Amy McCallum

By Tara Daniels

Amy McCallum has absolutely no background connection to the cancer world.

In fact, McCallum’s start in the non-profit work force came about because of her study abroad opportunity in South Africa, while she was in college.

McCallum currently works as an assistant director for the Jimmy Fund Golf Program. She didn’t always work for Dana Farber and the Jimmy Fund, though.

She started out studying sociology, human development and anthropology at Colby College, in Waterville, ME. It was there that her anthropology professor sparked her interest in South Africa, and furthermore sparked her interest in working in the nonprofit world.

An opportunity came up in McCallum’s junior year of college to study abroad with her anthropology professor along with a few of her professor’s classes.

While in South Africa, three times a week, McCallum and her fellow classmates would take a bus from their host school in a wealthy suburb to a high school on the outskirts of Cape Town.
The high school was in townships that were heartbreaking to go through. McCallum said, “Trash was everywhere and goats were running through the streets.” Even though the learning and living conditions were sub-standard in most opinions, the high school children who lived there were astoundingly happy. “They had nothing, yet they didn’t seem to see it like that,” McCallum said.

“Their classrooms and libraries were literally bare and their educational resources were beyond limited,” McCallum said.

It was at the high school in the townships that McCallum and her classmates taught the children how to use computers and the Internet.

The children took her and her fellow classmates to what they called ‘home.’ Often the structures were in shantytowns and made of scrap materials such as plywood, sheets of tin and plastic.

One of the things that she found the most bizarre, though, was that with such staggering poverty, most of South Africa's mid to upper class citizens seemed to do little to help their neighbors in need."

When McCallum got back to Maine after her experience studying abroad, her anthropology professor’s colleague had started fundraising efforts for a scholarship-like program to benefit South African children. This program was made to try to get them better schooling, in hopes that they would someday attend college. The work was too much for her professor’s colleague, though, so she partnered with a Boston-based, nonprofit company that is devoted to international development in South Africa.

After McCallum got out of college, she volunteered for the Boston-based company and ideally wanted to work for the company, however only internships and volunteering opportunities were being offered at the time.

It was then that she turned to looking for work at other nonprofit organizations.
McCallum found a well-known, Boston-based charity in the Jimmy Fund and Dana Farber. It took her a few years, multiple interviews and multiple application processes before McCallum got a job working for the Jimmy Fund.

She loves her job at the Jimmy Fund and goes as far to say, “My favorite part, hands down is working with families and meeting the people I get to work with. I get to talk to everyone who is interested in giving back, whether or not cancer has personally affected them.”

Amy’s family of two brothers and one sister, along with her parents, Karen and John, all support her work. “They all realize that the nonprofit world is where my heart is,” McCallum said. She said that they look to the Jimmy Fund as well because it is such a well-known charity in New England. “It doesn’t hurt that the Jimmy Fund is partnered with the Red Sox, either, seeing my family are all big fans,” McCallum joked.

Amy McCallum doesn’t keep South Africa far out of her mind, though. She is always trying to find a way to get back to helping the underprivileged children and people of those Cape Town townships that she visited in 2001 whilst she was attending college.

She possibly even would one day like to start her own nonprofit organization in South Africa.

“You go there and you just want to stay and give back. You’re touched by the experience and it never leaves you,” said McCallum.