Nearing the end of my summer, work at Heartland Alliance has proven both to be exactly what I expected and exactly what I did not expect. On a practical level, Heartland Alliance functions very similarly to how it was described. It is an underfunded non-profit. When I was originally told at the beginning of the summer that I would be taking participants to social services, health clinics, and completing administrative work, that has all turned out to be exactly true. However, the interaction with coworkers, participants, and the community has been anything but predictable.

Working in an office setting, I had both an expectation and hope for coworkers. Media often portrays office settings as problematic, dog-eat-dog, and full of annoying employees. Shortly after arriving, I realized how naive I was. Non-profits, or at least Heartland, cannot afford to function in this manner. The interdependence between departments at Heartland creates both a supportive work environment, but also one that can be slow as participants often cannot move towards independence without the backing of the whole office. If it weren’t for nice coworkers who were patient, work would be unbearable.

Secondly, working with the participants has been different than anticipated. Going into the job at Heartland Alliance, I expected to meet a population different than any I had encountered. I have worked with refugees from Central America in the past, but had not had the privilege of working with immigrants from elsewhere in the world. As I have spent more time with the participants (primarily from Africa and Asia), learning about their culture and way of life, getting insight into their histories, and talking with them about their lived experiences have taught me much about the world. Many participants have showed me videos describing their home countries and friends back home. This brings an extremely human element to hot button issue that is talked about in the news. The similarities between my family and theirs far outweigh the differences. Some citizens of the United States have a misconception about refugees draining social services of funding they have not paid into. This could not be further from the truth. I have not met a single participant feeling a sense of entitlement to any assistance they receive. More than anything, the refugees want to get off social services and become dependent from the help of the government. Finding a job and contributing to the United States becomes the number one goal for participants, which reminds me of anyone graduating college. This highlights a great similarity between the culture of the United States and refugees new to the country, and acts as a reminder that we share more than simply being human.

The DMV, Public Aid, Social Security Office, and health clinics, among many others, get terrible representation in the world. Although they provide services that are essential to most Americans, they are only thought of as slow bureaucratic offices never looking to help. I’d like to serve as a nice reminder that many countries do not have these institutions that help the United States run much more smoothly, and we should be thankful even during the frustration of interaction.

Ultimately, this summer has both a living and learning experience. I won’t say it was life-changing or that I am a whole new person coming out of this summer, but I will look at the world a little differently.