As I entered the Avenue Church building on 90th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan this summer, I didn’t know what to expect. I rode the elevator up to the third floor, and when the doors opened, I was greeted by children laughing and playing with blocks, while their parents and older siblings sorted  through a wide variety of clothing options with the help of volunteers. I signed in at the front desk and attached a nametag to my shirt. Before I knew it I was helping my first customer, a clipboard, pen, and large bag in hand. I walked around the shop with the customer, speaking to her in her native dialect of Spanish, marking off the items that she chose and storing them in the bag. Part of our job as a personal shopper is to limit how many clothes each customer can get, since they are shopping for free. All the clothes are donations so we have a limited supply. After going through all the clothing options, shoes, underwear, jewelry, and offering the customer a sandwich, I told her she could come back in two weeks and bid her farewell. (The rule is customers can come every two weeks since there is limited clothing. This way everyone receives enough clothing, and when the customers return there will be new donations to choose from.) I continued this process for the rest of the day and for many days to come over the summer. “It’s an amazing organization,” said Polygon’s Head Layout Editor Carolina Lisk ’26, another volunteer at the shop. Lisk is very involved with the Little Shop of Kindness, helping them out in any way she can: sorting the clothes, being a personal shopper, managing their TikTok account, taking the migrants personal information at the front desk, and now she answers emails from migrants trying to make an appointment. Other Poly students, including Eliza Barrett ’25 and Chloe Guedes Smith ’26, have also volunteered at the shop. Lisk urges other members of the Poly community to donate the clothes that they no longer wear and “go volunteer there when you can.” 

Lisk started volunteering at Little Shop of Kindness in April of 2023 after Elijah Sivin, history faculty and director of service learning, posted a link about the organization during a Student Service Board meeting. The Student Service Board is a club whose mission is “to support students in taking leading roles in school-wide service initiatives,” according to their mission statement. After volunteering there during the spring, Lisk felt invited by the warm atmosphere, and decided to spend most of her summer at the shop. She loves playing with the migrant’s children, practicing her Spanish and making new friends with the staff and customers. The Little Shop of Kindness also works with a corresponding legal clinic, helping asylum seekers find a place to stay, where Lisk also helped translate what the migrants were saying to the workers filling out their paperwork. She believes migrants deserve to have people to speak to in their native language. Frequent volunteer Rick Perez agrees, telling CBS, “I find that they find a sense of relief when they speak to someone in their native tongue.” Perez immigrated to the United States from Cuba in the 1970s, but he hasn’t forgotten about his roots and strives to help others who are going through this difficult journey. “They must feel so alone and out of place in this big, chaotic city,” Ilze Thielmann, founder of the Little Shop of Kindness, said in an interview to CNN. “We just want them to feel loved and appreciated, to make sure they know we’re happy they’re here,” she explained. 

The community at the shop has become a large and diverse family, including both customers and volunteers. On my first day of volunteering, it was the manager Barbara’s birthday. Thielmann bought her a cake and everyone stopped what they were doing to write in her birthday card and sing to her. It didn’t matter that I had only been there for a few hours, I had already been welcomed into the close-knit community. All the volunteers love helping at the shop and interacting with the asylum seekers, just as I do. Every time I met with a customer, they were very grateful for my assistance. These migrants have come into this country with very little, and providing them with these basic necessities is changing their lives.