Scattered Notes of a Social Work Student

There was the apartment I once lived in- a dusty two bedroom in a disheveled old building a few blocks from Tahrir Square that discreetly held decades of memories and monumental history in its walls. Around the corner was the shiny beacon of a coffee shop that made the closest thing to a cappuccino in all Cairo, and I would spend exhausted evenings there, struggling to make Skype connection with family back home. Nearby that was the all-night warehouse with boarded-up windows that served one type of drink and one single dish, and I spent hours in that spot listening to expats talk about motorbiking through Afghanistan or evading arrest in Gaza as a journalist. And when the nights quieted down, we would all traipse a few minutes to Talaat-Harb, the historical gem of a town square that held our favorite bakery where we’d buy pastries with names we couldn’t pronounce.

This was the world I thought would become my own. I was eighteen, fresh from my first year at NYU, and spending my summer as a volunteer with African refugees in Cairo. If you’ve read this blog for any bit of time, you might know how deeply those eight weeks in Egypt impacted my own identity and ideas for the future. It shaped me, inspired me, and confirmed my long-held passion for refugee communities in the Middle East. Over the past three years, I’ve consistently talked about and worked toward a career in Cairo and surrounding areas. I have constantly planned and prepared for a permanent return to those places that first ignited my passion.

But what do you do when the world changes quicker than you can? That old apartment of mine smoldered ashen nearly a year ago during a riot fire, seemingly self-immolating as the police and protestors brutally clashed on its block. The pretty little café spilled across the New York Times Photo of the Year spread- it’s glass windows shattered as hot violence scalded the street out front. The nondescript bar made its name in Vanity Fair last spring as it became the hotbed for Tahrir’s social media campaign, making billions of eyes look at the miniscule, secret place. I have little idea what happened to the bakery. The agencies where I sought employment have mainly closed, the presence of international aid workers has evaporated, and refugees risk their lives if they’re found in the wrong place.

This has all circled around my mind in all week, as I finalize MSW applications and fellowship essays, and I wonder what will come of this. I’ve read countless books, written dozens of papers, and worked on many projects relating to African refugees in the Middle East, mainly Cairo. I’ve wondered what in the world I should do when the one place I was so certain of has become perhaps one of the earth’s most unstable cities.

Yet a social work epiphany occurred- although this Egypt situation might seem entirely unrelated to what we speak about in class, that old adage of meeting the client where they are at has never felt more true. My professors and peers don’t stop seeing clients when a behavioral issue flares or circumstances harden. Social workers don’t drop caseloads when unforeseen obstacles occur. Why in the world, then, would I get scared off by Cairo’s security situation? The environment in which we work has changed- yet the desired end results of achieving refugee rights can remain the same. I might not be able to plunge directly into permanent employment in Cairo- but the same passion and determination can drive a contingency plan.

There is no rhythm when reading them- it’s an uncertain pattern, an unsettling cacophony- that makes you wonder how it all fits so streamlined in the body of an email. Today, there is mention of 37 men killed in South Sudan last night at a peace rally, and 70 more children in Kyrgyzstan have become HIV-positive. A bomb went off in Afghanistan, and 17 people drowned offshore the Dominican Republic after their migrant boat went adrift. 15,000 people have now fled rising tensions in Mali, and at least an additional 50 deaths were reported in Syria. Details are sparse on most of these- some, for space issues, and others, because we in the outside world don’t yet know what really happened.

All of these blips are part of the daily email that dashes into my inbox each morning at field placement- briefing staff on all that occurred around the world since we left the previous evening. Sometimes, I scan it without really seeing it more than a news bulletin. But other days, like today, I read through it and I hear a million things- it’s deep cries at a protest, it’s mourning families in Pakistan, it’s villages broken by bombs in Colombia, it’s kids that don’t have parents anymore in places like Somalia and Sri Lanka, it’s futures falling apart because of AIDS, and it’s screams for safety in flood-drenched, far-away lands like the Philippines and Bangladesh. The statistics lose their numerical value and become very intense notions that this is someone’s reality I am reading about. Suddenly, they’re not just one more example of how wretched the world can be, but they’re immediate reasons that we just can’t wait. It’s a line that echoes through my mind nearly each time I read the report- and a line that consistently fuels my passion for change.

Tomorrow night, I am thrilled to join a group of fellow social work students equally passionate about the urgent needs for social justice. I’ll be speaking on a panel of students at the “Why We Can’t Wait” event, sponsored by the USGA that seeks to encourage active discussion on the major, immediate issues our community faces. I’ll be representing immigration issues- a topic at the heart of all I hope to do- and other students will chat about critical subjects like food justice, race, and diversity. It’s an incredibly vital event, and I’m excited to play a small part in it.

Through the social work lens from which I’ve seen just a little bit of the world, I have witnessed that the only sounds that can drown out the dire, bitter discord of the world are the voices of a few finding common ground. It sounds terribly cliché, but clichés hold a bit more beauty than the other brutalities we hear each day, right?

Recently, a new acquaintance asked me what I like to do in my spare time. I gave my standard usual answer about reading and writing on subjects related to refugees and human rights. Yet as soon as I spoke, I found myself posed a new inquiry.

What do I like to do besides those? Like, outside of this social work realm?

Truth is, I had no idea. I could tell him the context of how genocide started in Darfur and I could talk for hours about what I think could improve social services in Iraq. But what I liked to do outside of all this? It left me spinning.

Even before I came to NYU, my lifestyle shed a lot of activities that were not related to international affairs, global social work, and refugee rights. Sure, I go out with friends each weekend and love taking long walks- but neither of those seemed exactly acceptable for an interview. In my spare time, I enjoy- deeply enjoy, actually- reading books about the Roma in East Europe, listening to podcasts on forced migration, and writing articles on American asylum policies. I don’t own a television. I know it’s ridiculously nerdy- but it’s what I like to do when I’m not at placement or typing out pages of essays.

But in the past week, I’ve thought continually about my life outside this world of work and advocacy- and while I am content the way it is, I’ve realized that perhaps I might need to take some time away from what makes me tic every now and then. I used to be much better at it- whether it was reading a Vogue magazine or watching an episode of something ridiculously lighthearted. Now, though, I struggle to watch a television show without contemplating where else they could’ve spent all the money it costs to produce, and I look at the ads in fashion magazines but only see the faces of the refugee friends I’ve made around the world. I suppose this is a sign that I need to self-care; but when you’re so passionate about something, it becomes the biggest struggle to just stop for a second.

They tell us all the time in social work to self-care, but perhaps I’ve always interpreted it as how to separate yourself from the emotional heaviness one encounters at placement. Yet for me, I’m learning that self-care is sometimes just remembering that you can still accomplish your goals and get rest. A hobby outside of your major line of social justice work isn’t necessarily distracting- perhaps by taking part in something else, it will allow me to focus more on what I really want. I was the one who always feared self-care, mainly because I felt selfish spending too much time on me. But it doesn’t have to be self-centric, as I’m learning- it just has to be about seeing outside of my little world of work.

So over the past few days, I tried to free up some time to figure out what I like to do besides social work. I had an incredible dinner at a place I’ve always wanted to try thanks to Restaurant Week, and I spent a few hours wandering around new bookshops in the West Village. I scheduled a friend from out of town to come stay with me next weekend. Even the simplest activities helped- I downloaded a new music application to finally replace the iTunes library I lost. I trekked through lower Manhattan in search of a famed donut shop, and I stuck to my goal of eating at a different culture each week (this is the one practice I’ve had going for a while). And most of all, I still submitted my MSW applications.

Through social work courses, I have been trained in helping others cope with failure. Personal failure, family failure, marriage failure- whatever the crisis, we are taught to assist others in managing and making sense of what went awry in their lives. As social workers, we encourage and actively invite people to be transparent with us- sharing their personal chaos as we accept it in a spirit of confidentiality and empathy.

Yet during my limited time in the social services sector, I am often left in wonder why so many agencies are completely opposite when it comes to their organizational transparency on failure. It’s a common theme in so many agencies that rely on grants and private donors to remain opaque on the outside- not publically sharing, admitting, or examining their mistakes. Whether it’s a planned program that totally collapsed or an afterschool program that ran poorly, no organization wants to admit they messed up- especially when grant funding could fall through or populations might lose trust of you.

In previous volunteer placements, I’ve felt that pressure to balance making mistakes better with making sure the agency’s image remains clear. Perhaps that was why I was so excited to read about FAILFaire (www.failfaire.org)- which is an online forum for organizations to share failures with each other. Most intriguing, FAILFaire holds events that bring together major non-profit leaders, who each speak about a huge practice mistake they’ve made or a doomed project they dealt with. The main focus of FAILFaire is mobile technology in international development- a new tool on the global relief front that every agency is using but few have perfected. Yet FAILFaire’s approach is applicable to a range of non-profits, and I so deeply appreciate it from a social worker’s stance.

FAILFaire struck me as a largescale sort of groupwork- allowing individuals to express how failure made them feel, and others to learn they’re not alone in this relief world. It humanizes some of the failures that cause social services to take so much flack, and helps focus non-profits on their shared mission of supporting and helping others.

I’ve been following FAILFaire’s work over the past few weeks, and I’m loving the idea being implemented in other capacities throughout all sorts of social services. Quite a lot of non-profit blogs are encouraging readers to share their own failures- so perhaps I’ll post one in the coming week.

A little over four years ago, I was asleep at my home in Tennessee when my mother came running upstairs with a thick envelope from NYU that had just been Express-mailed to our home. I rummaged to open it, and when I revealed its contents, both an assortment of papers and a great deal of my future seemed to fall into my hands.

It was an introductory letter that invited me to join the Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholars Program at NYU- and quite simply, I assumed they'd gotten confused and asked the wrong person. I was a blonde-haired, white-skinned girl from rural Tennessee. I knew most of my life privileges were unearned and I despised the inherent racism I saw in the South, but this program seemed to take my small passions and shape them on a whole new level. I worked with refugees from Africa and Asia- how could I contribute to race relations in the US? What did I know about Dr. King that could do his work any justice?

Turns out, now that I'm a graduating senior and MLK Scholar here at NYU, I've learned the rich, personal lessons that Dr. King's work doesn't stop at de-segregation. Dr. King's work, beliefs, values, and tireless dedication manifest in much of what I strive to do- whether as a social worker, a student, or simply part of humanity.

So instead of spouting off my own views this morning, I thought it'd be best to share the Dr. King resource that has most shaped my practice and perspective- entitled "Time To Break the Silence". It's the speech that made my own political views completely shift when I first read it, and it carries the quotes I constantly refer back to. And here it is for you: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm