A Service Year That Shaped a Career

When Gabby Davidson began her service year with Notre Dame Mission Volunteers, she didn’t have a five-year plan.

She had a degree in Human Development. She had considered becoming a teacher. She knew she wanted to work with people and make a difference, but she wasn’t sure what came next.

Then she discovered NDMV through AmeriCorps.

Gabby had first heard about AmeriCorps through a cousin who served with AmeriCorps VISTA. As she learned more, she realized that national service was much more expansive than she had initially imagined.

“I didn’t want to build houses,” she said. “But I started exploring what AmeriCorps was and how versatile it was.”

In 2019, Gabby joined Notre Dame Mission Volunteers, AmeriCorps (NDMVA at the time), and served with Fitness for Life, an afterschool program in Watsonville, California, that focused on gardening, nutrition, and helping students build healthy habits.

For Gabby, the placement felt like both a homecoming and an opportunity to explore something new.

Gabby (second from right) with her the Fitness for Life staff.

She had grown up in Watsonville and had actually participated in Fitness for Life herself as a middle school student. She remembers the program as a place where she could decompress and connect with her community. One memory that has stayed with her is planting a willow tree with one of her leaders—a tree that is now 10 to 15 years old.

Returning to the program as an NDMV Volunteer gave Gabby the chance to see it from a completely different perspective. She would visit different schools, working with students of a variety of ages to teach lessons in gardens about nutrition. The age differences could be challenging for Gabby, but there was one constant: She was always in the garden.

“I knew I didn’t want to teach in the classroom,” she says. “But I liked the idea of being able to work outside and the food access part—ensuring kids had access to nutritious foods.”

That realization became an important piece of Gabby’s career puzzle.

Her NDMV service year also gave her something she was looking for: a transitional way to enter the workforce while having the time and space to figure out what she actually wanted to do.

Then, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything.

Suddenly, the structure of service looked very different. But instead of seeing the disruption as a limitation, Gabby learned an unexpected lesson: sometimes, you have to adapt and go with the flow.

Her Site Director was particularly supportive, giving Volunteers what they needed while also giving them the space to figure out how they could continue serving.

When students could no longer gather in person, Gabby and her team found new ways to support them. They packed backpacks with materials so students could continue working from home and connected with other volunteer organizations to share resources.

Gabby also created an online website for the afterschool program, bringing together activities and resources that students and families could use at home. The experience showed her that service wasn’t necessarily about following a predetermined path. It was about recognizing a need and finding a way to meet it.

“Stepping up to support people—that was the foundation of why I felt allowed to show up for my community in the way that it needed,” she says.

And through all of it, Gabby continued to learn what energized her.

She loved working with young people. She loved being connected to her community. She loved being outside. And increasingly, she recognized that she was passionate about making sure people had access to nutritious food.

Set up for a nutrition activity where students got to taste test and rank different types of citrus.

After her service year, that interest continued to shape her career.

Fitness for Life partnered with a local food bank, giving Gabby another opportunity to work at the intersection of education and food access. She had the freedom to develop lessons and explore the topics she cared about.

Eventually, the food bank hired her for a two-and-a-half-year role doing SNAP outreach. That experience helped Gabby take the next step in her career. 

Today, she works with the California Association of Food Banks, supporting food banks across the state through policy work at both the state and federal levels. Her work focuses not only on helping food banks get food to people who need it, but also on the broader fight against hunger. 

Looking back, Gabby isn’t sure she would have found this career path without NDMV.

Her service year didn’t hand her a career plan. Instead, it gave her the opportunity to explore, experiment, and pay attention to the work that made her feel most connected to her values.

And for Gabby, that is the power of service: sometimes you don’t start with a clear picture of where you’re going. Sometimes, you find your direction by showing up, trying something new, and discovering what makes you want to keep going.

Her advice to someone considering a service year with NDMV is simple:

“It never hurts to apply!”