My Time at the Center

Hello! My name is Emily Miller and I joined the Children’s Healing Center in December of 2020.

I was introduced to the Center by a couple of my professors and a few peers who have recently interned and volunteered here at the Center. I was drawn to the Center because of how highly spoken it was within the Child Life Community at Western Michigan. Once I learned more about the Center’s mission and learned about my peer’s experiences at the Center, I knew I had to get involved!

The reason the Center is so important is because of the freedom the Center provides to families to forget about what is going on at home and in their personal lives. At the Center, it is important for the staff and all the volunteers to provide a safe, clean environment for the children and their families. While providing a safe place for families they are able to come together and make connections with one another to form long lasting relationships.

This experience allowed me the opportunity to improve my future interactions with children and will also assist me to improve the quality of my career in the near future.

My time at the Center was beyond amazing! I had the opportunity to create programs for the tween/teen nights, being this was the first time I had ever worked with teens. I was a little nervous at first but I had a fantastic time working with them! This is a wonderful group to work with and seeing the connections they created with one another was absolutely amazing. Creating programs from sports to crafts they were willing to do and create anything, they were up for any challenge. My last few programs allowed them to work as a team to create a couple crafts and put their crafts to a challenge and compete against other teams. We also had a blast creating lightsabers that actually lit up! The tweens/teens had more fun and LOVED throwing pie into the volunteers faces that night. Ending my internship with a sticky situation was well worth it!

The tweens/teens LOVED throwing pie into the volunteers faces that night.

The Center is a very special place and this tween/teen group will stay very close to my heart. I will miss creating programs for them and miss seeing them every week but I will forever cherish the connections I have made with them. This Center is a one of a kind place and I am very thankful I was able to have this internship and being able to keep volunteering afterwards to stay connected:)