ILR student Noah Doyle and his sister Rachel, a student in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell, run a non-profit program called Glamour Gals. Here he shares his experience of becoming involved with the group and the relationship his philanthropy has with his coursework.

“The Glamour Gals foundation began in 1999 as a small chapter that Rachel and her girlfriends started at the Gurwin Jewish Geriatric Center in Commack, New York, shortly after our grandmother passed away from loneliness in a Nevada nursing home. Since Rachel was a young child she has always shown a strong desire to help others, and our grandmother’s death motivated her to reach out to senior citizens in nursing homes. Since the inception of Glamour Gals, Rachel has given hundreds of free makeovers and the organization has expanded to include ten chapters in New York State. Rachel’s desire to prevent what happened to her own grandmother from happening to other older women inspired hundreds of teens to provide personal attention to women who might otherwise be left alone.

“Over the years I kept watching the organization grow as Rachel was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Early Morning Show, and interviewed for national publications, including the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour. When an author approached Rachel about turning her story into a children’s book, I knew it was time to get involved and help her manage the foundation.

“My experience with the Glamour Gals foundation has been extremely positive. Glamour Gals has provided an outlet for me to take the theories and paradigms I have learned in the classroom and apply them to building an organization. I sometimes wish I had taken better notes in all my organizational behavior classes over the years. Rachel and I are very different people and our strengths naturally complement one another. She manages the functional details in our ten Glamour Gals chapters, such as coordinating the volunteers and make up supplies; I deal with everything else, including fundraising and the business and legal aspects of forming a non-profit organization. Despite the publicity we’ve received, Glamour Gals is still a small “start-up” organization; we will only be able to grow to the extent we are able to raise the dollars to purchase the make-up for each chapter. I have quickly learned two important lessons: makeup is not cheap and fundraising is not easy. Of course, no one said Cornell was easy, but I’ve made my way here, too.

“The Cornell Tradition Program and the Public Service Center have been amazing financial assets for Rachel and me. Without their support and our ability to earn our financial aid workstudy through our efforts with Glamour Gals we would never be able to commit the necessary time to running the foundation each week. Every step of the way we have received support from the university for our foundation. Whether it has been a Cornell fraternity or sorority who has donated money or time, a professor who offers free advice to building our organization, or the free publicity we have received as students, Cornell has been central to the new phase Glamour Gals is entering.

“As the elderly population in this country increases, I hope that the mission of Glamour Gals can make a policy statement not just about how we care for the elderly physically, but also about how we treat our elders emotionally. Rachel has taken an innovative approach to raising awareness, drawing attention to the problems that understaffed and under-funded nursing homes increasingly face. Through the common bond of makeup, Glamour Gals challenges the growing disconnection between young and senior populations, while putting more smiles on the faces of elderly women than any type of advanced medicine or treatment could offer.”

—Noah Doyle, ILR Connections, Spring 2003