100 MAKE A DIFFERENC E CHALLENGE REFLECTI ON

Logistics

For the 100 Make a Difference challenge, I ended up volunteering at the Mary Durham
Boutique, which is part of the Women’s Opportunity Center here in Ithaca, NY. The boutique is
located on 110 West Court St in downtown Ithaca, and I was there from 1 to 4 pm on
Wednesday, May 1 st. I worked with Lynda Hoover, manager of the boutique, who can be
reached by phone at (607) 256-9957, or by email at LHoover@womensopportunity.org.

I chose the Women’s Opportunity Center to volunteer at because it was one of the few places in
Ithaca that tied in at least somewhat with my social footprint cause, which had to do with sexual
violence against women and female empowerment.

Women’s Opportunity Center

The Women’s Opportunity Center of Ithaca began in 1979 as a way to help displaced women
homemakers enter the workforce after divorce, separation, or widowhood. Since then, it’s grown
all over New York State and offers programs and help like job search and preparation
workshops, designed to emphasize job retention and development of essential computer skills,
career development, and the success of families in reaching their goals. Over the past thirty-five
years, 15,000 women have received training and employment services from the WOC. The
center provides a space for women to come in, take classes, receive any kind of help or training
they may need, and be able to join (or rejoin) the workforce. These women come from all walks
of life, but what they all have in common is that they are trying to get their lives back on track
and be successful in whatever they choose to do.

The Mary Durham Boutique is a part of the Women’s Opportunity Center. It is a real, non-profit
boutique clothing store that sells clothing donated to the WOC by the community, and all the
proceeds from the store go back to covering store operating costs and mainly to the WOC. The
clothing is sold at fairly low pricing (thing T.J.Maxx or even lower!) so that everyone in the
community can come in and find clothing that they may need at a price they can afford,
especially the women of the WOC. They have everything from casual clothing to business
clothing to the occasional wedding dress, and receive so much clothing in donations that they
actually don’t have the space to sell all of it. Any clothing that they cannot sell or choose not to
sell, they donate to the Goodwill of Ithaca. The best part about this boutique, however, is that it
allows the WOC to have a retail training program for the clients (the women seeking help from
the WOC) and gives them real-world experience and on the job training that they can use in any
job moving forward.

The retail program offers women hands-on retail experience, customer service training,
administrative experience (including office and computer skills), register training (using
QuickBooks), and marketing and inventory skills. The clients come in with limited work
experience and from all walks of life, some of them uncomfortable with interacting with others
or never having had to “sell themselves” as you need to do in a work environment. These women
gain the necessary work skills, but more importantly, they gain life skills that will take them far
in any work environment, not just retail. These women come in unsure of themselves and shy
and leave confident in themselves and their abilities. The Boutique gives them a chance to gain
solid ground under their feet and transform their lives, as well as allows them the opportunity to
network with and meet people from the community. They begin to feel more comfortable living
and working in the Ithaca community, and sometimes even meet people who offer them jobs or
other help they may be seeking, all by training in this boutique.

My Time Volunteering

Before this volunteering, I had never even heard of the Women’s Opportunity Center of Ithaca. I
had actually driven by the Mary Durham Boutique several times but paid it no mind; I just
figured it was another small, artsy clothing shop here in Ithaca. When I began to try and find a
place to volunteer, I was shocked to learn about the WOC and all it does for the women of the
Ithaca community. Since my social footprint project did have to do with women’s empowerment,
I figured this would be an ideal place to volunteer and hopefully be able to help them in some
way, even if it was a small way.

When I originally called them asking if I would be able to come in one day and volunteer, they
told me that they could use my help in the Mary Durham Boutique, and not within the actual
center. I was a little disappointed, because I did not realize that the boutique did so much for
their clients, and thought it was more of just a way for them to sell clothing and raise some
money for the center, which I did not think was very impactful. I was very glad to be proved
utterly wrong in that sentiment. Coming in, I assumed that the boutique was this overpriced,
artsy clothing store where all I would be doing was working the register or something along
those lines. I also assumed that I could not really be of much help there, since it was just a store,
after all. I did not think I would get a chance to work with any of the clients of the WOC or make
any kind of real impact on the organization, and I was a little disappointed before I had even
begun.

However, as I mentioned before, I was entirely wrong in my assessment of the boutique because
I did not realize the impact it had on the Women’s Opportunity Center and of their clients. I had
a really wonderful experience volunteering there, and the only thing I regretted was that I had not
heard about them earlier, because I would have gladly spent the semester volunteering there if I
had. When I first came in, Lynda spent twenty minutes just explaining how important the
Boutique is, talking about the client’s role within it, and showing me all around the store,
describing everything down to the smallest detail. I had assumed I would just be doing one role,
but very quickly I took all the various sales person roles: cashier, inventory, sorting out through
the donated clothing, coming up with prices for the clothing and shoes, wiping down the shoes,
and overall helping out customers in any way that I could. I had to pick everything up quickly,
because Lynda was the only staff member there at first and needed the help, especially with
customers continuously coming in. Later on, I actually got to work with one of the clients (who
I’ll refer to as the client to retain her anonymity) who came in to help with sorting through the
donated clothing that day. She told me about her story, about her kids and her life in Ithaca,
about her trying to learn and better her English by working at this store, and how the WOC has
been this huge help in her life. It was amazing to hear about how this organization and this
boutique had done so much for her, and it was rewarding to be able to help organize the store and
sell more items, since the more items that sold, the more money the WOC received.

I walked out of the boutique after volunteering feeling wonderful that there was a place here in
Ithaca that could do so much for the women in this community, and feeling humbled. I
understand that I come from a life of privilege, but it’s easy to forget when you’re surrounded by
the students at Cornell. The client had reminded me of my own mother, who came to the United
States with no English and had to work day and night to make a space for herself in the world,
and I just took that feeling of gratitude from this experience; grateful for the time I got to spend
with these women and grateful to my own family for working as hard as they did to get me to
where I am today. I also earned a whole new respect for retail workers from this experience; I
always knew they had a difficult job, but I could never imagine having to be the jack-of-all-
trades and learn every position within this boutique, and then being able to execute it well and
without messing up. This must be a daunting task that the clients are faced with at the beginning,
but I now understand why they leave after training feeling confident and able, because doing this
for several hours a couple of days a week will strengthen a person and their abilities.

I also learned a lot about myself during volunteering, and about the others who I was
volunteering with. I learned that I was much quicker at picking things up that I thought I would
be, and that I actually loved the idea of having this much responsibility and being in charge of so
many different aspects of the same business. It turns out, I thoroughly enjoy being kept busy,
especially when it’s for a good cause, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed my time
volunteering there, because I thought I really would not. I also learned that I’m not as afraid of
new situations as I usually make myself out to be. I always think I’m not good with people or
that I’m not great with getting used to new things, but I fit right in at the boutique and was able
to get on as though I had been volunteering there for a while, which I was pleasantly surprised
about. I also learned a lot from others I was volunteering with, like Lynda and the client. I
learned about how wonderful the WOC is and how much it’s done for women in the community,
and I learned what kind of hard work it really takes to keep an organization like the WOC and
the boutique running and afloat.

I hope I made at least a small impact with my time, and the follow-up email from Lynda
confirmed that I had impacted her day, at the very least. After volunteering, she had emailed me
thanking me for coming in and saying that I had really helped her out, especially since she was
supposed to be working alone during that time I was volunteering, which would have been very
overwhelming and a difficult situation to be in. I consider that a decent metric to help define my
impact, since she did seem really grateful and because I did really try to do as much for the store
as I possibly could, asking her to give me more and more work that I could do while I was there
so as to help the store out as much as possible. I also had told her about Cornell Social Business
Consulting and how she could reach out to them if the boutique ever needed pro-bono consulting
work to try and help it achieve some goal it wanted to, and she was grateful that I told her about
that as well since she had never heard of it and it was an excellent resource. I think I helped the
boutique out by bringing new resources it can use, which is also a good metric to help define my
overall impact, especially if they decide to go forward with forming a relationship with CSBC.