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What I’ve Learned from 7 Months of Serving Homeless and Housing-Insecure Women in DC

AVODAHGRAs I finished my senior year at Wesleyan University, one of the things I was most afraid of for my post-grad life was losing the environment in which everyone is eager to share the learning process with their friends and peers. The desire to preserve that, and the importance of my Jewish communities and experiences to me, is what led me to Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps.

Avodah is based on studying the issues and approaches of our own service work as a way to navigate the centuries-old question central to Jewish life that is: how do Jews meet our obligation to serve? To do this, my fellow 23 Avodah Corps Members in DC and I are placed at leading anti-poverty organizations across the District – where we gain hands-on work experience and learn about the root causes and effects of poverty in this country. We work with individuals facing challenges related to healthcare access, food insecurity, housing insecurity, our immigration and refugee systems, and much more, as we also consider how to best organize the Jewish community toward a more just and equitable future.

For the past seven months, I’ve been serving as a program associate at N Street Village. N Street Village empowers homeless and low-income women in Washington, D.C. to claim their highest quality of life by offering a broad spectrum of services, housing, and advocacy in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.

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Before I started Avodah, I was worried that my position and responsibilities would be too far removed from the macro-level social justice that I had spent most of college thinking about and cultivating my skills toward; I was nervous that I would not only miss reading, writing, and critically thinking about social justice in these ways, but that I wouldn’t be qualified for the direct service work that our clients needed me to do. Within the first few months I definitely faced a steep learning curve, but have also since found that I continue to learn more than I could have ever imagined about the lived experiences at the heart of the issues that I care about. This has been due in part to all of the training and learning opportunities that my placement provides its staff – especially its Avodah Corps Members and social work interns.

One of the areas of learning that has profoundly impacted me this year is trauma-informed care. Trauma informed care is a holistic approach to providing services, based in an understanding of and responsiveness to the impact of trauma. What fascinates me about this framework is that trauma-informed care is more about changing systems than providing brief interventions to navigate traumatic experiences: it’s more about how a person who has experienced homelessness feels in a space that is intended to provide care, rather than about agencies checking off boxes of predetermined treatment requirements.

Learning and exploring the principles of trauma-informed care has helped me imagine concrete ways in which the choices that I make at work can be empowering for clients, even when challenges within the systems can be endlessly disempowering for them. Having an understanding of this holistic approach to care, I’m able to better recognize symptoms of mental health instability as related to the traumatic experiences of homelessness and being deprived of basic human needs. Most importantly, this framework helps me as a staff person to focus on the sheer resilience at the core of human responses to stress and crisis, reduce the shame and stigma associated by homelessness and/or other crises, and ideally, help survivors feel respected, connected, and hopeful about their recovery.

Though I describe trauma-informed care as systemic, and at its core it is all about a widespread change to social work and the standards behind providing services, where it really manifests are the personal experiences I have with clients and my coworkers. In the fall, our N Street Village CEO wrote a letter to the organization’s staff in the wake of multiple acts of white supremacist violence – from the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to the murders of Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones in Louisville, Kentucky. She wrote that in our work at N Street Village, “every day we have multiple invitations to challenge our implicit biases and to seek interpersonal justice. We are invited to acknowledge our well-worn habits of mind which automatically see an ‘other’ — and instead to exercise new habits of heart which see our commonality and which instinctively reach for connection.”

Having experienced this work for the past seven months, and getting to see its impact, I’m so grateful to my workplace and to Avodah as a whole for bringing the interpersonal connections to the foreground in my understanding of justice. I can only hope that through the rest of the year and beyond, my fellow Corps members and I never stop finding ways to fold that interpersonal justice into greater action and movements for progress.

 

About the Author:

Sammi Aibinder is an Avodah Jewish Service Corps Member. She currently works as a program associate at N Street Village, which empowers homeless and low-income women in Washington, D.C. Ms. Aibinder is a graduate of Wesleyan University.

 

Young Artists of America: Local Student Performers Go Beyond the Stage with New Grant

One of Catalogue for Philanthropy’s 2018-19 Best Nonprofits, Young Artists of America(YAA), has launched a new initiative thanks to a grant from Greater Washington Community Foundation’s Donors InVesting in the Arts (DIVAS) Fund. This initiative will run in tandem with YAA’s preparation for their spring production of Les Miserable–which will feature over 300 students and a full orchestra–on March 16th at the Music Center at Strathmore.

First combined rehearsal for Les Miserables at Youth Artists of America

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Titled after one of the most rousing songs in the score, YAA’s “Hear the People Sing!” project will examine the themes in Les Miserables to inspire students to make connections between the social challenges in Victor Hugo’s time and those in today’s world. Whereas young people during the French Revolution saw injustice between populations and classes and decided to take action through insurgencies, this project will empower YAA students to use non-violent means to identify the injustices seen both in Les Miserables‘ and in modern time, including immigration, class inequity, gender-based oppression, and imperfect justice. Peaceful methods of engagement and dialogue will be modeled by teachers and encouraged throughout the musical theatre rehearsal process, as well as throughout the social media component of the project.

Specifically, YAA artistic staff will lead student group reflection and social media journaling, primarily via Instagram posts. YAA staff will also create and post a “students voices” video of final lessons learned that will be made available on their YouTube channel, and an edited version displayed on screen before the performance to enable audience members to participate with as well. Community members can follow along with the project by searching #HearthePeopleSingYAA and #WhoAmIYAA on social media platforms.

“It is YAA’s hope that this project will deepen students’ understanding of the material we are performing, as well as spark additional dialogue among their peers about contemporary issues,” says YAA’s Artistic Director, Rolando Sanz. “We are incredibly grateful to The Community Foundation’s DIVAS.”

The final production on March 16th will take place at 3pm and tickets are on sale now. What will make this performance artistically unique will be the scope of this student collaboration, including a full 60-piece youth symphonic orchestra, Seneca Valley High School Chorus of 150, and 80 singers/dancers/actors from YAACompany and YAAjunior. www.yaa.org/spring-production.

 

The After-School All-Stars at Deloitte

Earlier this month, middle school students from John Hayden Johnson and Charles Hart took a field trip to the Deloitte office in Arlington, VA. This excursion was just one of many unique opportunities made possible by the After-School All-Stars Washington DC, a local charity that provides free after-school programs for low-income middle school students. The trip to Deloitte was part of the Career Exploration Opportunities Initiative, a program focused on exposing students to attainable and attractive career paths that they may not have been aware of, otherwise.

As the middle schoolers arrived at the Arlington office, they weren’t sure what to expect. They wanted to know, “What does it mean to be a consultant?” Because many of the students were (like most Americans) unfamiliar with Deloitte, they were eager to hear more about the company from the perspective of dedicated staff members. They were greeted by Maddie Devine, a Deloitte Business Technology Analyst who also graciously serves as the Event Lead for the After-School All-Stars. After a dinner provided by the company, students were given a full tour of the facility that included a breakdown of every department. Deloitte staff members spoke about their current projects, and the students were introduced to the newly renovated Deloitte Digital Studio.

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The tour culminated in a group activity where students were split into teams and presented with a mock case study, in which they had the opportunity to play the role of ‘Deloitte consultant’ for a notable client: Coca-Cola. The student groups had impassioned dialogues, and then submitted proposals on how Coke might expand its reach in global markets. Then, the groups had the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a few Deloitte staffers. Ranging from athlete endorsements, door-to-door product delivery services, new flavors, and even Coke-sponsored disaster-relief shelters in the developing world, the students’ ideas were amazingly creative and comprehensive. This exercise was impactful: it encouraged the students to be resourceful, to think outside the box, and it served as a wonderful conceptualization of what it means to work for an organization like Deloitte. All at once, the group understood what it means to be a consultant!

After-School All-Stars DC is privileged to have Jared Townshend, a Deloitte staff member, as an advisory board member. Jared acts as the official sponsor for ASAS DC within Deloitte, and is the Managing Director for the company within the Government and Public Services team. Together with Maddie, Jared sent the All Stars off in style with parting gifts, courtesy of Deloitte. Staffers posed for a photo with the group, and passed out hot cocoa as students left. The ASAS DC partnership with Deloitte has been characterized by the warmth and hospitality the students experienced on their field trip, and it is greatly appreciated.

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This trip to Deloitte exposed the All Star students to a career path worth aspiring to. The students left the office full of excitement, expressing admiration for the dynamic work that the consultants take on to meet client-needs. The students all saw themselves serving in similar roles in future careers, and said they’d be proud to work for the organization.

As always, ASAS DC will continue to provide these events to the students we serve. In this way, we will work to expand their worldview, increase their self-esteem, and help them understand the kind of success they are capable of achieving.