her work is conducted strictly by email, Muller said she still takes time to stop by the food bank and visit with the workers there.
“There are always people there and all the workers know me so it’s always really nice to see how gracious they are,” she said. “It makes you want to keep going.”
Muller certainly kept going, raising more than $45,000 for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. Members of the Charlottesville community aren’t the only ones to appreciate her work — Muller has received several awards, including being named one of 21 “Amazing Young Women” in a 2011 issue of “Glamour” magazine. She was subsequently flown to New York City to walk the red carpet with other starlets in celebration of her work.
“There are very few individuals who have been able to achieve what she has,” McKee said. “It’s been really enjoyable for all of us to experience it at the food bank.”
In September, One-A-Day Women’s Nutrition Mission rewarded Muller with a $25,000 grant for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. That grant could translate to more than 200,000 meals, according to calculations from Feeding America, the national organization that manages the local food bank.
McKee said 5 percent of the bank’s food comes from community food drives like Nicole’s, translating to millions of meals.
“The U.Va community really has been an extra important source of support — Nicole has been able to continue doing what she does, which is really important to us,” McKee said.
Also a political science major, Muller does not intend to let go of this passion.
“I can see myself doing non-profit work and planning different fundraisers and such for them,” she said. “I could definitely see making a job out of it. I don’t have any plans of ending this anytime soon because it is so rewarding.”
Going from a small 13-house drive to thousand-dollar donations in just four years, Muller has single handedly fortified a community and brought new energy to food banks everywhere.
“A couple cans or a couple dollars — it can start a whole organization,” Muller said. “You can do that with anything, not just a food drive.”
A previous version of this article erroneously stated that the $25,000 grant aided 10,000 individuals and that the $45,000 Muller raised translated to 18,000 meals.
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