Volunteer Profile: Destiny Arias-Buckeye

Destiny’s connection to Florence Crittenton Services is deeper than many of her fellow interns from Regis University. Destiny’s mother was 15 when she had Destiny while attending West High School, a neighboring Denver Public High School. At the time, Destiny’s mother heard of FloCrit from her counselors as an option for her to continue her high school education, but she elected to stay at West. Destiny grew up in Denver and was the Valedictorian at Arrupe Jesuit High School. In September 2019, Destiny started her freshman year at Regis University and enrolled in a course called EnRoute, a year-long philosophy class for first years centered on service learning. This class allowed her to volunteer at a Denver organization and earn college credits for her time. She saw the list of organizations and immediately picked Florence Crittenton Services.

Destiny is an Early Childhood Education Center assistant in room 118, one of our youngest classrooms, for children ages 6-weeks to 1-year-old. She spends her weekly visits holding, rocking, feeding, and playing with the youngest attendees of our ECE Center. Destiny feels grateful to be able to interact with the babies on a daily basis and see their curiosities grow. She finds so much joy in being able to support the classroom teachers, like Ataya, whom she calls “amazing and wonderful,” and our campus as a whole. Destiny recommends the ECE Center to any prospective volunteer and feels that volunteers can make the greatest impact by assisting in classrooms.

“I had my heart set on FloCrit,” says Destiny. “It feels amazing to give back in this way; it feels like home to me.”  In addition to working in the classroom, Destiny has been able to give back to the community in other tangible ways. She has a new baby brother, and regularly donates his extra diapers to our emergency diaper program. She also worked alongside her fellow Regis EnRoute interns to secure a small grant for our ECE, which ECE Center Director MonaLisa Martinez plans to put toward baby buggies to take our youngest friends outside for a crucial component of their learning and development. Though her time was cut short due to Regis and Denver Public Schools closures from COVID-19, Destiny made a huge impact on the campus in her year here, and we hope she’ll continue to stay engaged as she advances in her academic career at Regis.