Much has happened since my previous blog post. On a logistical end, my IT issues have been resolved and I have begun working more directly with Heartland clients. I find it especially difficult to articulate the vast array of feelings and thoughts that cross my mind when doing my work. There is awe at the strength of our clients for enduring countless struggles, all for the hope of a better life. Along with it, a deep sense of appreciation for the comparatively easy, coddled life I have. On a practical level, there are feelings of incompetence whenever I make a phone call and stumble across language barriers. Many of these individuals know 2 or more languages even before English, a truly outstanding feat as anyone who’s tried to learn a language knows. To complicate matters further, my work has not been near the caliber of a clinician, it has been largely logistical: making calls to schedule appointments and check in with clients. Yet my feelings emerge all the same. Perhaps it is the knowledge that I am contributing to an effort greater than myself or the hope my efforts aren’t going unnoticed among the staff and clients. Likely it’s both.

For the sake of confidentiality, I cannot share specific stories, so in place of such, I simply ask the reader to imagine the life of a refugee. Refugees across the globe come from any number of backgrounds with one thing in common, trauma. Some are fleeing from wars that destroyed their homes, others leave their towns under the cover of night with nothing more than the clothes on their backs to escape persecution for their religion, political, or sexual/gender identities. A family’s difficulty does not end after their individual exodus either; most spend years, and more often than not the remainder of their lives, in United Nations refugee camps which I discussed in my last post. Yet these are still preferable to the life they left.

I don’t write about such trauma to glorify their resilience, as it is apparent enough. Nor do I intend to use the struggles of others to build some sort of empathetic veil of white savior-ism over myself. If anything I write to show how we as a nation, and as humans have failed one another. What an exercise in forgiveness it must be to seek refuge in the same nation that began the political unrest that eventually led to the destruction of your home. What continued bravery to willingly come to a nation whose previous administrations built a cult of hatred for the refugees it helped create through the insatiable hunger of its bloated military-industrial complex or the boundless greed of its corporations. Thinking in the wake of such unconscionable despair leaves quite the hefty psychological toll. After all, what am I, a single undergrad, to do?

I have no answer to the problems at large. But I do know that I can help those who are here now. I can assist Heartland’s clients as they build new lives, even with duties as small as facilitating communication between clinicians or counselors. I hope I can help a few souls find peace in a disorderly, chaotic world. If I can do that, I will find some solace.

I began my internship with the Heartland Alliance last Wednesday, 5/26/21, and have been met with a number of logistical challenges right off the bat. The Monday before my orientation I took the time to attempt to log in to the necessary online portals I would be frequenting as my internship is remote however I was met with screen after screen of dead links. It wasn’t until Thursday that I learned that the Alliance’s IT department was having major outages across several of their servers. Because of this I have thus far been unable to begin many of the tasks of my internship such as reaching out to clients and writing and logging case notes. All communications and video calls with my team have also had to transition from my Heartland Alliance email to my school email that I have access to. Needless to say this has been quite the source of frustration as I was so eager to dive into the world of social work.

Another source of surprise has come from the content of my work thus far which has largely been in the form of reading large quantities of legal documents related to the US refugee system and Heartland’s own policies surrounding their programs. While much of this has been important to understand, and I have learned a great deal from it, it certainly is a deviation from my desire to help the clients in the system; but that will come with time. On the first day of my internship, I met with my supervisor for a brief orientation session where we discussed the importance of the work we do. I was presented with some rather harrowing statistics about the global refugee crisis and watched some videos interviewing refugees to understand their personal experiences through resettlement. According to the UN, there are approximately 80 million forcibly displaced peoples in the world today. Most of these individuals take refuge in UN Refugee camps, which although good in theory ends up looking like tent cities with few resources available for medical or psychological care. Less than half of a percent of these people will successfully resettle in a new home after a rigorous screening process that can take anywhere from 5-20 years.

The knowledge of these struggles has kept me humbled and level-headed throughout the process. I often remember the words of the early 1900s radio host Orson Welles:

“We must each day earn what we own. A healthy man owes to the sick all that he can do for them. An educated man owes to the ignorant all that he can do for them. A free man owes to the world’s slaves all that he can do for them” (1943)

Such has been my reason to pursue this internship and my motivation to see past the comparatively insignificant ailments of the first world. Of course, there is a fine line to walk between humility and delegitimizing one’s personal emotional struggles; however, the fact of the matter is that I can certainly persevere through IT troubles or remote learning environments for the betterment of others. After all, the existence of such problems is evidence of my own privilege in life; and what good is my privilege if it is not used for the betterment of others.