Glamour Magazine Names Maggie Dunne to List of Top College Women

Maggie Dunne of Scarsdale was honored as one of Glamour magazine’s Top 10 College Women for 2012. An SHS graduate, Dunne is currently studying Native American studies at Colgate University. She was selected for her work on behalf of the Lakota Pine Ridge Indians in South Dakota who she has helped via the Lakota Pine Ridge Children’s Enrichment Program which she launched to address Native American poverty in South Dakota. To further her cause Dunne traveled to Bangladesh to learn aid techniques to be used on the reservation, and has so far distributed more than $100,000 worth of coats, boots, and books to the people there.

Dunne was awarded the grand prize of $20,000 in the competition that has recognized 10 students from across the country for the past 55 years for campus leadership, scholastic achievement, community involvement and unique, inspiring goals. The 10 winners are profiled in an editorial feature in the May 2012 issue of Glamour and you can see the full article here.

According to information on Colgate Connect, Dunne’s interest in Native Americans began when she took a volunteer trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota during an alternative spring break trip as a high school sophomore. She said, “I’d never seen poverty like that—and in our own country!” she says. “I vowed to go back every year for the rest of my life.”

Inspired to help, during her junior year in Scarsdale Dunne organized a children’s coat and book drive. To her surprise, her idea to “do something a little extra” yielded more than 2,000 children’s books and more than 300 children’s coats, which she personally distributed to the schools on a return trip that year.

Her continuous fundraising efforts caught the attention of a local corporate lawyer, who offered to help Dunne take her cause to the next level. With the lawyer’s assistance, Dunne created the nonprofit organization Lakota Pine Ridge Children’s Enrichment Project Limited (LPRCEP), through which she gathers resources for the Lakota children. She continued the work of the group at Colgate, organizing fundraisers, collecting clothing, electronics and refrigerators as well as an alternative spring break trip for Colgate students to Pine Ridge.

Congratulations to Maggie!