Guest blog - Elizabeth volunteers at SMART Camp

I am Elizabeth, an undergraduate student at the University of North Texas. I am majoring in Psychology and will be graduating this December. I was inspired to volunteer with youth after taking a Play Therapy course at school. I was very fortunate to stumble upon Girls Inc. via a job shadowing program that UNT held this spring. 

After that experience, I was eager to sign up for more volunteering. For two weeks I worked alongside Girls Inc. staff, volunteers, and some of the high school-aged girls at the “Geek Girls” SMART camp held at the Diamond Hill Branch Library in Fort Worth. We encouraged the girls to pursue a greater appreciation and knowledge of the science, math and technology fields. 

I will admit I was a little apprehensive about leading the groups of girls at first. Would they like me? Would I be able to teach them anything? Would they have fun at all? As the first week quickly sped by in a blur, I realized I had nothing to worry about at all.

Throughout the week, the girls disassembled electronics to view their inner workings.  They also had to create a “SMART Girl” which was a hypothetical career woman.  This involved research on the part of the girls.  

I was amazed at how each girl shared what she had found in her smashed electronic device and strongly voiced what she believed it did for it. I laughed alongside the more talkative younger girls as we made aromatic, yet delicious Rice Krispy Treats in the microwave. Silliness aside, they were able to name the measuring utensils and follow directions. 

I taught the older girls how a webpage was made using HTML codes and even showed them how to make hyperlinks to their favorite websites. It was quite dense material but I felt they had a good grasp of the information presented. They had a lot of fun learning how to add pictures and links to a page. I was proud of their perseverance. 

I was deeply touched by how welcoming these two groups of girls were of new comers. The compassion and encouragement these girls had for each other was astounding. The girls were very eager to give a helping hand to their friends and even the adults without specifically being asked. I remember on the last day, one of the girls was standing alone in front of the room when the time came to present her project.  Seeing her expression of fear, two of her friends immediately jumped up to help give her moral support and she was able to continue on. 

I was quite saddened when SMART camp came to a close. Surprisingly I learned quite a bit about myself from these two groups of girls. I was a role model to the younger girls. I was able to encourage them when they got stuck on a task. I found out I can teach others what I know. Sometimes it’s okay not to know what the answer is to everything, but to always ask questions in order to learn. I enhanced my listening whilst helping the girls with their activities. I learned that patience is a must and to never give up on any goal. I feel all these characteristics are crucial to being an effective counselor. More importantly I feel these skills are beneficial for everyone to have. I cannot thank Girls Inc. enough for allowing me to share these experiences with these amazing girls.