My theme for this week was gratitude. I choose this because for the first time in a long time, life felt normal. Normal in the sense that though some of may still be wearing masks and following social distance guidelines, we were able to do it together. My first week at the GIAC has been a lot of things. Exciting, interesting, fulfilling, and hectic, to name a few.

This week was the first week of in-person camps and programs returning. So every morning at 9am, I walk to the front door, unlocked the doors, and stand to wait for the Pre-K campers to get dropped off by their parents. Wait as each one of them slowly and sometimes not so surely walk up to the center, wondering why their mom isn’t following them and if they really want to do this. But as soon as they walk in they smile and run to the learning suite, excited to see what list of activities are on the board for the day. It wasn’t until Friday that i was given my official camp nickname. I told the kids that they could come up with mine for me, they decided on “Mr Snazzy”. Why they chose that i am not sure, but Mr Snazzy it is.

Camp ends around 11:30 and once the kids are all gone, the center is pretty quiet. This is when i get to sit down and work on some promotional things for the center like posting events to the website. I take a lot of pride in making these posts because I see how hard everyone here works to make the events special and i want to make sure that people get the opportunity to come see all the amazing things the center and the park have to offer.

On Wednesday, I got the opportunity to work with an Aphasia group who came into the center to volunteer. Aphasia is a disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language, most commonly from a stroke. They came in to volunteer by doing things that were low difficulty on fine motor skills such as organizing the library books or basic gardening tasks. It was definitely a humbling experience working with them because despite their conditions they came in smiling, laughing and joking around with each other, and were so eager to volunteer.

All in all, I can confidently say that I was placed in the right place to spend my summer. I am extremely excited to learn more about the non-profit sector through the GIAC this summer, as well as growing my strategic communications skills through event coordinating as well. as programming.