Youth, Education & Sport Initiative, Pittsfield, MA
This summer I was an intern with the YES (Youth Education & Sport) Initiative—a program that uses sports to mold young student-athletes into leaders of their families, schools, sports teams, and communities. As any athlete will tell you, athletics encompasses much more than running, jumping, throwing, hitting, and catching; sports teaches accountability to oneself and to others, provides an environment in which adversity can be encountered and overcome, and challenges its participants to persevere and keep progressing towards cultivation and success, whether that be on the field and courts, in the classroom or the workplace, or within one’s own family. Most importantly, however, athletics foster a bond, a brotherhood, a kinship between seemingly random and unrelated individuals in a way that no other group or institution can. Working with the YES Initiative allowed me the opportunity to impart upon young children the many values that sports can offer and to show them how to work together and solve problems in an efficient and inclusive manner. While my experiences with the children felt like the most rewarding aspects of my internship, the work that I did to help structure the student volunteer program, bolster the Initiative’s social media presence, and build the donor network were invaluable. Such responsibilities gave me the opportunity to hone my professional skills, skills such as professional correspondence, public speaking, adherence to crucial deadlines, and accountability for those who work under me.
My duties as an intern with the YES Initiative were split into two categories: program cultivation and youth cultivation. Program cultivation refers to the work that I did to promote and grow the YES Initiative. One aspect of these responsibilities involved working with the program founders and my fellow intern to create a Work Study Program at Williams that would grant the YES participants access to the knowledge and experience of Williams students, athletes and non-athletes. I worked with the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) to begin the process of procuring funding for a new Work Study Program; an experience that allowed me to dive headfirst into the inner workings of fiscal year budgeting, federal grants, and the general process of institutional funding. I first had to create a structure for how the Work Study would look on a daily operational basis. As a high-priority student at Williams that has worked a few on-campus jobs, I was able to lend a lot of insight to this process. We had to consider how hours would be scheduled, leaving enough flexibility in the structuring to account for academic schedules, athletic commitments, and, of course, the potential obstacles that could arise from the tumultuous weather that passes through the Berkshires. Mentor accountability and professionalism was another aspect of the program structuring that needed to be considered. For college students with so many commitments, it is important that a Work Study not be overly laborious or too open-ended so as to encourage (or rather gently enforce) meaningful work within a limited time-frame. One of the biggest challenges that we faced in creating the Work Study program was how to balance the Mentor Curriculum with the course load of the Williams Mentor. While education through sports is the main area of focus within the YES Initiative, Williams students are able to offer much more than athletic guidance to the participants in the way of academic assistance and guidance during the strenuous experience of applying to college and all that that process entails. We decided to structure our non-sport curriculum by academic concentration, allowing our mentors to focus on assisting the program participants with the subjects that they themselves are majoring in at Williams. This allows for maximum impact on the participant without burdening the mentor with the time-consuming task of learning or relearning subject material that they are weak or have no interest in, giving the mentor the added bonus of being able to critically think about their main area of study and relay that to the program participants in a coherent and effective manner.
Another component of the program cultivation was meeting and communicating with current and potential donors of the YES Initiative. I attended multiple dinners and lunches where I would explain (much like I am doing now) my involvement within the program, the progress that we had made, and what future steps we needed to take to get our Work Study off the ground. I also met with current program participants and interviewed them so that I could feature their profiles on the YES Initiative’s website and social media accounts. We would then send out these profiles, along with other updates, to current and potential donors to thank them for their continued support and to urge them to give and be a part of our amazing program.
The youth cultivation aspect of my internship was more straightforward: I mostly worked on developing a variety of athletic programs that could be instituted at YES camps and events. The programs that I created would help the program participants develop their athletic skills through drills and competitions, while stressing the importance of teamwork and inclusion. The YES Initiative focuses its athletic programs on soccer, but as a football player, I was able to introduce a few football-specific drills that would benefit most athletes, and I was even allowed to work in a football segment for the participants that had an interest. I got the opportunity to implement my first program at a camp in run by a program called BRIDGE, a partner program of YES. It was a very rewarding experience to see my work in action, especially because the campers consisted of mostly at-risk and mentally-challenged youth.
I absolutely loved working with the program founders, TL Guest ’17, Brandon Dory ’17, and Patrick Gordon ’17. They were more than willing to teach us how to complete tasks that we were unfamiliar with, and they were great sounding boards and brainstorming partners when we needed to think of new ideas or revisit old ones. Having worked on both sides of the YES Initiative this summer, I gained a deep appreciation and respect for non-profit work. Having to reconcile being a business person and a mentor to young children is no easy feat, but it is also one that is extremely rewarding for everyone involved. I hope that my future work, both during college and after, has that dynamic. As a political science major, I can see myself using what I learned this summer in a public policy role where I can use business and networking skills to make a meaningful impact on communities and individuals that need it. I want to express my sincerest gratitude to the Kraft Family and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for providing me with the resources and the guidance that made this past summer possible. I am so grateful for this experience and all that I have learned from it. It is my hope that one day I will be able to make opportunities such as this available to future Williams students.