Ryan Donahue lives in a tent in the house that he's obsessed over for the last six years, constructing and deconstructing, washing dishes in the bathtub. He anticipates that upon completion, his brain will be washed of any ideas and go into the blank green void of schools' summer chalkboards, a fugue escaped through thorough reading of 826 publications and a long walk somewhere.

In her various incarnations, Saku ee has been a chicagoan, ohioan, san franciscan, brooklynite, manhattanite, angeleno, an experimental filmmaker, a performance artist, a photographer, a writer, an actress, a singer in the shower, an acoustic guitarist, a scooterist, a kawasaku, a raw food chef, a wallflower, a social butterfly, a bookworm, a worker bee at a film studio, a tree hugger, a student, and a teacher. She feels privileged to be a volunteer at 826LA, a place where creativity, education, and community can take root and flourish in the hearts and minds of young people who may not have had this opportunity otherwise. Thanks, Mr. Eggers!

Amanda Gehrke originally hails from Wilmington, Delaware, but was driven west by the stigma of a bad Wayne's World joke. An urban planner by trade, Amanda is also relearning basic grammar and math as a tutor at the Venice drop-in center. She was a little nervous about working with kids in the beginning, but has since discovered that she and they have more in common than she realized. Though she's honored to be selected as Volunteer of the Month, she still has a lot to learn—about kids and grammar.

Though she hasn't been part of the 826LA gang for long, Reaux has made up for it by logging a huge number of painting hours at the new Echo Park space, not to mention general product assembly, floor sweeping, and just about anything else asked of her, including her advice on which Robot Emotion will sell best, Schadenfreude or Love. Outside of 826LA, she writes a 'zine series read by the likes of Daniel Handler, gets around on bike and by bus in this car-logged town, and loves the concept of reduce-reuse-recycle. She is currently close to finished with her AA at Los Angeles City College and hopes to transfer next year to Berkeley, or any school in the vicinity of an 826 so she can keep up the good work.