In the past couple of months, I have had the amazing opportunity to volunteer at BAWSI (Bay Area Women’s Sports Initiative)! I volunteered at Dorsa Elementary School in San Jose, where I met 40 awesome young girls. As a volunteer coach, I help set up different stations and get involved with the young girls to stay physically and mentally active. 

Working as a volunteer with BAWSI made me appreciate just how much the little things have an impact on us at such a young age. These young girls come from modest backgrounds, and despite being at school for a long day, not a single one of them was disappointed with coming to BAWSI. They all enjoyed talking to their 35 other friends, writing in their journals, playing at the stations, and singing the BAWSI song. 

BAWSI has this great system of using pedometers to track the number of steps the girls took, which often got to 2k or 3k during the hour that I volunteered. Additionally, at the start of each session, the girls would learn a new inspiring word, such as “strength”, “courage”, or “leadership” and we would have a station dedicated to teaching them all about this word. The girls would also set their step goal at the beginning of the session in their notebooks and more often than not, they would exceed it. 

BAWSI is such an empowering organization because it teaches girls how to be leaders in a world that often tells them they’re not. BAWSI treats these young girls with respect and teaches them how to respect one another, skills that they will use in the real world when they’re all grown up. I could see the profound impact that BAWSI had on these girls’ mannerisms and attitude towards life. 

This year, I also founded our school’s Lean In Girls chapter, where we discuss what it means to be a leader and how we can be a leader in our everyday lives (blog post to come about this!). In essence, volunteering at BAWSI helped me see the abstract concepts I was teaching to the young girls in my club being played out in the real world and truly changing the lives of the kids. 

That’s it for this blog post, thanks for reading and see you next time!