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Hans Sandoval
At Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement, the usage of assets is common practice and

also extremely important for the organization to be able to effectively serve the clients.

Throughout all the different departments at Refugee Resettlement, assets both at the agency and

in the community the agency serves are used. As well as the assets available to the agency, there

are also deficits in the agency. Similarly, there are some deficits that are present in the assets

already used in the agency. There are also assets that are completely missing from the

organization that should be put in place. In respect to the assets and deficits found at Catholic

Charities, I also value and focus on them personally. The value and focus that I place on certain

assets and deficits are all according to my personal experience at the agency. With this

rumination, I have been able to reflect on how my agency has made me think about community

development.

In the K-12 program, where I specifically intern, there are many assets used. To provide a

convenient and effective space for weekly tutoring, the K-12 program books the study room in

the Northtown Library Public Library off of Devon and California every Wednesday. This asset

was chosen to host the weekly tutoring sessions because it is located in the community in which

many of the clients live. The close proximity of the asset to the clients serves the clients because

they do not need to travel far to get to tutoring. Many of the clients walk from their schools in

Devon to the library and so it is important to make their commute as short as possible. This asset

also offers many of the resources that are required to effectively tutor the children. The asset

provides books, computers, writing utensils, and library staff members who can answer resource

questions. This asset also allows the K-12 caseworkers to have a space in which the parents who

accompany the children to tutoring can consult them and ask them questions about their children.

There are also deficits with this asset. Although this asset is in a convenient location for many of
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the children clients of Catholic Charities, there are also many children clients for whom the

location of the asset is not convenient. To remedy this deficit, Catholic Charities also provides

home tutoring in which volunteers tutor clients at their homes.

Other major assets that the K-12 program uses is the dental and eye offices where the

children are taken. These assets are important because all child clients at Catholic Charities must

have a recent eye and dental exam. Catholic Charities uses dental and eye offices that are both

close to the agency and in Devon where most of the children live. The varied locations of these

offices is very important because it allows for the combined convenience of the clients and the

staff member or intern who will accompany the clients to the appointment. The biggest deficit

that these eye and dental offices have is that most of them have a policy in which they will not

schedule a new patient (which all the clients are) past 1pm. As a result of this, for many

appointments the clients must be told to stay home from school and I or another staff member

must pick up the clients from their home. To remedy this deficit, I started taking the children to

an eye doctor that would take new clients after school and I also take some children to the one

other dental office that allows for after school appointments. To make sure that these assets are

used efficiently, the K-12 staff keeps a close relationship with the dental and eye offices that

serve the children.

Other important assets that are used are the schools that the children go to. The K-12 staff

keep a close relationship with the various grade schools and high schools that serve the children.

The K-12 staff keep close relationships with the teachers from the schools as well. It is common

practice that the K-12 worker put their number as the primary number to call on the childrens

school forms while the parents English is not advanced enough to handle a conversation. The K-

12 staff constantly receives phone calls and emails from the teachers of the various children that
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we have. The deficit with this is that since there are so many children it can be difficult to

coordinate and to communicate with the various teachers. To address this deficit, the K-12 staff

periodically has meetings with the K-12 staff members of other refugee agencies and a

representatives of the Chicago Public School system to discuss the needs of the students at their

schools. All of the above assets are some of the most important assets used by the K-12 program

to serve the children clients. It is evident that Catholic Charities values assets that are convenient

and accessible to the clients and staff members. Catholic Charities does its best to remedy any

deficit with the assets it uses. However, deficits are not highly valued because it makes getting

the work done for the clients much more difficult.

For me personally, I tend to focus on assets that serve more than one purpose. I do not

like assets that can only be of slight benefit to the community it serves. I have a bias toward

finding and using assets that can have a maximum bang for my buck. I think it is important to be

intelligent when using assets and not use an asset just because it can address an immediate issue.

For example, I do not like to go to particular eye offices with my clients because some of them

may not be reliable enough to effectively take care of my clients if the results of the first

appointment deem it necessary that my clients need a follow-up. The quality of the asset is

important to me because I want the asset to provide substantive assistance to my clients. On the

other hand, I view deficits as a burden rather than an opportunity for growth, I do not like when

things are difficult so I try to decrease the need to interact with deficits. I realize that it is not a

good thing that I do not have a positive opinion about deficits. Viewing deficits as an opportunity

to change something to work in my favor is something that can be very useful and important

when working for a particular community.

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Catholic Charities is helping me immensely understand community development. As a

result of the nature of refugee resettlement and the need for the agency to work closely with the

population and the community in which the population lives, I witness how the agency

participates in community development. For example, the job development office keeps in

contact with many employers around Rogers Pak and Devon to facilitate clients finding

employment. This requires the job development office to maintain close and amicable

relationships with multiple people from the community. This also benefits the community

because it has our clients participate in the formal economy of the communities in which they get

employed. However in a more general way, my work at Refugee Resettlement has made me

aware of how important it is for an asset like Catholic Charities to be an active member of the

community it serves. Being viewed as a trusted and beneficial asset in the community has

allowed Catholic Charities to enjoy support from a wide range of sources. The funding,

volunteers, and donations to Catholic Charities only are possible because Catholic Charities has

distinguished itself as a community leader that participates and contributes to community

development. I realize that all of the good that Refugee Resettlement is able to do is all do to

effective community development. This has made me realize that the strength of an

organizations community development will determine its ability to serve its targeted population.