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QuickTake:
Eugene teen Abigail Akins has competed in national pageants since she was young. She represented Oregon in Miss Volunteer America this year in Tennessee, highlighting her passion for gathering and donating books to schools and libraries to promote literacy.
For a small city, Eugene residents have a knack for ending up on national stages.
One of the most recent examples is Abigail Akins, Oregon’s 2025 teen representative in the national pageant Miss Volunteer America. A 16-year-old at Willamette High School, Akins attended the competition in March and will hand off her crown to a new Miss Oregon Teen Volunteer in January.
Akins won $2,750 in scholarship money for the title, and she hopes to someday use it to go to college for aerospace engineering.
She spoke to Lookout Eugene-Springfield about the Miss Oregon Volunteer program and the work she did in the community to earn her title. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lookout Eugene-Springfield: What is the Miss Oregon Volunteer program?
Akins: The Miss Oregon Volunteer program is a scholarship pageant organization that anybody between the ages of — we have a new princess program, actually — so I want to say 5 years old all the way to 26 can compete in to earn scholarship prizes, and we really focus on volunteering. It’s in the name, so it’s a huge part of it. And I joined the organization, I want to say, when I was 13. We have our acronym called S.E.R.V.E., and it stands for a Scholarship, Education, Responsibility, Volunteerism and Empowerment.
Have you done other pageants?
I’ve been doing pageants since I was 2 years old, so I’ve been doing this for quite a long time. I’ve held many national titles. I’ve competed in tons of pageants, and yeah, it’s kind of my thing.
What’s the difference between the Miss Oregon Teen Volunteer pageant and other ones you’ve competed in?
I would say for my region of the pageant, like in the Pacific Northwest, the pageant community’s kind of getting smaller and smaller. So it’s not super-big here, but I know in some of the Southern states, it is huge and at nationals, it is crazy-big. Nationals was in Jackson, Tennessee, and there were thousands of people there. It’s held on the same stage that the Miss America competition is held on.
What do you do to compete in the Miss Oregon Teen Volunteer pageant?
You start out as a local title holder. I was Miss Emerald City Teen Volunteer. And before you compete at the state pageant, which is in January, you do a bunch of volunteer work, you keep up on social media because the judges are always watching that. At the state competition, you compete in four areas of competition:
You have an interview; you have talent, fitness and evening gown. And each of those accounts for a certain portion of your score. Everybody competes in those, and then the scores are all tallied up, and the winner is announced and the aforementioned winner goes to nationals.
What did you do for your volunteer work?
I have my personal platform. It’s called Abby’s Kids, and it’s to help raise awareness about illiteracy in kids that are in kindergarten through fifth grade. So I go around and I donate books to little libraries, I donate books to schools, to various organizations around not just Eugene, but all around Oregon. And I give presentations at different schools. This stemmed from my love for reading. I was born with a congenital cataract in my left eye, and I had to have six eye surgeries up until this point. And through healing from those, I found comfort in reading always, and it’s just always been a huge part of my life.
What are some of your favorite books?
Recently, I have read “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros. This is my favorite series right now. I’m a big fantasy girly.
How many books have you been able to gather and donate?
Over 2,000 over the last 10 years of doing it. I started when I was 5 years old.
What have you learned from both your individual books project and group volunteer experiences?
I’ve learned a lot of resilience. It takes a lot to work as a team and to build something from the ground up, especially with something as big as volunteering and benefiting entire communities. So I feel like personally, I’ve learned really well how to handle myself in front of a group and a lot of leadership skills to help coordinate different things.
What advice would you give to someone who is interested in competing in Miss Oregon Volunteer but is on the fence?
I would tell them to absolutely do it. They can do whatever they set their mind to. And for somebody that would like to compete for the volunteer organization, I would tell them that it’s such an incredible organization. Genuinely, competing at nationals, it was one of the kind of groups of girls I’ve ever competed with. Some people have this stigma of pageants being like, everybody’s catty and everybody just really wants to be there to win, but honestly, my experience wasn’t like that at all. Everybody was there to support each other.
