 Reflections
"A huge part of my placement was building relationships with children. Sure, we helped them with their homework and provided fun recreational activities, but building relationships with the children was crucial if our presence was to have the most positive impact possible on their lives.
I had worked with inner-city children before, but a couple of the kids in our After School Program were particularly challenging. One child, “Nina” was a first grade girl who, when provoked, would become very verbally aggressive with other children and had very little, if any, respect for authority.
Our year together was a struggle...but, as I continued to work with her, we began to have more successes and the difficult encounters became fewer and fewer...and by the end of the year her respect for authority had improved dramatically as had her behavior in general. On my last day at Agape, many of the kids were sad to see me go. Nina,however, just wrapped her arms around me, wouldn’t let go for quite some time...and I knew that despite, and perhaps even because of, the difficulties we had experienced we had formed a true, meaningful relationship." Susan from Sheboygan, WI worked as “Randolph continuously disrupted his Sunday school class. The boy was too intelligent for his classes and nothing kept his attention. We started meeting on our own to discuss God, the big bang, how long forever is, slavery, and a few other finer points of life. He shared stories of home: abuse, death, reform school, seeing people killed for drugs. His 13 year-old-eyes have seen more than most of us ever will. I pray he will be challenged enough in school next year, maybe then he won’t drop out again.”
"One of the last cases that I worked on at the Chicago Legal Clinic was a pro bono case that my office took from a major law firm. The client was attempting to start her own business, but when she completed her zoning certification application, the city’s Zoning Board informed her that the property was licensed for residential, not commercial use. I worked on the case with an attorney for several weeks and helped the client prepare a presentation for the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). Right before my last day at the clinic, I learned that the Zoning Board had granted our client permission to open her business."
|
 |
Sara from Neodesha, KS served at the Agape Community Center in Milwaukee. She writes:
the “Christian Formation Director” for St. Martin Parish in Bluefields, Nicaragua. She writes about the education that she received during her three year commitment to Cap Corps:
Rachel from Port Washington, NY worked at a legal clinic in Chicago and tells one success story: