Black and Brown Women Deserve Doula Access Too

2017-18 Dominican Volunteer, Stephanie Zavala: “In New York City, a black woman is 12 times more likely to die during pregnancy, during labor, or from complications after labor.”

And from an NPR report, “A 2016 analysis of five years of data found that black, college-educated mothers who gave birth in local hospitals were more likely to suffer severe complications of pregnancy or childbirth than white women who never graduated from high school.”

In this two-part video, Dominican Volunteer Stephanie Zavala reflects on her calling to be a doula, an advocate and support to mothers during the birthing process. Stephanie was inspired to become a doula through her work at the Siena House, a homeless shelter for mothers who are pregnant and mothers who have young children in the Bronx. Stephanie seeks to offer her doula services to black, brown, and undocumented mothers who face systemic hardships and  barriers.

 

Thank you for your service, witness, and words Stephanie.

Blogger would not upload the second part of Stephanie's video.You can view part  2 of Stephanie's video here

Correction: in the second part of the video, Stephanie meant to say “black maternal mortality rate" rather than black mortality rate.

Our Nature’s Fire

Allison Beyer, Co-director, Dominican Volunteers USA

As we approach the feast day of our Dominican St. Catherine of Siena, Dominican Volunteers USA shares the words of our Co-Director, Allison Beyer, from our annual celebration and benefit last Saturday. Like St. Catherine, Allison challenges each of us to be who we are meant to be and set the world on fire. We are inspired by Allison’s work, words, and witness in living out our Dominican mission.
St. Catherine of Siena said, “For a servant of God, Every place is the right place, Every time is the right time.” Catherine was not “a woman of her time.” Catherine lived in the present but was not contained by the social, family, political and religious expectations or boundaries placed upon her. She was free in the love of God and the pursuit of making this love manifest through her prayer life and love of neighbor. Catherine was not naive in her joy or zeal; she lived fully in the reality of the plague, war, sexism and political despondency.

We, Dominican Volunteers USA, do not run from the injustices and despair of our time. Dominican Volunteers USA was born out of the Dominican tradition, of running towards and with the weary, sick, rejected, forsaken. DVUSA partners with organizations around the country that serve individuals and communities that are the poorest of the poor and marginalized. This is the Gospel call. Dominican Volunteers respond to that call with their very lives.

Gustavo Gutierrez teaches that when Jesus said “Take up your cross and follow me,” he was referring not to a personal cross, a cross of individual sin or suffering, but rather to the cross of humanity, the cross that we all bear, because we are One Body. This is the cross of injustice.

Too many of us are hungry in a country of abundance and waste. Too many of us as children are unsafe, uneducated, and disempowered in a country that prides itself on being the best. Too many of us are forced to leave our home countries and are treated like unworthy strangers by our neighbors here. Too many of us are cold, lonely, imprisoned. Too many of us suffer violence and abuse at the hands of our partners, family members, strangers. Too many of us are without shelter, without clothing, without community, without access to health care. All of us are living on a planet on the brink of climatic catastrophe. This is the cross. Jesus calls us to “Take up the cross and follow me.”

This call is as relevant now as it was some odd 2000 years ago. The Dominican Sisters heed this call now just as they have for the past 800+ years. They, like Jesus, invite each of us to come closer. To take up the cross and walk with them, to see where such a curious, demanding road might lead. We find, like Catherine, that the road is marked by needless, contrived, systemic and inexplicable suffering-- and still we continue.

 We are able to continue this work because of the loving companions who share the load and the journey. We are able to continue this work because it is just. We are able to continue working for peace because we have felt peace in our hearts when at prayer. We are able to continue defending the truth that we are all One Body because we feel the joy of this truth in our beings. We continue to seek new volunteers, women and men to preach God’s love through service. Your continued support allows future volunteers to answer the call, to have the opportunity to be transformed in and by and for Love.

Each year, Dominican Volunteers take the opportunity to live in intentional community, minister full-time and enter more deeply into the injustices of our day through study and prayer. Volunteers serve as teachers, campus ministers, coaches, counselors, nurses. They make a difference in organic farms, the United Nations, the Dominican Youth Movement, refugee communities and immigrant centers. They teach children how to read and encourage them to dream. They help refugees find jobs and teach English as a Second Language. Dominican Volunteers answer crisis lines, hold the hands of the dying, organize celebrations for Day of the Dead, protest and advocate.

We thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for coming here to join us as we celebrate our inspiring partner Sarah’s Inn and for Continuing the Journey with Dominican Volunteers USA. We could not do it without you. Thank you.

“It is beneath human dignity to lose one’s individuality and become a mere cog in the machine”

Our latest blog post comes from 2017-18 Dominican Volunteer Niki Klco.

DV Niki Klco

Niki serves at the Siena House, a homeless shelter for young mothers and their children in the Bronx New York. She reflects on this systemic obstacles that homeless people face and the necessity of recognizing the humanity of each and every person.

In this day in age being homeless is not just for the poor. With rent on a one-bedroom apartment being $1200 per month in the Bronx to $3500 per month in New York City being homeless or scraping for money to pay rent is common. The records say 63,500 people are homeless in New York City. Not only is this number the highest number of people since the Great Depression, but this only counts people spending the night in shelters. What about all of those people spending the night on the streets for which we have no countable number? One source estimates 4,000 more people are on the streets each night. Since working at Siena House Shelter in the Bronx I would even contest the total numbers that I have just listed. Here in the city it is required that residents prove that they are indeed homeless. Simply saying that you live outside or keep moving around from shelter to shelter is not good enough. Prove it! Prove to us that bridge in your picture is where you sleep, prove that you have been up all night riding the subway, and prove that you deserve a place in one of our shelters. With admirable intent in the 1970s a court law was passed that anyone who is homeless in New York City must be sheltered, but what do the consequences become when good intentions turn into making people into numbers on a page? “It is beneath human dignity to lose one’s individuality and become a mere cog in the machine” (Mahatma Gandhi).

            “Amen brother!” is my response to Gandhi’s statement. For, with so many people experiencing homelessness, people become nothing more than numbers… Who is moved in? Who is moved out? How fast? Have we done our required duty so that we can move onto the next case? It is a systemic issue that converts our people to numbers. Not only one person can break the chain. As Bai Ki-moon states, “Our work for human dignity if often lonely, and almost always an uphill climb. At times, our efforts are misunderstood, and we are mistaken for the enemy.” So, what can individuals do to have any impact as we fight against the current structure? I’ve found that if I come to work with the intention of being present to each and every resident daily that it not only creates a relationship, but from there I can share in the one human journey. At this point it doesn’t change the whole system, but I’m hoping that I do some good each day.  I don’t have answers for how to change the system, but I grapple with it consistently. As a start, I urge people to see the humanity in those around them - feeling is truth - and no one wants to feel as a cog in the machine. These people are our friends, family, and neighbors and we cannot let ourselves stoop to approving of them becoming numbers in a system!

Niki and Dominican Sister Gertrude Simpson OP of her Bronx community

If you can dream, you can do it

 DV  Julia Butts

Our latest blog post comes from Julia Butts.

Julia serves at the St. Francis Center, a center that supports low-income families in Redwood City California. Julia works as a teacher and shares her processing of an experience with one of her students.

If you can dream it, you can do it

The goal of the activity was to have the children think about where they had been and where they want to go by creating a timeline of their past, present, and ideal future. We were learning about advocacy, and I wanted them to learn that self-advocacy is a critical tool for achieving our goals. They started scribbling away on their pieces of paper…all but one of them. I asked why he wasn’t writing.

“I can’t do this.”

Why?

“It’s too hard. The past is too hard to think about. It’s too bad.”

Okay, then focus on the future. What do you want to do in the future?

“Restart.”

What do you mean?

“I want to get a restart on the past.”

Okay, well if you can’t go back in time, but have to go forward, what do you want to do? What do you want to see? What are your dreams?

“I don’t know.”

Do you want to graduate high school?

He shrugged.

Do you want to graduate college?

He shrugged.

Do you want to have a cool car some day?

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. I don’t have any dreams. I just want to restart.”

The conversation continued this way, and I started to feel at a loss for words. Looking into his eyes he just seemed so downtrodden, pessimistic, and dreamless.  Fortunately the program director entered the classroom, and I called in his aid while I proceeded to check on the other students. My heart, however, remained heavy.

Theoretically, I knew there were kids in the world whose situations were dire and whose pasts were difficult to such a degree that they struggled to believe that they were loved and capable and that the future could be bright.  I knew there were kids who struggled to dream any dream at all, be it big or small.  I knew this. But I had never seen it, in person, so starkly. Traveling the world, having a family, getting a cool job like being a professional ballerina or the president—dreams like those came so easily to me as a child, and to every child I’d previously met.

How do you inspire a child, only eleven or twelve years old, to work hard, to value themselves, to simply be happy, if they cannot be motivated by dreams? How do you show them that despite the undeniable influence of the past, it is not a complete determinant of their future? How do you help them to see their past as an asset that brings them strength and wisdom? How do you help a child dream?

The adage goes, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” I never really thought about what happens if you can’t even dream it.

Thinking about this experience, I remembered a poem by Langston Hughes that was featured in the play A Raisin in the Sun, which I read when I myself was back in middle school.  It’s called “Harlem,” and it goes:

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?”

But I’m hopeful. For every child I meet in my work who struggles to dream, I meet many dozens more whose dreams are vivid and beautiful despite their struggles. For every child I meet who struggles to dream, I have a coworker working dutifully to help that child generate the optimism necessary for dreams. Without a doubt, I have hope for a world in which dreaming comes naturally for every child.  What a wonderful world it would be.  :)