Kathleen Lantto

ESPL 390
3/21/2017
ABCD Reflection

At Catholic Charities, specifically in the Refugee Resettlement office, the nature of our

work is designed in a way as to frame our clients, our space, and our city as assets. In the Job

Development program particularly, we assess clients work histories, educational backgrounds,

and skills as well as their boundaries and limits so that we can assist them in getting a job

placement in Chicago that will benefit them as well as allow them to do their best work possible

and serve the city as well as they can. Our office space has many functions as well, which does

allow us to use it to as far of an extent as possible. Uptown, the neighborhood in which our office

is situated has a vast diversity of social services that we connect with in order to provide clients

with health care, language classes, and other services. Our proximity to bus and train lines allows

clients to easily access us and for us to easily access the rest of the city. Also, seemingly

unrelated organizations in the city have actually provided a great amount of support once

connected to Catholic Charities. In particular, we connected ARISE Chicago, a workers rights

advocacy group, to Catholic Charities and our clients who work at a chicken factory in order to

protect the rights of our working clients. Connecting them to us was a connection of assets that

functioned to serve the working community, and it is sure that this connection between

organizations will continue into the future.

In the video about ABCD, the narrator focused a lot on the wellness of the heart of the

community. Although the community can be filled with positivity because of the focus on assets,

that is not the only factor in the mood of the community. Greed and lust for power can still exist

in a community even when there are some agents working to reevaluate their community in light

of the ABCD perspective. In our office, although we do work with our clients as best as we can
and try to spend the better part of our time building up our clients, I have heard a lot of negative

talk in respect to the deficits and imperfections of our clients and our organization. This kind of

talk is destructive to morale and to the good intentions people carry with them as they assess

situations as assets, especially to new workers and interns. High turnover rates in the social

services and the nature of internships lead to a plethora of new faces in the office every year,

many of whom are looking for an opportunity to connect with refugees as humans and to serve

them in the best, fullest way possible. Additionally, our office is far from our clients houses due

to the increase in housing prices in Uptown.

The work that we do is an asset and I do believe that our clients are assets in and of

themselves, but the negative fashion in which some staff members speak about clients tears down

some of the work that we try to effect in the community. I personally do not like to dwell on the

inconsistencies and imperfections of clients or coworkers, as it overshadows the larger picture of

our goals and intentions of work. However, it is an asset in an office to be able to communicate

clearly and without hesitation or political correctness, a term that comes up often in

discussions surrounding social justice. Being able to see deficits and turn your mode of seeing

and communicating into an asset is valuable. It can be hard to see assets outright, but connecting

deficits, like a heavy workload, to possible solutions in the community, such as tutoring centers,

is the best way I can see to remain honest about the way I see a situation but to also have that

asset-mindset.

Working at Catholic Charities has given me an insider perspective of resettlement work,

which in this context has also given me more information about the assets in the resettlement

agency network as well as in the refugee community. It is most socially just to value people

while also working to better their standings in society, and I do believe this is our aim as Social
Justice Interns. The SJI program itself is an asset, I believe, that connects the university to

Catholic Charities and Misericordia and therefore to the populations each serves. SJIs worth

comes directly from education, through reflection and experience, and the people that make up

SJI do advance efforts of community development. It is clear that every person in this program is

working in the community during their internships as well as outside of this context. My own

example is being part of the Ignatian Family Teach-in for Justice with Matt as well as working at

Interfaith Worker Justice. I would not have been able to connect Catholic Charities and ARISE

Chicago without having been a part of Interfaith Worker Justice, and I know that my experience

at this Jesuit university has benefited me, my community of students, the Chicago community

through service, and the country at large in a small way through participation in the national IFTJ

weekend. This connects people, associations like SJI and our internship sites, institutions like the

university, and the land of Chicago in the best way as to connect the assets within each category

to effect community development that serves to benefit the community as a whole.