“At some point, I called up my mom and said, ‘There’s got to be a way to pay it forward as a job,’” she said.

After some research, Borghard found her calling in social work and then found Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service. She earned her master’s in social work last year, and today she works as a clinician serving domestic violence survivors.

But she still volunteers practically every day giving out clothing and toiletries to the homeless. She said she never leaves home without something to give away, most of it stashed in a backpack that she calls her “Mary Poppins bag.”

Facing Uncertainty

Several years back, Borghard was in need of help herself. She was in a car accident while in high school, and she experienced repeated seizures and short-term memory loss. Eventually, she underwent brain surgery to install a NeuroPace, which she described as a “pacemaker for the brain.” All the while, her parents, classmates, high school teachers, and college professors helped see her through her recovery. To her mind they paid it forward; now it was her turn.

Much to the consternation of her neurologist, Borghard traveled overseas through an exchange program to teach inner city students living on the outskirts of Marseille, France.

“I said, ‘Isn’t this what the [neurological]  device is for? I’m going to live my life and make a difference,’” she said.

Finding Purpose

When she returned to New York City and began classes at Fordham, she joined the Guardian Angels, a volunteer anti-crime activist group. Through the group, she began to reach out to the many homeless men and women throughout the city, offering donated clothes, toiletries, and conversation. “Most homeless people just want someone to recognize them and talk to them.”

Although her friends were concerned about her safety, she said that as a trained social worker she understands how to mitigate risk. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to be a member of the Guardian Angels. “They’ve got my back,” she said.

She said the same was true of her Fordham professors. “They were willing to let me think outside the box,” she said. “They understood that as a social worker you’re dealing with human beings; not just a textbook case.”

On Feb. 10, several Guardian Angels and a few Fordham folks joined Borghard for a clothing drive at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. The group collected gloves, hats, coats, and toiletries. To organize the event, Borghard teamed up with FCLC sophomore Cat Fernando, who distributes socks to the homeless.

“They are thrilled to get basics, like lotion,” said Borghard. “These are items we take for granted, perhaps because our skin isn’t exposed to the elements all the time.”

Sharing a Memory

Although she says she doesn’t volunteer to make herself feel good, Borghard recalled a moment of giving that warmed her heart. She recently lost her father to cancer. Her mother suggested that she distribute her father’s clothes among the homeless men that she’d come to know by name.

“That felt good for my mom, and it felt pretty good for me, too,” she said. “He’d owned some really nice things.”

She gave one man her father’s sweater, and it put a big smile on his face.

“When I saw that, I got emotional and explained why his smile meant so much,” she said. “He looked at me and said, ‘I am going to do it honor.’”

Borghard wishes that everyone could share in the volunteer experience. It would change perceptions, she said.

“Just because someone doesn’t fit your perfect ideal—maybe they are not dressed well or don’t smell great—they’re still a human being. You have to ask yourself, ‘How am I going to treat them?’”

And smiles could be seen all around during a tour of the agency given by its deputy executive director, David Vincent, PhD. To even the critical observer, it would seem that the people who work at The Door like their jobs.

The job satisfaction at The Door exemplifies the findings in Vincent’s dissertation, “Commitment to Social Justice and its Influence on Job Satisfaction and Retention of Nonprofit Middle Managers.” He is graduating with a doctorate in social work from the Graduate School of Social Service(GSS).

In a survey of 38 New York-area nonprofit settlement houses, Vincent asked middle managers to rate their awareness of social justice issues and examined how that awareness affected job satisfaction. He found that when managers’ social justice sensitivity aligned with the mission of the organization, their job satisfaction was high, as was job retention.

“When the baby boomers begin to retire, there’s going to be a big gap in the managerial pipeline at nonprofits, so we need to understand what makes employees happy,” said Vincent, who teaches in the leadership track at Fordham as an adjunct professor of social work. “Middle managers are future leaders, so we need to ask how we can help them be better leaders, and what kind of professional development do they need.”

Vincent’s journey into nonprofit work began during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, when many of his friends were dying. He volunteered and worked with HIV-positive youth, and felt like he was making a difference. Vincent later moved to Boston and began working with homeless youth, for which authenticity was essential. “They have to trust you, and you have to meet them where they’re at.”

After returning to New York to work as associate executive director at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, Vincent met Sandra Turner, PhD, a GSS professor and board member at Callen-Lorde who encouraged him to pursue his doctoral degree at Fordham.

“I came here because I could go to school and still work a full-time job,” he said.

Vincent pursued his doctorate taking one or two classes at a time, motivated mainly by ideas of social justice.

Empathy has been key to his work, his research, and his life, he said. Vincent is a white man who helps lead an organization in which most employees are black or Hispanic and most clients are young people of color, so he strives to understand the challenges they face.

“When you work with underserved communities and you want to do your job well, you need to understand racism, and that it is systemic, and that those are the issues that many of your clients and many of your co-workers are dealing with,” he said. “To lead an organization, you have to ‘get’ social justice. You need to understand equity.”

His own upbringing was far from the American mainstream. He grew up in a working-class Portuguese community outside Boston, raised by first generation parents.

“We were very marginalized, so I knew what it was like to come from the lower end of the totem pole and not the dominant part that ruled society,” he said. “It’s just by the grace of God that I had wonderful, supportive parents.”

Are you interested in giving up one night of your time to help the homeless?

Fordham University’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice is recruiting students, staff and faculty to participate in the annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) count, to be held at the Rose Hill campus on Monday, Jan. 31.

The annual event attracts some 3000 volunteers citywide, who spend one night a year combing streets, subways, parks and public spaces to count the numbers of New Yorkers who live unsheltered in the city.

For the past six years, Fordham has been designated one of the volunteer training center sites for Bronx neighborhoods by the city’s Department of Homeless Services. Last year some 120 volunteers were trained at the Fordham site to participate in the count, which takes place in surrounding Bronx neighborhoods from midnight to 4 a.m. Groups travel on foot and are accompanied by New York City police patrolmen.

Information gathered on the 2011 HOPE count will be used to determine federal and state money to be allocated to New York and, more specifically, to each borough.

For more information or to volunteer, contact Caitlin Becker associate coordinator of Community Service at the Day Center or register on line.

–Janet Sassi