Through the Summer Service Fellowship, I had the opportunity to work with Su Casa Family Ministries. I am a Spanish major and a Latin American Studies minor at Rhodes, and working at Su Casa gave me the opportunity to practice speaking Spanish while getting involved with the Hispanic community in Memphis and learning about the issues that surround it. I had also just returned from a semester abroad in Spain, and there I experienced living in a foreign country, tackling a language barrier, and figuring out aspects of daily life like going to the grocery store or the doctor. These are some of the same challenges immigrants face living in my own city, and studying abroad gave me a unique perspective and greater compassion to serve an immigrant community that built on my pre-existing love for the Hispanic people and culture.
Su Casa is a faith-based organization that seeks to meet the spiritual, physical, and social needs of the Hispanic community in Memphis. During the school year, Su Casa offers English classes to over 200 students and provides childcare four times a week. They also hold events and have resources to help their community navigate the legal, medical, and educational challenges that may arise. This summer, I assisted with a four-week kids camp by teaching arts and crafts to elementary students, planning weekly activities, and chaperoning field trips. After camp ended, I helped parents register their kids for school online and plan toddler and pre-kindergarten curriculum for the childcare offered during adult English classes in the fall. In addition to camp, I also participated in and helped facilitate a weekly Family Fun Night. Several of the camp kids came back at night with their families and we ate and played games together. This weekly event helped me get to know the kids better and interact with their families, which formed a more cohesive community overall and showed me the importance of the "family ministry" aspect of my service site.
Spending a summer in Memphis with Summer Service deepened my love and appreciation for the city that has been my second home for the last three years. Not only was I able to connect with the Hispanic community, but I also got to meet people who shared my passions about the issues surrounding the immigrants in this area. Furthermore, the Fellowship gave me the opportunity to learn about other issues in Memphis and the people who are passionate about and driven fix them. There is still a lot of work to be done in Memphis, but spending the summer here has encouraged me and given me a glimpse of what the city is capable of achieving in the near future.
Great post, Elizabeth! I absolutely love your initial paragraph and the way you directly connected your work this summer with both your academic pursuits and the daily obstacles of your past semester in Spain. In your second paragraph, you concisely describe what Su Casa is and what it does as well as what you did there this summer. I like that you included a sentence or two describing what Family Fun Night meant to you and why it was significant to your time at Su Casa. I think it would be a great improvement to your blurb if you did the same for the two prior sentences (“this summer, I assisted” and “after camp ended, I helped”) in order to consistently make connections between your daily service and the impact it had on you and those you served. Last but not least, good job on tying it back to Memphis and the bigger picture with your concluding paragraph and final sentence.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Julie about explaining the personal impact of your activities. I would also be interested in learning more about how religion played a role in your experience at Su Casa. During our visit they emphasized the importance of their faith, but I didn't get a sense of that in your blurb. Maybe that's because it didn't effect your daily job with the kids, but if it did, I think it would be a great addition!
ReplyDeleteOverall great job!! They're lucky to have you :)
This is a well-done reflective blurb. You flow smoothly from past experience/abroad, role at Su Casa, to impact of SSF. I think you could go a little more into detail about how Su Casa shaped your view of service. Personally, one of the most memorable aspects of our visit there was their commitment to family involvement in the process, whether it is learning English or signing up for schools. Again, great job, and I loved how you connected your growth and challenges abroad to your experience this summer.
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