For Jenna Jenkins, community involvement isn’t limited to her own personal time and efforts. 

Jenna, a teller for INB’s Bloomington branch, has rallied the INB Bloomington team to get involved with several local organizations she works to support as a student at Illinois State University. 

“I really wanted to get involved with the community myself so I thought ‘what better way than to involve everyone and get INB’s name out there?’” she said.

This holiday season, INB is sponsoring two children through ISU’s Holiday Helper program, thanks to Jenna’s encouragement.

“The program collects information about children in the Bloomington-Normal area who are in need of items for Christmas. Someone can ‘sponsor’ a child with a $50 limit to purchase things that they need and want,” Jenna explained. “Everyone at the Bloomington INB was super willing to help sponsor a child, and we decided we are going to do two children, a boy and a girl, to help them be able to enjoy Christmas like we can.”

Spirit of Giving Lasts Year-Round

Jenna is also involved with the Paws Giving Independence program through a group at ISU called Indy-pendence Service Dogs. The group’s mission is to help train service dogs before they are placed with an individual who needs assistance.

“Paws Giving Independence is a nonprofit organization that relies on volunteers to help train and foster service dogs in training until they are fully trained and pass tests to become certified,” Jenna said. “All of the dogs that they consider being service dogs must be temper-tested and go through a few other tests and pass them before the training starts.

“In the Indy-pendence Service Dog program, we have meetings every Wednesday evening, and we go over different commands the service dogs would need once they are trained to become a fully certified Service Dog.”

Jenna said she has enjoyed sharing about the missions of the organizations she is passionate about, and her fellow staff members at INB have been a big support to her in these endeavors.

“With Paws Giving Independence and Indy-Pendence Service Dogs, everyone was super interested in how we train the dogs, as well as everyone here enjoying animals. Watching the service dogs that I have worked with learn new things and improve is just very rewarding to me; I am very passionate about helping other people!” she said. “Everyone at the branch was very supportive of me asking to involve them with the Holiday Helper as well. I am very appreciative to work with others who are so willing to contribute to the community just like I want to!”