Course Spotlight: Internship Seminar with Community Organizations

I loved my relaxing,25-minute commute
to St. Rita's, walking up Fordham Rd.

This fall semester, I am taking a sociology elective that pairs sociological discussion theory on cities and the built environment with a placement at a community organization. While we need to secure the internship on our own, Professor Rhomberg provided us with a list of local community organizations that other students have found worked well in the past.

Last spring semester, I started volunteering at St. Rita’s Center for Immigrant and Refugee Services on Fordham Road. I taught adult immigrants English classes for two hours, twice a week. I feel very lucky that I found this position through the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice’s Volunteer Fair, as it allowed me to experience another aspect of our community in this part of the Bronx. I realized that I felt really fulfilled working with immigrants, so I wanted to gain more experience with the legal side of things. Coming back to Fordham this fall, I decided to intern at Mercy Center for my seminar class.

Mercy Center is a multi-service provider located in Mott Haven, a neighborhood in the South Bronx. I work in the Immigrant Services department, helping complete naturalization applications for Legal Permanent Residents and applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. While the latter application means a lot more work (for example, we need to provide evidence in an organized manner, resulting in a large file), I feel that the work is more important because the undocumented immigrants it protects are so vulnerable. I love that I get to work with participants and learn about real immigrants’ experiences trying to make a better life for their families in New York, but I am also learning so much about the system itself.

Mercy Center also offers programs in Personal Development, Workforce Readiness, Adult Education, After-School Programs, Family Skills and Development, and general Social Services. 

I think that classes like this internship seminar, as well as the Service Learning classes offered across disciplines, are great examples of Fordham living out its mission. Students are encouraged to not just learn and stay inside the bubble of the university, but to complement their academics with real-world experiences. These classes make it so easy to do; I'm getting major requirements and credits toward graduation for the 14 hours a week I’m working an unpaid internship, while understanding my internship (and fellow classmates' organizations) better via class discussion and readings.  

My supervisor, Bridget (Director of Immigrant Services),
celebrating with one of our recently naturalized participants! 

My commute to Mercy Center on the Bx41 bus. It's so rewarding to experience another neighborhood in our borough.

Jumpstart at Fordham

Fordham University is dedicated to social justice and being men and women for others. Fordham encourages all of its students to Volunteer at some point in their Fordham career. This year I joined one of Fordham’s most active community service groups called Jumpstart. Jumpstart is an organization that visits local preschools on weekly basis in order to encourage language and literacy skills in children ages 3-4. Joining jumpstart is one of the best decisions I have made here at Fordham.

This is me and my jumpstart team.

On Tuesdays and Friday my jumpstart team and I visit La Peninsula, a local preschool.  Before we head to the school, we have a team planning meeting to discuss what book we will read, and what activities we will do with the children. When we arrive at the school we separate into groups. Our first group activity is going over the letters and sounds of letters in the children’s names. After that, we read our book of the week. Reading the book is my favorite part because the children respond really well to them. They laugh and really enjoy the pictures. After books are read we come together again during circle time, where we sing songs and say poems that help develop alphabet knowledge and phonemic awareness. After circle time, the children are given an option of whether they want to go to an art, reading, writing, puzzle, or dramatic play area. All of the activities set up for the children were especially designed to support the vocabulary and content we read in the book. The last thing we do during session is sharing and goodbye. During sharing and goodbye, children are given the opportunity to share what they did during center time with the rest of the class. Of course sharing and goodbye is accompanied by the famous goodbye Jumpstart song.

While jumpstart may be a very large commitment, it is extremely rewarding. I love working with children and jumpstart has given me the ability to do just that. I am so happy to know that I am helping children learn to read. But it’s definitely a two way street, I would say I get just as much out of jumpstart sessions as they do. Watching the kids grasp a concept, or spell their name for the first time is really awesome. In addition, as if the kids weren’t enough jumpstart has fostered so many friendships for me. My team is a group of truly extraordinary people and I wouldn’t have them any other way.

 

Peer Health Exchange

Interested in volunteering? Interested in health or education? Want to make a positive impact on high school students? Then, Peer Health Exchange is the club for you! Peer Health Exchange, or PHE, is a non-profit organization, whose mission is to give teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions.

How can students get involved? Undergraduate students can get involved by applying to be Health Educators (HEs) at www.peerhealthexchange.org/apply.  HEs are on a specific team and undergo training to teach one of the health workshops at public high schools that have no health education. To date, PHE has trained over 7,500 college student volunteers to bring health education to more than 96,000 public high schools located in the beloved NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington D.C.

A good and funny try at spelling P-H-E

 

What are the different health workshops? There’s a lot! To mention the ones taught through Fordham, the workshops are:

·         Sexual Decision-Making (SDM)

 

·         Pregnancy Prevention (PP)

 

·         Rape & Sexual Assault (RSA)

 

·         Abusive Relationships (AR)

 

·         Healthy Relationships (HR)

 

·         Mental Health (MH)

 

·         Nutrition & Physical Activity (NPA)

 

·         STIs & HIV

 

·         Decision-Making and Communication I & II (DMC I & II)

 

·         Drugs (DR)

 

·         Alcohol (AL)

 

·         Tobacco (TOB)

 

How many people are on each workshop team? Each team is led by one of the members of the Leadership Council (LC), with a Senior Health Educator (SHE), and three Health Educators (HEs). The wonderful Co-Coordinators (CCs) lead and manage all workshops, under the direction of our humble and hard-working Program Manager.

Here's my lovely fellow HE, sophomore Hannah Buckley!
We both teach SDM!

When do students apply? PHE recruits Health Educators during the fall and spring semesters. Once you apply, an interview process will be held with the AWESOME Leadership Council and Co-Coordinators! And who knows? Maybe if you’re a part of PHE, you’ll be so inspired to get more involved by applying to be a CC or LC or even a SHE!

 

 



Here's the great LC for SDM, senior Dan Mullen! Did I mention he's awesome?

 

  Even if you’re NOT interested in health or education, you can still get involved! I’m actually a business student. Of all the organizations I have been a part of, PHE is definitely the BEST! Not only will you make a difference by providing a much-needed service to students who are facing such high pressures that inhibit them from making healthy decisions, but you will also get to train and educate with fun and incredible people, who are some of the most genuine people I have ever met.



Fordham Peer Health Exchange

90% of teens who were educated in a PHE workshop intend to take what they learned to help them in making healthy decisions about what is right for them. I highly recommend PHE for students, who want to be a part of the fun, use tons of acronyms haha, but most importantly, be a part of inspiring others and making a difference!

 

The Smart Girls Group: an Incredible Fordham Experience

Over the past two years, I have been asked many times about the best part of Fordham. My answer has always been, and always will be, the people I have met here. The people at Fordham are some of the most driven, inspiring, caring people i have ever met. One of my friends is an incredible example of this spirit within the Fordham community. One of my good friends Emily Raleigh, a sophomore in the Gabelli School of Business, founded her own company two years ago as a senior in college, and it has flourished.

Emily Raleigh, Gabelli School of Business Class of 2016, and founder of the Smart Girls Group

I feel incredibly lucky not only to know Emily, but also to work for her company the Smart Girls Group. The Smart Girls Group is a social enterprise dedicated to empowering the next generation of influential women. The Smart Girls Group has campus chapters, online classes, an online magazine, and an international sisterhood. The Smart Girls Group's office is located at the Fordham Foundry, a small business incubator just outside Fordham's Rose Hill campus. The Foundry helps student entrepreneurs, like my friend Emily, get their small businesses started. 

With the Smart Girls Group, I serve as the Deputy Editor for our monthly magazine, the Smart Girls Guide. One of my main duties as the Deputy Editor is to read and edit every article before it gets published in the magazine. I also review the magazine one last time after it has been put together to catch any last-minute mistakes or typos. With this job, I get the opportunity to work with the incredible girls of the Smart Girls Group staff, and collaborate with them on ideas how to further the company and make a bigger impact on the rising global community of driven young women. 

A past issue of the Smart Girls Guide magazine

Being a friend of the founder of the company, I have an inside look at what it is like to work in a social enterprise, which is what I would like to do post graduation. Emily inspires me, and many others, every day, and she is one of many students at Fordham who are doing incredible things to change the Fordham community and the world. But these students working to change the world are often doing so very quietly, and you may not know about it unless you know them personally. Dinner conversations with Emily have come to include pitching new ideas to better Smart Girls Group, planning collaborations and sponsorships with powerful people and companies, and discussing crucial issues of feminism, like whether Beyonce or Sheryl Sandburg is more inspiring. The definitive answer to that question was never decided, but we concluded they're both very important in their own ways. 

Working with Children in the Bronx: City Squash!

If you love to volunteer and are looking to do so regularly, or even once in awhile during your college experience, Fordham is a great school for just that. The Bronx community has so many opportunities and options to give back and volunteer. Whether with the elderly, your peers, or with young children, there are a lot of different options, all in a very diverse and interesting neighborhood.

One of these options, which I personally feel very strongly about, is City Squash. City Squash is only a few blocks away from campus, making it a very easy walk after class. What is City Squash you ask? This program is a non-for profit after school enrichment program that local kids in the area can attend after their daily classes. The program is held both at Fordham and in the Bronx as well. The kids are taught how to play the game Squash, which teaches them a new and interesting sport and gives them good exercise, and then afterwards, they are tutored (by Fordham kids!) and work on their homework together. It is a great program to help kids stay on track.

Where do the Fordham kids come in you ask? Whether here on campus or at their office in the Bronx, you tutor the children in the program, which is so rewarding and has been such a great experience for me and my friends that have participated. When you get started, you fill out a sheet telling them which grade you would like to tutor, and then you get placed with kids.  I tutored 4^th graders, and formed close personal relationships with many of the kids. They looked forward to our meetings, and after working on homework we would chat and do extra worksheets for fun, which they really enjoyed. If you are looking to be a teacher this is a great program to look into! Even if not, giving back is so important, and it is so stressed here at Fordham. City Squash is a great way to do so.

The program is so flexible and the hours aren’t long. Whether tutoring in English, Math, or History, the kids really appreciate your help and get really excited for the sessions.

Fordham is the perfect school for those looking for multiple volunteer opportunities, one of those being City Squash. I highly recommend it; you’ll get so much out of it and help kids too!

A Look at the Fordham Dance Team!

Fordham Dance Team (FDT) is the perfect club to join if you’re interested in dance and want to show off your school spirit! Although it is a club sport here at Fordham, the dance team is heavily involved with Fordham Athletics. FDT and the Fordham cheerleaders work together to provide the ultimate school spirit and support at athletic events. Fordham Dance performs during halftime and media timeouts at all home Fordham Football and men’s and women’s Basketball games. In addition, we do sidelines with Fordham Cheerleading at all basketball games. This year at both the Homecoming and Family Weekend football games, Dance and Cheer did a special halftime performance together! I tried out for the dance team the first semester of my freshman year, and I have loved being a part of the team ever since. It has been a great way to be involved with Fordham and to show my support for the athletic teams and my love for the school! 

FDT at Homecoming 2013!

In addition to game performances, the team values performing and fundraising for groups and organizations both on and off campus. Last year we participated in Fordham’s Relay for Life event. We raised $3,000, walked at the event, and performed. We also participated in the Light It Up Blue-Autism Awareness event. This year the team is very excited about adding the Making Strides Walk Against Breast Cancer to our events.

FDT being silly at Relay for Life.

Light It Up Blue-Autism Awareness Event

This past summer the team had the opportunity to attend Universal Dance Association (UDA) camp at Western Connecticut State College for a weekend. We got to work with trained dancers, and learned five routines to use for the upcoming year. The team also won a Superior trophy for performing our own Fordham Fight Song Cheer! Whether you’re into dance or not, I recommend joining at least one club at Fordham because the experience of being a part of a group and making some of your best friends is worth it!

UDA Camp at Western Connecticut State College