SquashSmarts: Giving Kids Their Best Shot.

Hello everyone! This is Jay reporting from SquashSmarts. To begin, I started interning here about two weeks ago and I have learned a lot already!

SquashSmarts an after-school program that recruits students from Philadelphia’s public schools to help them with academics and sports and keep them in track for graduation. This program started in 2001, and was specifically designed to keep students in school. Since Philadelphia has one of the highest high-school dropout rates, SquashSmarts became an antidote for that. This program is free, and recruits students based on their commitment, effort and attitude. SquashSmarts recruits 5th and 6th graders, and helps them through high school, into college; so it is about an eight year commitment when joining the program. The program combines the sport of squash and academics in classrooms to keep kids in school, in shape and on track for graduation.

Going into personal experience, I specifically wanted to intern at SquashSmarts. Though this program does not have a marketing department, nor a huge advertising program, but that is exactly why I wanted to be here. Being an alumni of SquashSmarts this was the best way for me to give back to a program that has done so much for me. From getting me into a great high-school to now at Temple, SquashSmarts has been there for me every step of the way. So to kick start their marketing department, and help redo all of their exposure distribution methods, such as flyers and brochures, it is an honor.

So far I have been working on multiple things here, one being the SquashSmarts general brochure, two: is the flyer for future recruitment, and lastly I am working on a website for them. I also put together a slide show that will be shown at the year end SquashSmarts graduation, it will also go up on their facebook page to attract more online traffic and lastly it will be on their new website that it yet to be launched.

Here is a link to the slide show I created, enjoy!