My Nonprofit Reviews

Simply Smiles does not offer charity - they offer partnerships. With the Lakota in South Dakota, the team offers their time, energy and resources as colleagues. They are successful because of their ability to engage the community.

This is not something that is easy to do. The community has centuries of experience being denigrated and persecuted, and Simply Smiles is slowly but surely proving that what is past is not prologue. Simply Smiles has spent a decade earning the trust of the people in the community.

The Simply Smiles team knows their community. It is important for volunteers to understand this. I have been volunteering for several years, and when I am in South Dakota, I listen and learn. Although I have a wide experience, I can see that Jasmine, Alex, Zach and the rest of the team have a deeper and harder won insight.

They know what works. They know how the community perceives people like us from Connecticut, and how we can contribute to the partnership they have begun. They are very good at learning who we volunteers are, as individuals, and suggest how best we might contribute in the time we are there. Everyone volunteering can benefit by trusting the staff.

The Simply Smiles team is dedicated to a long term collaboration, and not a short term transfer of resources. The time you spend on the team will be humbling, but edifying. Prepare to learn a lot.

The Python course was superb. I really appreciated the exercises; we worked through them and the instructors jumped in when we were at an impasse. The focus on manipulating data into information made the Python particulars real to me. I learned an awful lot, but I also know how much I need to learn and how I can do that.