Cabrini Immigrant Services, New York City empowering others

November 6, 2015

Cabrini Immigrant Services, NYC

The mission of CIS-NYC is to empower immigrants, their families and their communities through education, access to essential services, civic participation and community building. They strive to work together with the immigrant community to create a more inclusive society by fostering justice, dignity and respect.

The multi-cultural and multi-lingual CIS-NYC staff members and volunteers provide a wide range of essential services, which include the following:

General Immigration, Legal and Social Services

CIS provides a broad range of culturally and linguistically appropriate services to immigrant, refugees, asylees, and their families through both supportive services and concrete assistance. Family-based immigration services include on-on-one legal consultation (free) and application assistance on issues such as family based petitions, adjustment of status, citizenship and naturalization.

The Food Pantry

The food pantry, which is open every Tuesday, has a client list of approximately 700 families, who are culturally and socio-economically diverse, are low income, and many of whom are immigrants. Some clients are disabled, some are veterans and some are homeless.

English, Citizenship, Literacy and Computer Classes

ESOL classes are taught by volunteers who are recruited through a number of volunteer programs and ESL certification courses throughout New York City. The classes are designed to meet the needs of learners at specific levels. CIS-NYC also offers individual tutoring to prepare for the citizenship test, as well as computer and literacy classes. Courses are offered in both English and Spanish and are offered free of charge (donations accepted).

The College Readiness and Angel Fund

This entity works with immigrant clients who express a desire to attend college but encounter issues such as lack of documentation, lack of funds, or a simple lack of knowledge about the college application process. The Angel Fund is a scholarship program offered by CIS-NYC to assist a small group of undocumented students with school-related costs including tuition, books, etc.

Justice for Immigrants – (JFI)

JFI is a community-led popular education and civic engagement initiative at CIS-NYC that exists to empower, educate and involve immigrant families as active agents of change regardless of their immigration status.

A Place to Learn

CIS-NYC relies heavily on the work of many quality volunteers, interns and missioners. As a ministry of the Missionary Sisters, CIS-NYC partners with the MSCs’ lay missioner program, Cabrini Mission Corps, as well as various MSW programs in the city providing a place for hands-on learning for aspiring social workers and community organizers.

We are here to create something NEW

October 22, 2015

“We are here to create something NEW”

…These are the words of MSC General Superior Sr. Barbara Staley, spoken as she offered her opening remarks at the 2015 Provincial Assembly currently in session in Florham Park, New Jersey.

Missionary Sisters and lay leaders from the Stella Maris Province were united in an Assembly for the first time with the Missionary Sisters from Mexico and Central America. In the near future, the MSCs from Mexico and Central America will join the MSCs of the Stella Maris Province in forming a new entity.

Sr. Barbara reflected, “we are living the dreams and visions of our sisters of the past. We are building the future, which we look to with hope. Sisters and brothers, we are living in the rivers of grace and mercy; a grace that comes to us through charism.”

Fittingly, as the Stella Maris Province unites with the region of Central America, the theme of the Provincial Assembly is “interculture-ality”. To explore the implications of this new entity – this new union – Dr. Arturo Chavez, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Mexican American Catholic College in San Antonio, Texas, led the Assembly in interactive exercises designed to consider the many dimensions of culture.

Taken from the work of Edward T. Hall and Eric H.F. Law, “culture is the particular way in which a human group interprets life and relates with nature, God, the world and other peoples. Culture is lived and expressed through traditions, relationships, food, music, religion, beliefs, thought patterns, myths and how we act. It is not only how we are, it is who we are. It is our history, our ethnicity, how we think about our families, who we include in our families, how we speak and when we speak, how we think about God and how we relate to God. It is how we relate to each other and how we relate to the stranger.”

Dr. Chavez asked the Assembly to consider the “Iceberg Analogy of Culture” created by Hall and Law. In doing so, sisters and laity contemplated the internal and external aspects of culture. The Assembly was invited to share in conversation about individual family heritage and traditions – how these serve to form an individual and his or her perceptions of others and of the world.

The first step in building an intercultural community, posited Dr. Chavez, is to get to know our own hearts. Being aware of our own heart, we come to a better understanding of our own power and how cultures have formed us.

One session of the Assembly focused on the way in which Cabrinian ministries are addressing the pressing issues of immigration, migration, refugees, asylum seekers and human trafficking. It is through these responses that we see how the Cabrinian charism is living and active in the world today.

Woven into the Assembly program were times for prayer and reflection each highlighting a different country present at the Assembly. Liturgies at the Assembly were offered in Spanish and English in honor of the new reality. In a further spirit of celebration, during Monday’s liturgy, Vicky Lucio renewed her commitment as a Cabrini Lay Missionary (CLM).

Nothing transcends culture like music and dancing. Therefore, no Assembly is complete without its own fiesta! With smiles and laughter, Missionary Sisters and laity shared the floor dancing to the beat of Latin, Swazi and American songs…united as one. For more photos visit: www.mothercabrini.org

Cabrini College Hosts Involvement Fair

September 17, 2015

On Thursday, September 10^th, the staffers at the Cabrini Cottage attended Cabrini College’s annual Involvement Fair. The event is focused on providing students, both incoming and veteran, with information about clubs and organizations that are available to them on campus. Our staff wanted to be sure that we maintained a presence throughout the event to welcome students and to become familiar with or be reintroduced to our MSC sponsored organizations.

As some Cabrini students are looking towards their post-graduate future, our staff was there to remind them of the opportunity to possibly volunteer with the Cabrini Mission Corps. Cabrini students were also reminded of the urgency of anti-human trafficking efforts and the awareness that is being raised through the Cabrini Action and Advocacy Coalition (CAAC).

Our staff, as well as having a presence at the fair, wanted to informally introduce the new CMC missioners to the college community – Ashley Block, Vanessa Miranda, Morgan Perry and Rachel Recolcolin.

Lastly, another of our goals was to create increasing familiarity of the Missionary Sisters as the religious sponsors of Cabrini College; to meet Sr. Christine Marie Baltas, MSC and Sr. Grace Waters, MSC whom we are blessed to have on our campus; as well to heighten awareness of the MSCs’ presence and ministries throughout the world.

Cabrini Health Nurse Volunteers in Rwanda

July 15, 2015

In February 2015, Jovie Ann Decoyna, a nurse who works at Cabrini Health, Australia left for two weeks to volunteer in Rwanda. Accompanying her on the flight was the goodwill of many within the Cabrini community who had donated toys, clothes and medical supplies.

Rwanda, a central African country, remains impoverished and deeply scarred by the civil war that began in 1990, which climaxed in a frenzied period of genocide in 1994. Jovie travelled there as part of the medical program of the Global Volunteer Network and was supported by a Cabrini clinical services grant.

Jovie worked in a health centre taking blood, performing HIV tests, giving immunization protection, dressing wounds and assisting in the maternity unit. She dewormed children in a transient centre and visited women who had been victims of domestic violence. The medical supplies Jovie brought with her provided health workers there, at least for a short while, with the means to do their work as best they could. The donated clothing was distributed to the waiting arms of those who had little to call their own and whose gratitude was immense.

Until the volunteers arrived, the children’s beds in the transient centre were alive with bed bugs. Jovie was one of the volunteers who washed blankets and sheets by hand for hours and painted the beds in preparation for a shipment of new mattresses and bedcovers. The donated toys now grace beds fit for the children and have brought joy to their lives.

Jovie was shaken by much that she saw but grateful and honoured to be able to help. She says: “During one of my dressing changes, an elderly woman came in. Her wound was almost healed but I noticed that the scar encircled the entire lower leg around the ankle. She said she sustained it during the genocide. What can you say to an elderly woman who has carried the burden of seeing the horror and atrocities of the genocide through her open wound every day for 20 years? I just went on my knees and cleaned her wound in reverent silence.”

Jovie’s work does not end in Rwanda, she volunteers weekly with Asylum Seekers.

Cabrini Mission Corps – Capturing a year of service.

June 26, 2015

A year on mission is many things. It is a year of discovery, growth, spirituality and friendship. It is about learning who you are and who you are becoming. It is about giving of oneself and serving others. It is about the transformation of hearts – your own and those of others. It is about walking with others and walking in their shoes. It is about the hope of changing the world for the better. It is about being a “bearer of the love of Christ in the world.”

Please enjoy this video that captures the essence of service with Cabrini Mission Corps.

Advocacy Day – Anti Human Trafficking

June 11, 2015

The Cabrini Action and Advocacy Coalition joined with advocates from all over Pennsylvania at the Capitol Building in Harrisburg on Tuesday, June 9^th, to visit legislators to discuss Senator Greenleaf and Senator Leach’s upcoming Safe Harbor Bill to protect minors who have been trafficked.

What does Safe Harbor do?

S.B. 851 would require law enforcement to report to the Department of Human Services any encounter with a minor who has been subject to sexual exploitation. The Department will develop and implement a state-wide protocol to deliver safe long-term housing, education, life-skills training, and counseling to the children who have been exploited. The bill would require that police be trained to identify and assist sexually exploited children. Most importantly, the bill would require that sexually exploited children be diverted from the criminal justice system to more appropriate human services.

Senator Daylin Leach (shown at podium) said, “There is no such thing as a child prostitute. There are only victims and survivors of child rape. S.B. 851 would establish a non-punitive response for juvenile sex-trafficking victims, and provide them with support to address their trauma and specialized services, which would be partially funded through enhanced penalties for traffickers, facilitators, and patrons of prostitution wherein the victim was a minor. Juveniles involved in sex-trafficking are already considered crime victims under international and federal law. Pennsylvania must advance anti-human trafficking reforms such as this legislation to protect these innocent children.”

Cabrini College Holds Forum on Faith, Climate and Health

April 23, 2015

Cabrini College lays claim to a beautiful campus forested with trees both young and old, a bustling wildlife presence, and students who call these grounds home. On Friday, April 17^th, The Wolfington Center sponsored a conference to engage concerned citizens in the practice of entering into a healthy relationship with that natural world which men and women everywhere call home. Dr. John Burke, Cabrini College Professor of Religious Studies, organized the day-long event with a series of speakers, presenters, and dialogue amongst community members.

More than fifty attendees were treated to a thought-provoking piece by Dr. Burke to begin the day. The conversation concentrated on the relationship between the Catholic faith and environmental issues in our modern world. He reviewed the different themes of Catholic engagement with these issues ranging from the work of Cardinal Turkson to different encyclicals that display the varying facets of how the Church has mostly been on the stewardship and anthropocentric side of the environmental relationship. Dr. Burke then projected the steps which these people of faith ought to take in order for the concept of “green discipleship” to become genuine practice. His challenge to the Catholic Church was to view Catholic Social Teaching through an environmental lens as inhabitants in relationship with the natural world around it, rather than in a dominating relationship over the world.

Catholic perspectives were not the only ones heard throughout the day. Renowned Rabbi Arthur Waskow sparked the room with dialogue about the earth-oriented theology of Hebrew Scriptures. Rabbi Waskow spoke of how we need to change what we name ideas, both the idea of global warming and how we understand the name of God. Rabbi Waskow suggests that we start saying that we are scorching the earth, and recommends we start using the term global scorching in order to get across the extremity of the situation. He then exhorted us to think of the name of God as the breath of life, the breath that all living things breathe and that we all breathe reciprocally from each organism to the next: the trees breathe in what we breathe out, and we breathe in what the trees breathe out. Reconsidering our understanding of the name of God, will make us reconsider our relationship to our breath, and thus what we put out into the world to breathe.

Continuing with the theme of applying green practices to all aspects of our world, the conference broke into small groups with three presentations. Dr. Carrie Nielsen, Cabrini College associate professor of Biology, shared the science of climate change is making people around the world sick. Global warming (or scorching if we abide by Rabbi Waskows suggestion) often is associated with nature and the harm we are doing to nature, or the ice caps, or the polar bears at the ice caps. However, Dr. Nielsen shows that global warming has killed, and will continue to kill people until something is done. Dr. Nielsen also gave groups time to reflect and come up with ideas to help change our stereotypical understanding of global warming to add a human element.

Chuck Marshall, joining from Central Baptist Church, led his group through the history of his church becoming a carbon neutral building and institution, the processes they went through to get to that level, and suggestions of what they could do further, and what other buildings and institutes could do in order to get to neutral emissions.

Finally, as a continuation of his larger presentation, Rabbi Arthur Waskow spoke about the application of Hebrew Scriptures in today’s ecological world, and specifically how we can allocate our money responsibly, in order to help maintain a more ecologically friendly world.

Through interfaith dialogue and a shared passion to embody genuine care for God’s creation, this gathering offered a deepened the sense of responsibility for this beautiful campus which so many people call home. This small gathering for Cabrini College is one big step forward to educating the hearts of the world around it. For as St. Francis of Assisi says, “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”