Julie Averbach

Short Hills, NJ | 17

2017 Award Recipient

Julie Averbach turned a Girl Scout Gold Award-winning project into a global initiative when she created a comic book called Adventures from My World (AFMW), designed to showcase some of the unique challenges and joys that siblings of special needs individuals encounter daily. The comic book offers siblings support, promotes awareness and compassion, and serves as proof of concept for comic book therapy. Thus far, over 5,000 copies have been shared across the US and abroad. Julie is currently working to translate the first story of AFMW into Spanish and Portuguese in order to reach a wider audience. She hopes to continue exploring educational and therapeutic applications of comic books in collaboration with the Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale, where she will be studying this fall as an undergraduate.