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Her older brother Jeffrey started Sock It to Me five years ago to earn a Boy Scout badge. Nurse Karin Tackett, a next-door neighbor and friend of the Burris family, gave him the idea: homeless people are hard on socks; for hygienic and health reasons, they are always in need of new pairs. If Jeffrey would collect the socks, Tackett would have the Georgia Nurses Foundation, which treats the homeless, distribute the socks at shelters in nearby Atlanta and Athens. Helped by Jessica and parents Herb and Patty Burris, Jeffrey got his badge. But Jessica decided the campaign had merit and kept it going. And growing. Jessica currently has 20 kids her age volunteering for Sock It to Me. Now they also collect shoes, clothing, toiletries and money for medication, to the benefit of thousands of people. "We've had more than one party sorting socks," said her mother Patty, once a big-time volunteer herself. "I'll have a sleep-over with friends, and we shoot hoops with the socks we sort," added Jessica, who looks a lot like her mom.
Jessica's zest for life is something mother imparted to daughter. Since she was seven, Jessica had witnessed her plucky mom battle angiosarcoma (cancer of the vascular system), which claimed her life 14 days after Jessica's interview with Time. Patty cherished life, says Tackett, and in that way "Jessica is so much like her." --Reported by Leslie Everton Brice/Conyers
ON THE FAST TRACK This teen's fight against abuse is all business
Ask Cecilia-Nan Ding, 17, to name the last compact disc she bought or the last movie she saw, and she cannot tell you. But ask the senior at the prestigious Boston Latin School how many beds for battered women there are in Boston's shelters, and her recall is a rapid 400...419, to be precise--a number Nan (as she prefers to be called) finds disturbing. Consider in comparison, she says, the number of calls made in 1996 to Massachusetts women's hot lines: 80,843.
Despite all the rhetoric condemning abuse, says Nan, statistics like these prove that domestic violence is "institutionalized" in our society. It was not what she expected to find when she immigrated to America four years ago from Tianjin, China. The problems here, she says, are too reminiscent of how women are "suppressed" in China. And that is why she feels compelled to do something about it.
To help remedy the problem, Nan, this past June, started a company called FAST (Friends and Shelter for Teens). Its goal is to have teenagers educate elementary school children about domestic violence and counsel those already trapped in an abusive relationship. Nan has 25 teen volunteers working with her, most of them recruited from her school.
Although FAST hasn't generated revenues yet, its sponsorship of two rock concerts at Boston clubs put the company on the map. Taking a page in long-term planning from her homeland, Nan says the volunteers will be doing research and creating educational materials over the next couple of years. She projects that FAST won't be fully operational until around the turn of the century. Still, Bostonian Robert Tynes, co-founder of INA (Increase Your Natural Ability), a not-for-profit company that helps teens like Nan start and run their own businesses, is impressed with the speed at which FAST, the fifth such company INA has launched, is taking shape.