As you likely know, the fire in the Tremont section of the Bronx on Sunday killed at least 19 people and hospitalized many more. Many tenants of the building were left homeless and without sufficient clothing, medication, and other daily needs.

The most expeditious way to get aid to survivors and the families of victims is to give to Catholic Charities, an organization that already has a sizeable footprint in the community and a low overhead, insuring that your aid goes to those in need. This is a method fully supported by Father Cecero and the Division of Mission Integration he leads.

I hope you will give generously to support the survivors of this tragic fire—the worst since the Happy Land Social Club fire not very far from campus—and in keeping those who died or are injured, and their loved ones, in your thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

“The Smyths have a long history of humanitarian action [and]a commitment to Catholic values,” the agency said in announcing that the couple, both 1985 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduates, would receive the 2019 Edward Cardinal Egan Humanitarian Award. “The two also share a commitment to sustainability and work in professions that allow them to advance progress on social and environmental causes.”

The Smyths accepted the honor on Nov. 12 at the 34th Annual Child of Peace Awards Dinner in Manhattan.

As chief financial officer of the utility company National Grid US, Margaret “Peggy” Smyth played a key role in advancing clean-energy investments in battery storage pilot programs, charging stations for electric vehicles, and renewable natural gas. She has chaired workshops to encourage other CFOs to show leadership in sustainability, including a roundtable at the United Nations last year.

Bernard “Berney” Smyth is an account executive for the construction management and general contracting company Structure Tone. He has been active in Catholic Charities and served on its board for the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut.

The Smyths are regular supporters of their alma mater. Together they created an endowed scholarship for Fordham students, and Peggy Smyth is a Fordham trustee fellow and member of the President’s Council executive committee. The two met during their first year at Fordham and felt an “instant connection,” in Berney Smyth’s words.

They married in 1987 and adopted their son Brian in 1997 and his half-brother Pierce in 2000. Both were adopted—within days of their birth—through Catholic Home Bureau, one of two organizations that later merged to form Catholic Guardian Services. For each adoption, they received a reference from Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., GSAS ’68, president of Fordham at the time.

“Everything good in our life came from Fordham,” Berney Smyth said. “We met at Fordham, and we like to think that we got the kids as a result of Father O’Hare.”

In addition to adoptions, Catholic Guardian Services provides shelter, rehabilitation, counseling, training, and other services for underserved people and families in New York, with the goal of promoting holistic well-being and self-sufficiency.

Shea, who learned Spanish in elementary school, developed a bond with his Spanish-speaking coworkers. Many of them were men from Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.

“They all worked super hard. I was just working there for a summer job, but many of the guys were working to provide for their families,” said Shea, a 2017 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate who will earn a Master of Science in marketing intelligence this year from the Gabelli School of Business. He said his personal experiences with the Bronx’s Latino community inspired his decision to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) after graduation.

For a year, Shea will serve as a family self-sufficiency case worker at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, where the population is more than 50 percent Latino. He’ll assist families and elderly clients with issues related to poverty, food insecurity, housing, and immigration.

“I wanted to do something where I could see the benefits of what I was doing,” said Shea, who chose not to pursue a “typical office job” after graduating. “I wanted something a little bit more tangible and a little bit more real.”

Shea is one of roughly 300 young adults in JVC’s global volunteering program at any given time, according to Mike Reddy, interim president of JVC.

“Jesuit Volunteers accompany poor and marginalized communities through service within agencies at the front lines of social justice,” said Reddy. “Their term of service in JVC not only benefits those communities, but it also gives our volunteers a sense of purpose, mission, and values for years to come.”

Annie David will serve with JVC for a year as an after-school coordinator and coach for Girls in the Game—a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on helping girls find their voice, confidence, and power through sports.

“It’s kind of like a safe place for girls in Chicago,” said David, who learned firsthand how sports can inspire and motivate when she joined Fordham’s women’s rugby team.

“I had never played before, but being supported by the team and learning that everyone is there to have fun and help each other, that led me to want to pass on what I’ve learned.”

David is graduating with a degree in communications from Fordham College at Rose Hill. Originally from Lynchburg, Virginia, she said that studying and living in a diverse, urban environment like New York helped her to become aware of the challenges faced by marginalized communities.

She thinks the year ahead will help her find her purpose.

As of May 2, eight other graduating seniors also plan to serve with the JVC next year: Brian Kriebel will serve at Catholic Parish Outreach in Raleigh, North Carolina; Stephanie Leo will work at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley in San Jose, California; Emily Lindo will serve with Civicorps in Oakland, California; Siobhan Loughran will serve at Promise Arizona, an immigrant- rights organization in Phoenix; Christopher Ly will serve at the Midtown Assistance Center in Atlanta; Christina Monaco will work at Preble Street, which addresses issues like homelessness, hunger, and poverty in Portland, Maine; Michelle Nista will work at Friends of the Poor in Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Kathleen Stanovick will work at Raphael House, which serves homeless and low-income families in San Francisco. Greg Rigatti, who graduated in 2016, will serve at Community & Home Supports in Detroit. And Corina Minden-Birkenmaier, a 2017 graduate, will serve as a criminal justice reform intake specialist with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.

As a volunteer helping anxious parents understand the immigration system and fight to keep their children in the United States, Rodrigo Ricxu Bacus, found that parents sometimes needed more than just information. They needed encouragement, reassurance, and hope.

“It’s a confusing system,” said Ricxu Bacus, one of a handful of Fordham Law students who volunteered to assist at information sessions sponsored by Catholic Charities in Manhattan. “I sometimes [found]myself saying, ‘This is just the process. It’s not a barrier.’ I guess it can be, but I try to reassure them: just think about the process, what you need to do, what your responsibilities are.”

Student volunteering is just one effort at Fordham to grapple with the current immigration crisis, marked by tens of thousands of vulnerable Central American children fleeing violence in their home countries for the United States, where they often seek to reunite with family.

This year 90,000 children are expected to be apprehended at the southern U.S. border, up from 7,000 or 8,000 annually just two years ago, when the numbers started to spike, said Olga Byrne, director of the New York Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Project (NYUICP) at the Feerick Center for Social Justice of Fordham Law School.

The majority of the children are trying to reach parents or relatives here, Byrne said.

“There are so many stories of family separation and reunification behind this,” she said. “It could be parents who have been living here for a decade and left behind a toddler in their home country who’s now a teenager. Parents are desperate to see their child, like any parent would be. On top of that, the kid is getting menaced by gangs who may either want to kidnap him (or) extort him—‘Oh, you have parents in the U.S.? We’re really going to go after you now because you are getting remittances sent back.’”

The NYUICP—a collaboration among the Feerick Center and other external organizations—involves research and advocacy efforts to make it easier for unaccompanied immigrant children to make their case for legal residency. (The children are given court dates after being apprehended at the border and, where possible, released to any relatives in the United States.)

Thousands of other undocumented young immigrants in the New York area are entirely alone, without support from family, and are vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers, smugglers, employers, and others, according to the Feerick Center.

The center and Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) cosponsored a panel in June on the migration crisis, and IIHA Director Brendan Cahill intends to host more—perhaps one per semester—that will point to solutions.

“By everyone’s account, this is a humanitarian crisis,” driven by gangs who are preying on the young in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, he said. “Parents are saying, ‘Take a bag and go. Get to a safer place.’”

Another Fordham event focused on the immigration crisis will take place Sept. 16, when the Center on Religion and Culture and the Center for Ethics Education cosponsor a panel discussion, “A Crisis of Conscience: What Do We Owe Immigrant Youth and Families?”

Meanwhile, Fordham law students who volunteered at Catholic Charities last year will renew their efforts this year, and hope to recruit more of their peers.

They’re helping out at a Catholic Charities legal orientation program that informs the children’s custodians about bringing the children to immigration court, helping them sign up for school, obtaining health care and other services, and protecting them from trafficking and other dangers.

While the students can’t offer legal advice, they can answer questions not addressed in the one-hour presentation, help attendees fill out forms, and provide general information and referrals.

Some are finding that school systems won’t accept the children as they’re supposed to, said Laura Wooley, a law student and the coordinator of the volunteer effort. Others might struggle with forms that aren’t available in Spanish, said Ricxu Bacus, once a child immigrant himself.
Born in the Philippines, he had to wait 10 years to join his mother in the United States after she moved here on a green card. He remembers the fear and confusion he felt as an adolescent going through the slow, bureaucratic intake.

“When you’re looking at a maze of things, at a process where you have to do 20 different steps, it’s much easier to see an obstacle than it is to see a pathway,” he said.

Why, she wondered, couldn’t clients of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York also benefit from brightly colored artwork in its facilities?

So in 2013, Bruce, the agency’s director of volunteer services, began soliciting artists’ designs for therapeutic art that could hang in its various facilities.

Artists Olivia Servais and Mackensie Leigh answered the call, and on July 17, members of Fordham’s Office of Development and University Relations (DAUR) paid a visit to Catholic Charities’ offices to help replicate their work. After tracing the outlines of the art on to square wood-and-cloth canvases, DAUR members used watercolors and sharpies to fill in the blues, reds, yellows, and greens of the collages.

Bruce said the canvases will be hung in facilities that are home to Beacon of Hope, an assisted living facility for 400 adults with severe mental illnesses; Catholic Guardian Services, which provides foster care services; and Incarnation Children’s Center, a nursing facility that provides specialized care for children and adolescents living with HIV/AIDS.

Beacon of Hope, she said, was the first to receive art, and the response was so positive that organizers at other programs began asking for pieces as well. In addition to the assembled canvases, Bruce has arranged for traditional outdoor murals to be painted on-site at the Incarnation Children’s Center.

“It’s an easy, fun way for groups to get together and contribute to the program,” she said.

For more information on how to volunteer, visithttp://www.catholiccharitiesny.org/get-involved/volunteer/.

—Patrick Verel