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In This Issue:
HOGAR STAFF Lorraine LaVia
Education Services: Brooke Hammond Lisa Ehm Waller Hope Adair Danny Quinn Bill Kelly Krupskaya Elliott
Michelle Sardone Mike Elliott
Social Services:
Hogar Immigrant Services |
It is with a heavy heart that I write to say that I have resigned from Catholic Charities effective Tuesday, September 6. It was exactly ten years ago this month that Sally O’Dwyer (then the head of Hogar Education Services, now CCDA’s VP of Community Services) and I first met to discuss my desire to become a Hogar volunteer. Next month will mark ten years since I began as the ESL site coordinator at St. Anthony parish in Falls Church—an assignment which ultimately led to my leaving the corporate world and joining this organization full-time in 2007. I had no way of knowing back in 2001 that responding to a little ad in the St. Charles Borromeo parish bulletin seeking Hogar volunteers would forever change the direction of my life. When I submitted my resignation, I told Sally that I would never be able to thank her adequately for introducing me to this extraordinary program which has welcomed so many strangers since it opened its doors in 1981. It has been a remarkable journey. I leave Hogar bigger (who ever imagined there would be a Leesburg “branch”?), stronger (financially and operationally), and better equipped with technology, grant funding, and human resources to meet the challenges of the future. But it is you—the indefatigable employees, the dedicated army of volunteers and the clients and students—who did all of the hard work. I was fortunate just to “conduct the orchestra” and to witness God’s grace at work every single day for the last four years. To say I will miss Hogar would be an understatement. I will carry fond memories of this place with me for the rest of my days. But the time has come for me to embark on my next challenge. I will be moving to Northern VA Family Service, a strong local partner with whom several of you have worked in some capacity. So I am not abandoning the mission “to serve the neediest among us”. I will simply be fulfilling it at a different agency. In every way possible, I have more confidence in this program’s ability to be a leader in serving immigrants—both locally and nationally (as the USCIS grant demonstrates)—than at any time in my four years as its Director. So, in closing, God bless you all and the work that you do each and every day. God bless our clients and students. Y que Dios bendiga este Hogar. John.
Volunteers Needed!
Forty-five applicants came out on Saturday for our Naturalization workshop at St. Anthony’s, despite the hurricane! It was a busy day but luckily we got everyone out the door and home safely before 3 p.m. A big thank you to all of our steadfast volunteers who came out to assist applicants despite the bad weather. Our next workshop will be held on Saturday September 17th 2011 at the Arlington County Department of Human Services building at 2100 Washington Boulevard (Sequoia Plaza), Arlington, Virginia. Registration opens at 10:00 a.m. Staff attorneys and trained volunteers will be on hand to assist Lawful Permanent Residents in completing their applications to become U.S. citizens. Interested applicants should call 703-534-9805 x 250 to pre-register and find out what they need to bring to the workshop. The Western Regional Office of Catholic Charities was the proud recipient of a portion of the Preferential Option for the Poor through St. Francis de Sales in Purcellville, Virginia. The money was granted too the Western Regional Office for the expressed purpose of Emergency Rental Assistance for Lo. County residence. The office has experienced an increase in the number of individuals needing rental help in the last few years. This award will allow the office to provide necessary assistance to families who would otherwise lose their homes. This month we are happy to profile our legal intern, Sister Karen Lynn Trespasz. Sister has been with us for a few months now, and we have all benefitted from her delightful presence and legal assistance. Sister is a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia, based in Bristow. She is also a licensed attorney who practiced law for several years before joining the Benedictine Sisters. How did Sister go from practicing law to joining a religious order, and how did she become interested in working with us here at Hogar? I sat down with Sister last week to find out more about her fascinating journey. Q: What kind of law did you practice before you joined the Benedictine Sisters? A: Well before law school I had worked at the Connecticut Department of Aging; I was interested in helping people from the beginning. My projects involved working with the elderly to ensure that they received the medical care and services that they needed. After I graduated from Yale Law School I was also a new mother, and I realized that I didn’t want to work at a large law firm having a new baby, and I was interested in the public health system, so I took a job with a health care organization for several years. I also wrote a couple of books and was an adjunct professor at a local law school. Q: What led you to want to lead a religious life? What led you to that transition? A: Well I did a retreat through my church, and I was at a point where I was considering what I wanted to do with my life, realizing that my daughter was now an adult—she was in pharmacy school and I realized that she was on her path to self-sufficiency. I realized during the retreat all of the restrictions I had been putting on my life, and shortly after the retreat, I was driving one day and it came to be that I could be a nun, and it immediately filled me with such a sense of peace, that I thought to myself, “that’s got to be it then.”
As we begin the fall semester at many Hogar sites, we thought you could use a reminder about the importance of goal setting with your classes. Many adults who come to take English classes have similar, assumed goals- but it can be good to set aside time at the beginning of the semester to help students clarify their individual goals. In addition, because of the diverse backgrounds of our student base there will likely be some significant variation in students' goals. Someone with a professional career in their own country and a high level of formal education might plan to go on to a degree program in the U.S. or take exams to become certified to practice their profession here in the U.S. Someone else who has a family, minimal formal education, and minimal time to devote to further study may want to focus on the vocabulary needed to get promoted in their current job and communicate with his English-speaking children. Below are some tips to help you do effective goal-setting: -Work with your students to identify an attainable and measurable goal -Create a realistic timeline to achieve the goal -Devise a system of occasional reveiw and revision of goals (How will your students know he/she attained his/her goal?) -Initial goal-setting should happen at the beginning of the semester -Ask open-ended questions (who, what where, when, how) -Short-term: accomplished in 6 months or less -Long-term: accomplished in months or years -Make SMART goals that are:
-Map out a timeline:
-Review and Revise:
-The benefits of setting goals include:
-Use your student's goals for lesson planning:
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