WINCHESTER, Ky. — Brittney Woodrum has hit her peak as a hiker. Precisely, in 2020, she hit more than 50 peaks.

Woodrum, 28, a native of Winchester and University of Kentucky graduate now living in Denver, Colorado, was awarded the Presidential Volunteer Service Award for her service to the international disaster relief charity ShelterBox in 2020. During The Fourteeners Project, Woodrum climbed more than 50 mountain peaks to raise awareness and nearly $85,000 for ShelterBox, which provides shelter and warmth to victims of natural disasters.

“It's an incredible award,” Woodrum said. “I feel very, very humbled to have received it.”

The President’s Volunteer Service Award is a special recognition presented on behalf of President Joe Biden. The award is part of a national recognition program created in 2003 through the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation for individuals of all ages who contribute a significant amount of time to volunteer activities.

Woodrum, a ShelterBox Ambassador, received the gold-level service award for donating more than 500 hours of her time to support families with the emergency shelter and supplies they need to survive after losing their homes to disaster or conflict. 

“I studied nonprofit administration in college, and I have I've always been very service-focused and always wanted to be involved in the community,” she said. “After graduating, I had the great fortune to kind of hopscotch around from different organizations working in almost every corner of the world, from Mexico to Myanmar to Thailand and Hong Kong, and with these different projects, I was working a lot with different nonprofits on everything from education to working with refugees to women's empowerment.” 

Woodrum said her work in nonprofits piqued her interest in humanitarian aid-based work and steered her toward ShelterBox. She enrolled at the University of Denver to study nonprofits and humanitarian assistance. Woodrum was looking for a way to get involved in the Denver community and the greater community of humanitarian aid. She was a ShelterBox ambassador for almost a year before taking on the fundraising project.

ShelterBox provides necessary items for victims of natural disasters. (Brittney Woodrum)

“I quickly learned that ShelterBox is a small organization in terms of employees, but they have this huge ambassador base that really serves as their outreach,” she said. “There are many ambassadors who have taken on some pretty crazy challenges to raise both awareness and funds for the organization, so whenever I heard this, I knew it wasn't so much a question of if I would take on a physical challenge, but what it would be and when, because physical challenges have kind of been a thing for me over the years.” 

Woodrum said she saw the challenge as a chance to combine her hiking passions and elevate other people's voices and causes. A physical challenge of this kind is not something Woodrum intended to attempt while being enrolled full-time in graduate school. Then COVID-19 hit. 

“All of a sudden, there was this huge growing need that I saw that no one was talking about,” she said. “Vulnerable populations, and those dealing with disaster or those who didn't have shelter, were much more vulnerable than me and many of my neighbors, so I thought there had to be something that I could do to go out and make a big, positive impact on the global community.” 

What followed was the beginning of The Fourteeners Project, and in the summer of 2020, Woodrum succeeded in climbing all 58 of Colorado's “fourteeners,” which are mountains above 14,000 feet. She did so with a ShelterBox, a big turquoise tub, strapped to her back. 

“In just under three months, I pretty much climbed every day raising awareness and funds,” she said. “By the end of the project, I'd raised about $85,000, and to date, I've raised just over $100,000, all going to ShelterBox and its COVID relief emergency fund.”

After completing such a formidable task and gaining recognition from the Biden Administration for her efforts, Woodrum is contemplating her next endeavor.

“After doing that project, I kind of joked that I have ‘peaked’ now,” she said. “If anything, after finishing that project, I felt pretty confident that these were not the last mountains I would climb, and this was not the last project that I would do with ShelterBox. I'm a passionate long-distance hiker as well as a long-distance cyclist, so I'm already kind of planning on what the next project will be. I’m just giving my legs time to rest and feeling out what the next project will be.”