Volunteering dynamo Favors non-profits and ‘good causes’

Edgar Romero is driven - he is passionate about volunteering for the non-governmental organization (NGO) Women for Afghan Women (WAW), is the creator and director of his own Strengthen the World Project and is on a committee to make sure the residents of his apartment building recycle.
What is most impressive about Romero, though, is that he does all of this for his community while pursuing his college education. Not only that, he moved from his native Venezuela to the United States in 2002, first to Miami and then to New York City in 2006, in the hopes of achieving his dreams.
“I wanted to move to pursue my career,” he said.
Romero, a Brooklyn resident, is currently studying international relations at LaGuardia Community College. He is a member Alpha Theta Phi, a chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, which is an international honor society for students at two-year colleges.
“I want to work for a non-profit organization,” he said about his career goals, also noting that he would like to work for “good causes,” such as helping the environment.
But Romero is already involved with numerous causes that he cares deeply about, one of the major of these causes being the WAW, which is based in Queens.
His interest in this organization was first ignited after he watched a documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival about four American women who lost their husbands on September 11. Romero said that the women in the film did not know each other even though they lived close to each other. People in the neighborhood said that they should meet and when they did, the women decided to move to Afghanistan to help Afghan women.
“I wanted to screen [the film] at my school,” he said.
After doing some research, Romero found out about WAW and was able to get the manager of the organization to speak at LaGuardia to a crowd of about 80 people.
After getting involved with this organization, Romero was inspired to create his own similar project, the Strengthen the World Project. Romero’s Strengthen the World Project works with the children of the women who are helped by the WAW.
On his blog, strengthentheworld.blogspot.com, Romero wrote that the “Strengthen the World Project is inspired by those people that care to advocate creating consciousness for a social change.”
This summer, Romero’s project held a nine-week summer camp for the children of refugee Afghan women. In addition to playing sports such as soccer and basketball, they also got to take field trips to museums and the Bronx zoo.
The mothers of the children benefited from the summer camp, too.
“The free time afforded to the mothers will open up opportunities for them to further their own education,” Romero wrote on his blog. “Many of these women are learning English and increasing their literacy for the first time.”
In addition to volunteering with the WAW and starting his own project, he also cares about protecting the environment.
“We know we live on this planet [and] this is the only planet we have,” Romero said.
Romero said that he was concerned about the lack of a recycling program at his 16-story apartment building in Brooklyn. He expressed these concerns to the super of his building, and he was able to join a committee to help improve the recycling there.
“Finally the recycling program [there] has developed,” he said.