This summer, Good Sports was lucky enough to have two fabulous interns join our team! Both Paola and Marangela played a big part in supporting Good Sports’ day-to-day operations, in an effort to help increase access to youth sports for kids in need. Learn more about Paola and Marangela below:
Paola Torres
My name is Paola Torres, and I am a rising junior at UMass Boston, and currently doing an internship here at Good Sports. This internship opportunity was brought up to me by a program I am an alumni of, called SquashBusters. When I first joined Good Sports last summer, I worked to help pack sport kits for the Dick’s Sporting Goods project, to give equipment to kids in need through the Sports Matter Giving Truck. This is an example of the kind of projects Good Sports takes part in and is one of the reasons why it led me here. By providing brand new equipment to kids in high need communities, schools, programs, and even families can be stress free from financial worries and gives them a chance to focus on other matters that can benefit their kids to play.
I think part of what I want in my career is to be able to help communities in need because it is rewarding to see the impact that it can make in people’s lives, and being in this internship gives me an opportunity to be a part of that impact. As a past student athlete at SquashBusters, I was able to see how expensive sports equipment can be and through this internship, I’ve been able to understand the challenges supported programs experience even more. After helping these programs out and seeing their evaluations, this is a very satisfying experience that I would probably want to have as I continue exploring my career options. Being at Good Sports has given me the chance to see how an organization works in order to give out their donations, and every business unit requires different steps for everything to come together. A lot of my work here involved doing a lot of research for a couple of different projects such as looking for more programs to support, looking for foundations to fund Good Sports, and searching for female ambassadors for the She Who Plays initiative. For other projects I got to be a bit more hands on, where I got to do some kit packing, create social media content, and provide ideas on ways to promote important equipment to give out to the kids. Doing all these projects helped me understand in more depth the importance of how a sport can impact someone’s life.
During my middle and high school years, I had always been involved in some kind of sport. I had gone from basketball, volleyball, soccer, and even squash, which was something I had no idea it even existed. I am so glad I was able to be given the opportunity to play these sports because schools and programs played a big role in making these things happen for me. Now seeing the work that Good Sports does for these kids and getting their feedback on how much it has helped them, makes me grateful that I got the chance to do this internship.
Marangela James
My name is Marangela James. This summer I had the opportunity to work at Good Sports as a summer intern. It has been an exciting and enriching experience! I have learned so much about myself and Good Sports in a short amount of time. Initially, I was interested in working for Good Sports because last summer I had the opportunity to work on a DSG project where we packaged over 10,000 sports kits for the initiative, She Who Plays! Personally, this event was special to me because I am passionate about the empowerment of women in sports as a female athlete.
I play varsity squash at Wesleyan University, and prior to that I played squash at a nonprofit organization called, SquashBusters. SquashBusters is built off the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to play squash and go to college no matter their background. Squash is considered a wealthy sport that many young kids, just like me, simply cannot afford to play. Thanks to SquashBusters, I had access to equipment and everything else I needed to succeed in squash. I am extremely grateful for them and having the opportunity to play a sport I love. I understand how hard it is to play sports when access and money are barriers, and because of that, I love what Good Sports strives for and wanted to be a part of that impact even if it was in a small way.
As an intern each week, I would shadow a different department and work on projects that were specific to that team. I did things like researching potential programs, brainstorming ideas on how to make Good Sports more sustainable and even got to look at how an order is completed when a program requests equipment. These are a few of the things I got to work on this summer, but there were many more. My favorite project this summer was with the warehouse team, when I was tasked with finding ways of how Good Sports could be more ecofriendly. I was most interested in this because it is part of what I study in college now and what I went aboard this summer to do in Costa Rica. Being more cautious of ways we can reduced our carbon footprint or use products that can be recycled instead of trashed is something important to me. I am grateful for my time at Good Sports, and for being given the opportunity to explore my passions and new things.
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