I am happy (and relieved) to report that I have been hired at Catholic Charities as a Case Worker. I'll work with individuals and families who are at a high risk for becoming homeless. I'm very thankful for everyone who helped me get this job and all the positive thoughts, advice, and prayers I've been getting from family and friends.
I start work on Monday—which is good because I need the money and bad because I have so much to do. Even though I have a lot to do, I wanted to write an update.
As promised, my year of service changed me. Probably the most obvious/measurable way that I've changed is how I've changed my plans: I decided not to go to graduate school right away (I applied to five schools, got into three, and was offered a Graduate Teaching Assistantship that would have covered all tuition costs and provided a stipend). There were a lot of reasons I decided not to go to graduate school—one of which was that the school where I was offered the GTA was in Kansas—but probably the biggest reason is that I want to continue to serve the poor and vulnerable for a year or two or maybe even more. I still see myself getting a MFA one day, but it might not be for a while.
For a few years I've seen the connection between my faith/spirituality and social justice/service. This year I've grown in my faith, expanded and deepened my spirituality, gotten to know myself better, and learned more about the systems of poverty and injustice. Now, I cannot separate spirituality and social justice. I think if I stopped serving others and engaging in different aspects of social justice my spirituality would be empty and weak. I'm certainly not a perfectly just person, but I want to do my best to make the world a more just place. I've enjoyed putting my faith into action and doing that is largely why my faith has grown so much this past year (it's also grown because I've taken the time to explore my spirituality and reflect).
The work I will be doing is more charity (it is Catholic Charities, after all), but I'll be continuing to serve those in need. I also plan on seeking opportunities to work for social justice both within my work and outside of work.
I'm excited about my future and nervous about paying rent, student loans, buying a car, and all the other financial and logistical things I have to figure out that I haven't done (or done much of) before. That said, I'm happy to have this to report: so far, so good.
Showing posts with label service/volunteering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label service/volunteering. Show all posts
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Please Take Action
I’ve been trying a lot of new things lately. Until Wednesday, I never used the forward button on my email and until yesterday, I never called a senator’s office. Yesterday I forwarded an email asking that people sign a petition to save AmeriCorps and today I forwarded an email asking people to contact their senators to keep funding for refugee programs.
I’ve sent many form letters and signed numerous online petitions in the past year or so, but today I also wrote my own personal letter and emailed it to Maine senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.
Many things will be cut in the new budget for our country and I agree that we need to spend less money, but I’m not sure all the cuts are from the right places. The two cuts in funding that I asked the senators not to support in my calls and emails are the potential cuts to Migration and Refugee Assistance and the Office of Refugee Resettlement as well as the proposed cut in funding to the Corporation for National and Community Service (which includes AmeriCorps).
Congress proposed that we completely cut the AmeriCorps program and reduce funding for refugee assistance programs by a huge amount. Both programs are extremely important. As much as I hate the idea of cutting funding for either of these programs—I can understand the need to cut some, but all of the funding for AmeriCorps? And half of the funding for refugee programs?
What I am including below is part of an email the director of my program sent to all Catholic Charities of Western New York employees.
“On Saturday, February 19, the House of Representatives recommended massive cuts to various humanitarian assistance programs, including:
45% cut to Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA);
10.4% cut to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR); and,
67% cut to International Disaster Assistance (IDA).
"Since we are already five months into the federal fiscal year those cuts would basically shut down the refugee assistance program within the US and severely reduce refugee processing overseas. There would not be money available to resettle more refugees until October 2011. Since our funding is per capita performance-based, no new arrivals equals no more funding.”
I understand the desire to cut programs that serve non-Americans, but refugees are some of the most vulnerable people in the world who have experienced great violence, oppression, and human rights violations in their home countries, as well as in many of the refugee camps. In addition, refugees bring important diversity to our communities, rent apartments from Americans, work, pay taxes, start businesses, and by cars and homes in the United States. There are also many refugee resettlement and assistance programs similar to the one where I work that would either shut down or have to lay off many employees.
When our director told us of the possibility of these cuts, I felt sick to my stomach, but I’m sure my feeling was nothing compared to many of my coworkers who are themselves former refugees and many of whom are applying to bring their family members to the United States.
Especially in this economy, volunteers fill needed positions in many jobs that directly serve the most vulnerable Americans. Agencies that serve the disadvantaged are already under-funded and under-staffed and often rely on the help of full-time volunteers. Not only would fewer services be provided without AmeriCorps, but more people would need those services because at least some of the volunteers would be unemployed if they were not in full-time volunteer programs. AmeriCorps provides important job experience to More than 85,000 young Americans a year. I know that AmeriCorps is an expensive program, but it is far less expensive than having a regular, paid employee and paying for all the consequences of less services to those most in need.
Again and again programs that help the poor and vulnerable are the programs that are cut by the government because the people don’t have a voice and are forgotten. I disagree with the Catholic Church on many issues, but I strongly believe in the Catholic Social Teachings that tells us we need to have preferential options for the poor. Cutting programs for refugees and AmeriCorps (as well as other service programs) do not follow with this social teaching.
Please sign a petition, send a letter to your senator, or call your senator to help protect funding for refugee programs and AmeriCorps. I believe it is our moral obligation to help those most in need, which includes Americans and non-Americans.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that we have to take action and fight for justice for things that directly affect us and for people who are poor and marginalized. We are all in this world together and, as much as we might want to ignore people who are easily forgotten, there will never be peace and justice if we don’t include everyone.
I’ve sent many form letters and signed numerous online petitions in the past year or so, but today I also wrote my own personal letter and emailed it to Maine senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.
Many things will be cut in the new budget for our country and I agree that we need to spend less money, but I’m not sure all the cuts are from the right places. The two cuts in funding that I asked the senators not to support in my calls and emails are the potential cuts to Migration and Refugee Assistance and the Office of Refugee Resettlement as well as the proposed cut in funding to the Corporation for National and Community Service (which includes AmeriCorps).
Congress proposed that we completely cut the AmeriCorps program and reduce funding for refugee assistance programs by a huge amount. Both programs are extremely important. As much as I hate the idea of cutting funding for either of these programs—I can understand the need to cut some, but all of the funding for AmeriCorps? And half of the funding for refugee programs?
What I am including below is part of an email the director of my program sent to all Catholic Charities of Western New York employees.
“On Saturday, February 19, the House of Representatives recommended massive cuts to various humanitarian assistance programs, including:
45% cut to Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA);
10.4% cut to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR); and,
67% cut to International Disaster Assistance (IDA).
"Since we are already five months into the federal fiscal year those cuts would basically shut down the refugee assistance program within the US and severely reduce refugee processing overseas. There would not be money available to resettle more refugees until October 2011. Since our funding is per capita performance-based, no new arrivals equals no more funding.”
I understand the desire to cut programs that serve non-Americans, but refugees are some of the most vulnerable people in the world who have experienced great violence, oppression, and human rights violations in their home countries, as well as in many of the refugee camps. In addition, refugees bring important diversity to our communities, rent apartments from Americans, work, pay taxes, start businesses, and by cars and homes in the United States. There are also many refugee resettlement and assistance programs similar to the one where I work that would either shut down or have to lay off many employees.
When our director told us of the possibility of these cuts, I felt sick to my stomach, but I’m sure my feeling was nothing compared to many of my coworkers who are themselves former refugees and many of whom are applying to bring their family members to the United States.
Especially in this economy, volunteers fill needed positions in many jobs that directly serve the most vulnerable Americans. Agencies that serve the disadvantaged are already under-funded and under-staffed and often rely on the help of full-time volunteers. Not only would fewer services be provided without AmeriCorps, but more people would need those services because at least some of the volunteers would be unemployed if they were not in full-time volunteer programs. AmeriCorps provides important job experience to More than 85,000 young Americans a year. I know that AmeriCorps is an expensive program, but it is far less expensive than having a regular, paid employee and paying for all the consequences of less services to those most in need.
Again and again programs that help the poor and vulnerable are the programs that are cut by the government because the people don’t have a voice and are forgotten. I disagree with the Catholic Church on many issues, but I strongly believe in the Catholic Social Teachings that tells us we need to have preferential options for the poor. Cutting programs for refugees and AmeriCorps (as well as other service programs) do not follow with this social teaching.
Please sign a petition, send a letter to your senator, or call your senator to help protect funding for refugee programs and AmeriCorps. I believe it is our moral obligation to help those most in need, which includes Americans and non-Americans.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that we have to take action and fight for justice for things that directly affect us and for people who are poor and marginalized. We are all in this world together and, as much as we might want to ignore people who are easily forgotten, there will never be peace and justice if we don’t include everyone.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
In other news...
USCIS is now on twitter. I'm not sure what could possibly be exciting enough for them to twitter about. The new fee waiver --form I-912?
I took the practice citizenship test on the USCIS website and got a 96%. I'm in, yessssss.
Tomorrow (January 17th) is MLK day and "A Day On for Service." Most of my community members and I will be helping to winterize low-income housing.
I took the practice citizenship test on the USCIS website and got a 96%. I'm in, yessssss.
Tomorrow (January 17th) is MLK day and "A Day On for Service." Most of my community members and I will be helping to winterize low-income housing.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Invincibly and Ardently in Love with Our Enemies
During September I started each day by reading the morning prayer, the daily bible readings, and the meditation of the day in the “Magnificat.” I found that when I started the day in this way, I was able to keep God more in the forefront of my mind throughout the rest of the day. Of all the meditations, there was one that I kept thinking about for a few days after I read it.
The Gospel reading on the day that I read this meditation was Luke 6:27-38 which is the reading about loving our enemies and treating people as we wish to be treated. The meditation was written by Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, a Dominican preacher from the mid-1800s. Father Lacordaire wrote about love in a way that was compelling to me. He wrote, “[f]or the peculiar quality of love is to unite those who love one another, to blend their thoughts, their desires, their sentiments, all the expressions, and all the blessings of their life, and to penetrate even to the substance of the loved one, in order to cleave to it with a force as invincible as it is ardent.”
The language Father Lacordaire uses says something beautiful about love whether it’s romantic love, love between family members, love for God, or God’s love for us. As the Gospel says, it is easy for people to love their children (or parents, partners, close friends, etc.) and to give their children good gifts; however, this isn’t the kind of love we’re especially called to and the kind of love that makes the world better.
The ideas about what love does and means in this meditation made me think a lot about if everyone took God’s call to love our enemies seriously. What if we had the kind of love Father Lacordaire describes for our enemies? What about the poor? The oppressed? The forgotten?
Whether we realize it or not, we make people who are poor and people who are oppressed our enemies. If not conscientiously, we make them our enemies by our actions—or inaction—and in our policies, laws, and social practices that perpetuate poverty and keep oppressed peoples and groups oppressed.
Many people worship God and think to “cleave” to God as the meditation suggests happens in love, but how many of us think to cleave ourselves to the poor, oppressed, and forgotten? Isn’t God in the poor and oppressed? What would the world look like if we really loved who God called us to love and as God calls us to love them? How could we possibly continue to oppress the oppressed if we shared their “substance”? If we got to know their experiences, pains, joys, struggles, thoughts, and desires?
To love the poor and oppressed as God calls means more than to give a gift at Christmas to a child in need or put together a gift basket or volunteer a day a month at the local soup kitchen or give annually to a charitable cause. It even means more—much more—than doing a year of service. All of these things are good and a step in the right direction, but I’m not sure they’re love. Of course, it isn’t easy to love the poor and oppressed because we have to look at our own lives and behaviors. Even harder, once we share their substance, we’ll have to change.
Maybe we believe we already know the substance of the poor and oppressed. Maybe we believe we already know what they want and what they need. But, how can we really know until we’ve stopped judging and truly gotten to know people? Until we’ve leaned about their lives on a deeper level? Until we’ve united ourselves to them? The more you get to know and really understand someone, the harder it is for you to make them your enemy.
Here is another question—what if we really don’t love the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten? Perhaps we can lean to love them by working backwards to understand their substance, hopes, thoughts, and struggles, as well as the blessings of their lives. Maybe in coming to understand these things by living in solidarity with the poor we may come to love them and to see that those who were once our enemies are now people we love with a love that is both “invincible” and “ardent.” If we do this, how can we possibly be the same?
The Gospel reading on the day that I read this meditation was Luke 6:27-38 which is the reading about loving our enemies and treating people as we wish to be treated. The meditation was written by Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, a Dominican preacher from the mid-1800s. Father Lacordaire wrote about love in a way that was compelling to me. He wrote, “[f]or the peculiar quality of love is to unite those who love one another, to blend their thoughts, their desires, their sentiments, all the expressions, and all the blessings of their life, and to penetrate even to the substance of the loved one, in order to cleave to it with a force as invincible as it is ardent.”
The language Father Lacordaire uses says something beautiful about love whether it’s romantic love, love between family members, love for God, or God’s love for us. As the Gospel says, it is easy for people to love their children (or parents, partners, close friends, etc.) and to give their children good gifts; however, this isn’t the kind of love we’re especially called to and the kind of love that makes the world better.
The ideas about what love does and means in this meditation made me think a lot about if everyone took God’s call to love our enemies seriously. What if we had the kind of love Father Lacordaire describes for our enemies? What about the poor? The oppressed? The forgotten?
Whether we realize it or not, we make people who are poor and people who are oppressed our enemies. If not conscientiously, we make them our enemies by our actions—or inaction—and in our policies, laws, and social practices that perpetuate poverty and keep oppressed peoples and groups oppressed.
Many people worship God and think to “cleave” to God as the meditation suggests happens in love, but how many of us think to cleave ourselves to the poor, oppressed, and forgotten? Isn’t God in the poor and oppressed? What would the world look like if we really loved who God called us to love and as God calls us to love them? How could we possibly continue to oppress the oppressed if we shared their “substance”? If we got to know their experiences, pains, joys, struggles, thoughts, and desires?
To love the poor and oppressed as God calls means more than to give a gift at Christmas to a child in need or put together a gift basket or volunteer a day a month at the local soup kitchen or give annually to a charitable cause. It even means more—much more—than doing a year of service. All of these things are good and a step in the right direction, but I’m not sure they’re love. Of course, it isn’t easy to love the poor and oppressed because we have to look at our own lives and behaviors. Even harder, once we share their substance, we’ll have to change.
Maybe we believe we already know the substance of the poor and oppressed. Maybe we believe we already know what they want and what they need. But, how can we really know until we’ve stopped judging and truly gotten to know people? Until we’ve leaned about their lives on a deeper level? Until we’ve united ourselves to them? The more you get to know and really understand someone, the harder it is for you to make them your enemy.
Here is another question—what if we really don’t love the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten? Perhaps we can lean to love them by working backwards to understand their substance, hopes, thoughts, and struggles, as well as the blessings of their lives. Maybe in coming to understand these things by living in solidarity with the poor we may come to love them and to see that those who were once our enemies are now people we love with a love that is both “invincible” and “ardent.” If we do this, how can we possibly be the same?
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Back to the Future
Well, the technology fast is over and I feel like celebrating. The only problem is that my computer is broken. I cannot even turn my computer on, so it is now in the shop. Right now I'm using a computer that belongs to one of my community members. I suppose I'm going to be doing technology fast extended edition.
I don't often personify objects, but--like so many computers--mine seems to have a mind of its own that practically demands personification. Right now, I believe my computer was so upset over my neglect that it broke itself.
Computer problems aside, my first month and a half of CCSC has been a wonderful experience. I like my community, I like my house (expect for the bathroom door that doesn't close and a few other old house quirks), I like my job, and I like Buffalo--though I'm reserving my final judgement until March or whenever winter ends here.
It's hard to reflect much on what has happened so far because it's still the beginning and I've been very busy. However, there are a few things I've learned that I'd like to share.
1) A surprise--being open and sharing isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. When talking to Amy, the CCSC director, she suggested that learning to be open and sharing myself with others was the next step that I was about to take in my personal development with or without CCSC. I think she may be right, but I also think coming here to volunteer and live in community with other volunteers has helped me with this piece of my personal growth and development.
2) It's really nice to jog outside in a park and smile and say hello to people instead of be so absorbed in the music on my ipod that I hardly notice what's going on around me. Also, other people who are walking and jogging without ipods usually smile and say hello back while people with ipods tend to look the other way.
3) On to work matters--getting a green card seems simple enough, but it isn't and it takes a very long time (four months minimum).
4) If you give children paper and markers, they will write on the table.
5) Walking is a perfectly acceptable mode of transportation and a good way to unwind from as stressful day so that I can be pleasant when I come home to my community members.
6) USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) loves numbers. LOVES. There are immigration numbers, social security numbers, arrival numbers, employment code numbers, alien numbers, case numbers, and on and on and on.
7) People of nearly every culture are responsive to a smile and complements about their children.
8) A lot of people wait until the first day of school to register their children for school even when they've had since January (and I'm not talking about refugees).
9) Don't agree to help a co-worker without knowing what exactly you'll be doing. You might end up waiting in long lines on the first day of school to register children and everyone will look at you funny because even though you look like you're twenty-two you seem to have six children (and one of them is 16).
10) Hide the candy.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
CCSC Video
This video isn't super-exciting, but it's pretty informative about Catholic Charities Service Corps and the purpose of a year of service. If you really want to find out about the program of CCSC, this video is really helpful.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
About Experiment in Sharing
I’ve decided to start a blog—something I’ve actually been opposed to doing for a long time—to chronicle my year of service (August 2010 to August 2011). I have some reservations about blogging (and I think I should disclose right now that I almost never read blogs and I have no idea what I’m doing), but I think it’s important to have a record of this year. In addition to recording the events of this year, I want to have a way to share my experiences with a large number of family members and friends, I want to let others know what a year of service could be like and potentially encourage them to look into doing service, and I will hopefully bring some attention—however small—to different issues I care about.
I’m calling this blog “Experiment in Sharing” because I typically don’t share my personal experiences and feelings with many people. Sharing in so public a way is new for me and I don’t know how it’s going to work out.
This whole year is an experiment, an adventure, and a challenge in many ways and one of my experiments is sharing. Not only will I be sharing my experiences on the internet for any random internet user to read, but I’ll also be sharing myself with those I live in community with and those I work with. Since I’m living in community with other volunteers, I’ll be sharing space (though this isn’t new since I’ve never lived alone and I always had a roommate in college), but more than sharing space, every week the community meets to discuss things such as spirituality and our experiences at our work sites. I’m sure we’ll be sharing our thoughts, feelings, fears, doubts, etc, and this is the kind of sharing that will be the real experiment—and challenge—for me.
I’m sure some topics I’m likely to write about are spirituality, living in community, my work (I’ll be working for Catholic Charities’ Immigration and Refugee Services), health, social justice, the environment, feminism, equality, Catholicism, books, things I learn from the people I live with and the people I’m serving, and I’m sure many other topics I can’t yet anticipate.
I intend for this to be an intelligent, thoughtful, and honest blog, and I hope that people will give me constructive critical feedback if I’m really missing something or if this blog becomes something else.
A few disclaimers:
For the first month of this year, I’ll be participating in a technology fast (no computer, cell phone, TV, ipod, etc.), so I won’t be posting during that month. After the first month, I may not post very frequently because I won’t have internet access at home.
I also want to apologize in advance for any errors because I’ve found I’m blind to errors in my writing until I print it off and read it in hard copy and I don’t plan on doing that before I post things.
So, thank you for sharing this experiment with me—I hope it’s a successful one for all.
I’m calling this blog “Experiment in Sharing” because I typically don’t share my personal experiences and feelings with many people. Sharing in so public a way is new for me and I don’t know how it’s going to work out.
This whole year is an experiment, an adventure, and a challenge in many ways and one of my experiments is sharing. Not only will I be sharing my experiences on the internet for any random internet user to read, but I’ll also be sharing myself with those I live in community with and those I work with. Since I’m living in community with other volunteers, I’ll be sharing space (though this isn’t new since I’ve never lived alone and I always had a roommate in college), but more than sharing space, every week the community meets to discuss things such as spirituality and our experiences at our work sites. I’m sure we’ll be sharing our thoughts, feelings, fears, doubts, etc, and this is the kind of sharing that will be the real experiment—and challenge—for me.
I’m sure some topics I’m likely to write about are spirituality, living in community, my work (I’ll be working for Catholic Charities’ Immigration and Refugee Services), health, social justice, the environment, feminism, equality, Catholicism, books, things I learn from the people I live with and the people I’m serving, and I’m sure many other topics I can’t yet anticipate.
I intend for this to be an intelligent, thoughtful, and honest blog, and I hope that people will give me constructive critical feedback if I’m really missing something or if this blog becomes something else.
A few disclaimers:
For the first month of this year, I’ll be participating in a technology fast (no computer, cell phone, TV, ipod, etc.), so I won’t be posting during that month. After the first month, I may not post very frequently because I won’t have internet access at home.
I also want to apologize in advance for any errors because I’ve found I’m blind to errors in my writing until I print it off and read it in hard copy and I don’t plan on doing that before I post things.
So, thank you for sharing this experiment with me—I hope it’s a successful one for all.
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