Volunteer Spotlight: Derrick Costa

Special thanks to Learning Life intern, Ehvyn McDaniels, for her assistance in drafting the following profile.

Hang around Derrick Costa long enough and what will strike you is his quiet yet dogged resolve to improve himself by helping others.  In his young life thus far, that resolve has taken him from Washington D.C. and Virginia, to New York, Missouri, Colorado and Costa Rica.

Motivated by the “opportunity to learn and gain new skills, meet new people, and help those who need it most,” Derrick has served as a videographer and events promoter for a teen mentoring program and taught math and English to inner-city youth in Denver, Colorado; cleaned up homes and yards as part of a community clean-ups in Denver and Niagara Falls, New York; served the homeless at a shelters in St Louis and Washington D.C.; filmed and live-streamed sermons at his church, and helped market Volunteer Loudoun, a county civic group in Virginia; and volunteered as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for high school seniors in Costa Rica.

Consistent with his resolve to help others, Derrick pursued volunteerism at Liberty University, from which he graduated in 2012 with a degree in English.  At Liberty, he helped in a variety of ways, including clearing the campus of debris, stockpiling firewood for retreats, and assisting with crowd control, clean-up and stage dismantling for campus concerts.

Soon after graduating, Derrick began working as a projectionist at a movie theater, following his ambition to become a screenwriter.  His work as a projectionist has allowed him to establish a blog as a movie critic titled “Entertainment Observer,” with a growing list of movie reviews Derrick wrote.  Then, in November 2013, eager to take on the challenge of helping to promote and develop a new non-profit, Derrick began volunteering with Learning Life.

Since last November, Derrick has helped promote Learning Life and its quizzes via Facebook and email, informed relevant Washington D.C. area faculty of our work, conducted market and business research, assisted with educational content development, including interesting and important facts Learning Life routinely disseminates via Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.  In April, Derrick completed production of Learning Life’s second brief video, which promotes our novel approach to public education.

Asked why he chose to volunteer with Learning Life, Derrick responds, “I not only saw an opportunity to gain some new skills that could be utilized in other career fields, but also a chance to help develop a new non-profit from the ground up.  I also found Learning Life’s mission enduring because by spreading free knowledge we are helping people become aware of issues that may prove detrimental to not only our society, but to the wider world around us.  By providing easily accessible information we can help people become passionate about rectifying these issues.”

We at Learning Life are very glad to cross paths with Derrick in his pursuit of improving himself by helping others.  We look forward to working further with him and wish him the best in his quest to become a professional screenwriter.

To learn more about volunteering or interning with Learning Life and other ways you can help, contact us at email@learninglife.info.