One Danced. Another Delivered 3,000 Diapers. Five Volunteers Share Their Stories!
This week is National Volunteer Week (April 19-25), when we recognize and honor the incredible people who volunteer their time and services to VNS Health.
In 2025, more than 345 volunteers—including 66 people who’d never volunteered for us previously—contributed over 27,600 hours of their time to teams across VNS Health, representing $961,352.07 in value to the organization.
To help celebrate National Volunteer Week, in this Frontline article we spotlight five of our amazing volunteers!
And to our VNS Health volunteers reading this… a big THANK YOU for all you do!
To go directly to a volunteer profile, click on the links below or you can just scroll down to find them all.
- Protecting Chinatown Seniors Against Fraud: Yvonne, Ng Chen
- Helping Kids in Our FRIENDS Clinic and STEPS Summer Program: Bianca Thompson
- Participation in Vigil Visits at End of Life: Sally Dankas
- Dancing with a Hospice Patient to Frank Sinatra: Tina Ruan
- Delivering 3,000 Diapers in Nassau for Our Nurse-Family Partnership: Sienna Cirrincione
Protecting Chinatown Seniors Against Fraud
When Yvonne, Ng Cheng retired two years ago, she was ready to give back. Encouraged by her cousin, who also volunteers for VNS Health, she quickly discovered how meaningful the experience can be.
As a volunteer at our Chinatown Community Center & Chinatown NNORC, Yvonne helps out at events serving older adults, many of whom speak little to no English. Fluent in Chinese, she welcomes people, assists with event logistics, and works with fellow volunteers to prepare and distribute meals—sometimes packing hundreds of lunches at a time. She supports food pantry distributions as well, helping seniors register for these events, carrying their heavy groceries for them, and packing their carts so they can get the groceries home safely.
To help protect Asian American seniors, Yvonne also recently attended a fraud-prevention workshop organized by VNS Health. The workshop included a visit to a local supermarket, where attendees practiced safe payment techniques.
“It felt like a field trip,” Yvonne says, “but we learned important safety steps that we could share with others.” Drawing on that knowledge, Yvonne later spoke during a virtual fraud-prevention meeting where seniors were given tips on how to keep their finances safe.
Yvonne’s advice to anyone considering volunteering with VNS Health is simple: “If you have the time, do it. You may not realize it at first, but you’ll make a difference—and it will make your life fuller, too.”
Helping Kids in Our FRIENDS Clinic and STEPS Summer Program
For Bianca Thompson, a Cornell University senior studying Human Development, volunteering at VNS Health was more than a summer position. It was a deep dive into the intersection of psychology, community-based care, and clinical medicine. With a career goal of becoming a psychiatrist, Bianca sought out VNS Health to understand how mental health care functions beyond hospital walls.
Bianca began working with the Behavioral Health team over the summer, volunteering four days a week across two distinct programs. Her role blended clinical exposure with hands-on support: she greeted clients, assisted in waiting rooms, conducted outreach calls, administered social determinants of health surveys, shadowed intake appointments, and helped coordinate appointments and documentation.
Bianca also worked closely with the Behavioral Health FRIENDS Clinic, which serves children and adolescents and their families, and the STEPS summer program for children ages 5 to 17. “I loved being able to interact with the kids, play games with them, and help create a space where they could relax and just be themselves,” she says.
A defining part of her volunteer experience was shadowing a VNS Health psychiatrist. “Watching him remain patient and empathetic, even when a patient was hesitant to share, really stood out to me,” Bianca recalls. “He taught me that effective psychiatry requires understanding the full context of a person’s life—their stresses, their environment, and their relationships—not just their symptoms. Shadowing him solidified my passion for psychiatry, and showed me how meaningful it is to support people during vulnerable moments.” As she prepares for medical school, Bianca reflects on the human connection at the heart of VNS Health. “This experience solidified my passion for medicine,” she says. “It showed me that even in vulnerable moments, providing a space where people feel supported and connected can be just as meaningful as the clinical treatment itself.”
Participating in Vigil Visits at the End of Life
As a volunteer with our Hospice Care team, the work Sally Dankas does is rooted in connection. Over the past two years, Sally has built meaningful, long-term relationships with the hospice patients she visits, meeting them wherever they are in their end-of-life journey. Among the individuals she sees regularly, one is a person with limited verbal communication, and their visits often consist of simply coloring side by side or listening to music.
Sally’s path to volunteering was shaped by her experience as a caregiver for her mother, which taught her to connect not only with patients but also with family members. “I understand how exhausting being a caregiver can be,” she says. “Sometimes just having someone to talk to makes a difference for them, too.”
In addition to visiting with hospice patients and their families, Sally stays closely connected to the broader VNS Health Hospice community, volunteering at team meetings and speaking at orientations for new team members and volunteers.
Sally also participates in vigil visits, where she spends time with hospice patients in their final days of life to ensure that they’re not alone. During one especially memorable visit, a patient asked her to stay close.
“He just wanted to be held,” Sally recalls. “I held his hand and sat with him for hours. It was very simple, but very meaningful. Even the smallest moments can mean everything to someone.”
Dancing with a Hospice Patient to Frank Sinatra
For Tina Ruan, volunteering with our Hospice Care team is deeply personal. A New York-based theater artist who was born in Taiwan, Tina has long been drawn to embodied storytelling through her work in oral history and performance. That same curiosity about people’s inner lives and experiences led her to volunteer with hospice patients.
“I’ve always been interested in what gives life meaning,” she says. “Hospice is a space where people reflect on that in a very real way.”
Her decision to volunteer was also shaped by her own family history. Tina’s mother received hospice care before passing away, and years later Tina felt ready to return to that space as a source of support for others.
Since joining VNS Health last fall, Tina has spent time with patients in both private homes and care facilities, typically visiting with several individuals and their caregivers each week. Her role during these visits is simple but powerful: to be present.
“Sometimes we talk, or I read to them, or we listen to music,” she says. “Other times, we just sit quietly. Some of the most meaningful moments happen in that silence.”
One specific moment that stayed with her involved a bed-bound patient who loved singing and dancing. As they listened to Frank Sinatra together, Tina asked if she wanted to dance. “We raised our hands and danced together from the bed,” she recalls. “It reminded me that in every body and circumstance, there’s still so much space for vibrancy and joy.”
Through her volunteer work, Tina has also gained a deeper appreciation for caregivers and the emotional complexity surrounding end-of-life care. It’s taught her to be more receptive, that every interaction is different, and the stamina to stay with what’s real amid so much outside of our control.
To others who are considering becoming a hospice volunteer, Tina says: “Take time to reflect on what it means to truly help someone, how you tend to the support around you, and be open to whatever the moment brings.”
Delivering 3,000 Diapers to Families in Our Nassau Nurse-Family Partnership
Sienna Cirrincione’s volunteer experience started with the simple realization that the most essential items for families are often the most overlooked. Now in her senior year of high school, Sienna launched a diaper drive as a high school junior after learning that baby diapers are not usually covered by assistance programs and can be a significant financial burden for families.
Using social media to spread the word, Sienna organized donations throughout her community, ultimately delivering approximately 3,000 diapers to VNS Health for families in our Nassau Nurse Family Partnership program. She later expanded her efforts with additional drives for baby wipes and children’s toys.
While she had the support of her family and friends, Sienna coordinated the drives largely on her own, managing every aspect from outreach to delivery. Although she did not meet the recipients directly, she heard from VNS Health team members that the donations made a meaningful impact.
For Sienna, the most rewarding part of the experience has been knowing that even small actions can make a big difference. “It showed me that something simple can really help someone who needs it,” she says.
As she prepares to attend the University of Texas at Austin this fall, Sienna plans to continue giving back, and is considering a future career in health care. “I’ve always wanted to help others,” she says. “This has just made me want to do even more.”