I’m currently in my 6th week at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Right now I’m at the downtown Grand Rapids campus for the remainder of my Social Work classes. One of the requirements for this semester is to volunteer. I reached out to a few places, including Samaritas in Grand Rapids and Court Appointed Special Advocates or CASA of Kent County.
Casa was first to reach out to me, however they were not accepting anyone into the volunteer program until November of this year, and that would just be cutting it too close. CASA is nonprofit and works to provide a voice to children who can’t defend themselves. My understanding of CASA is that volunteers would work with families and observe the environment, family interactions, and social interactions. They say on their site that they appointed by a judge to be the voice for the best interested of a child who is abused or neglected. CASA was really appealing to me as I want to work with the Department of Health and Human Services in Grand Rapids or the Department of Children and Family Services in Illinois, more specifically Chicago. Neglect and abuse are close to my heart and I want to help prevent as much as I can before my time ends on this earth.
Samaritas was my second choice, and I have been accepted there and will meet with the family that I’ll be assisting in a week from today. I can’t say much about the family, other than I know they don’t speak English. Samaratis is a great opportunity for someone in my shoes, I’ve never been out of the country to experience any other cultures, so this gives me a taste of other cultures and at the same time I get to help them adapt to the American Culture. I have 3 children, and I was told that I can bring my children with me to meet their children, use those meetings to not only teach my children about their culture but for their children to have kids their age to play with.
There’s a lot of things that are mentioned in my classes about how to interact with people, such as not judging and being open to their culture. I’m actually really excited about this and have been reading up on the African culture and attempting to learn some Kiswahili before meeting them. I had never heard of Kiswahili, I had only known of Swahili. After doing a bit of Googling, I learned that Kiswahili is what the language is called when speaking it and Swahili is what you would refer to as the culture and the people. I find it really fascinating to learn about new cultures, so this is going to be an amazing opportunity for me to learn.
Even though this is a journal entry on this site, I hope that someone eventually comes to me with questions about this experience.