My name is Lauren Sadowski, and I just finished a four week internship volunteering at Girl AGain. My high school offers a program called “Senior Options”, where we can find an internship or work on an independent project starting in the middle of May.
When I started to think about what I wanted to do for Senior Options, I immediately thought back to last summer, when I volunteered at Girl AGain as a “peer mentor”, working side by side with the trainees. After a good experience with the store last year, I knew it was something I would want to do again. I reached out to Marjorie Madfis, the founder and Executive Director of Yes She Can.
Yes She Can is a nonprofit that operates Girl AGain boutique as an authentic business where young women with autism develop employment skills. Marjorie and I created a schedule where I would do work similar to last summer, as well as work that had to do with marketing and advertising for the store.
I have been volunteering with children and teenagers with developmental disabilities for about three years now, and I’m very interested in psychology. However, I am also interested in marketing, so this mix of working with the trainees while also working on separate projects was the perfect internship concept for me.
From home, I compiled a list of local businesses we could contact in order to plan events with them, and I drafted emails and Facebook posts to reach out to people and spread the word about the store. One big project I helped with was contacting local summer camps about offering the opportunity for Girl AGain trainees and staff to come to the camp to do an activity related to the American Girl dolls or to talk to campers about autism. In the store, I worked with the trainees on taking in donations, pricing and preparing merchandise, as well as putting many different items on the boutique’s website.
I had an incredible experience working with Girl AGain, and I feel like I gained a lot from the experience. I’m excited to continue to study psychology and developmental disabilities next year at The George Washington University, and volunteer with people with autism in DC.
Lauren with Izzie, a trainee at Girl AGain
Thank you to everyone at Girl AGain Boutique for being so welcoming while working with me these past few weeks! I wish everyone there the best of luck and I hope to come back soon to help out in the future.
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