Savoie Srodulski is the president of GC’s chapter of Miss Amazing, which serves Milledgeville, Baldwin County, the entire state of Georgia — and Alabama.
“What if, from an early age, women with disabilities were equally as encouraged to consider their goals, challenge themselves, and take pride in every aspect of their identities?” Miss Amazing’s website said. “Not only would women with disabilities have far greater opportunities to lead fulfilling lives and to affect change, but our world would also reap the benefits of that added value.”
It is a cause Srodulski has always connected with.
“I had volunteered at a special needs pageant before, and then I heard about it [Miss Amazing] through a friend of mine, and so she connected me with Caroline Pedersen, and I just fell in love with the organization, everything it stood for,” Srodulski said.
In October, Miss Amazing held a cornhole tournament at GC, which served as a fundraiser for its main event, its annual pageant. Although it is not until February, Srodulski and the rest of her team are already hard at work.
“We’ve been preparing, talking to the Give Center a lot about getting food donated, making sure that the space is ready for us,” Srodulski said. “We’ve been having weekly exec meetings as well as monthly club meetings to kinda prepare the back end of things, so figuring out our theme, the amount of participants that we’re expecting and then coordinating how many Buddies and helping hands and volunteers that we’re gonna need.”
It can be hard to present an organization marked by bright pinks and purples and tiaras as anything other than that, but there is far more to Miss Amazing than glitz and glamor.
“I try to talk about it more as an advocacy program than I do as an actual pageant because what we’re doing is building the confidence within the girls, building their self-esteem and then teaching them essential life skills, like interviewing, public speaking, that they’re gonna be able to use to further their own lives later on,” Srodulski said.
She believes getting involved is the solution to any assumptions people might have about a pageant.
“I know a lot of our decorations can look like, ‘Oh, it’s a shiny crown and a sash,’ and give that wrong impression, but I just encourage them to come out to the event and actually see the girls on stage, how much fun they’re having, the connections that they’re building with the other girls and to just see it personally before any assumptions are made,” Srodulski said.
Srodulski says Miss Amazing is always looking for volunteers: “Buddies,” individuals who are paired with, and serve as stand-in mentors for, the girls; hair and makeup artists, photographers and videographers. She encourages any and all interested students and staff to be a part of the pageant and, by extension, the organization itself.
“Please, reach out,” Srodulski said. “We’ll have a document out soon about that, and then it’s also free to attend, so there’s no payment or anything required, and you can come out and just enjoy the show.”
