“Fordham students have a passion for leadership and understand the academic underpinnings of societal issues. That passion gets ignited in the classroom and continues with civic engagement in the Bronx, Manhattan, and beyond,” said Arto Woodley, Ed.D., executive director of the Center for Community Engaged Learning. “As [Irish poet William Butler] Yeats said, ‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but a lighting of a fire.’”

All volunteers bring individual expertise to their respective organizations, but Fordham College at Rose Hill seniors Marc De La Hoz and Laura Lynch said Fordham students bring something extra: a commitment to service, honed over their four years here.

De La Hoz is heading to Cameroon with the Peace Corps as a health educator. Lynch will assist teachers at underserved community schools outside of Sacramento, California, with the JVC, one of the world’s largest lay, Catholic, full-time volunteer programs. Both say they are going away to learn, as well as to help.

Lynch said her experiences in Alaska and Mississippi with Fordham’s Global Outreach, part of the Center for Community Engaged Learning, taught her a lot about how to approach helping others. At the forefront is self-awareness of her own privilege.

“When you’re working with marginalized communities, or any kind of service work, you have to be careful not to be paternalistic,” said Lynch, adding that the people she’ll be aiming to help will have plenty to teach her.

The French major said she’ll be brushing up on her Spanish over the summer before beginning her one-year stint as a teacher’s assistant at Saint Hope Charter Schools in Sacramento, a city known more for its wealth than its underserved communities.

“Everyone talks about how nice a city it is, but there’s shocking disparity, so historically underserved populations don’t benefit from that reputation,” she said, adding that it’s not unlike her experiences volunteering in the Bronx, where impoverished communities sit amidst New York’s enormous wealth.

Lynch has some experience in teaching; while at Fordham, she volunteered as a tutor at Concourse House, a transitional housing site, and at the Rose Hill Tutoring Center.

She said she’s looking forward to the JVC version of volunteering, which incorporates Ignatian values signified by four pillars: simple living, social justice, community, and spirituality. To that end, she’ll be living in a community with other JVC volunteers on a small stipend, where she’ll share dinners and experiences. Mostly, she’s looking forward to meeting her new students.

“I want to stand with these students and hear about their experience,” she said. “This is for me as much a learning experience as another year of school would be.”

De La Hoz also expressed a desire to learn from the people of Cameroon over the next two years. He’s already hunkered down on reading about the diverse country, which tends to “lean very religious and conservative,” he said, regardless of the many religions represented there. He said he’s expecting to embark on a period of listening to understand what’s needed from him. He spent years teaching sexual health as a volunteer at Peer Health Exchange in New York City, a health education program for underserved community youth. He used what he learned at Peer Health to help educate a diverse group of populations about sexual health, from sex workers in the Dominican Republic to teens at his church near his hometown of Fishkill, New York.

Each community has its own needs and each has its own way of receiving health information, he said. Bronx teens appreciate frankness, he said, “or they immediately lose interest.”

“With a sex worker, the situation is very different. In that case, it’s sitting there and letting them know you are listening to them as a person, not a sex object,” he said.

In Cameroon, he’ll need to learn the needs of a new population: those living with HIV/AIDS. He will not be dealing with clients as directly as in the past. The Peace Corps, established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy with Sargent Shriver serving as its first director, has its members work side by side with local leaders to tackle challenges.

He said his experience working with immigrants in his own community laid bare what happens when people don’t get the health information they need.

“Health education is what decides success in life,” he said. “If you’re a 14-year-old girl without real health education, you could get pregnant. A baby is a blessing, but what about that young girl’s future?”

De La Hoz’s ultimate goal will be medical school when he returns from Cameroon. For now, he’s set to listen.

“I won’t know the best way to get things done until I get there.”

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.

Both organizations place Jesuit Volunteers (JVs) for one- or two-year stints in communities that are tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges: homelessness, hunger, mental illness, crime, and poverty. This year’s Fordham JVs are serving in urban and rural areas across the United States and in six other countries around the world.

Both JVC and JVC Northwest share Fordham’s emphasis on values-centered service that focuses on solidarity over charity, making it transformative for both the communities and the individuals involved.

Since 1977, almost 250 Fordham alumni have served with JVC.

Related Stories
Learn more about the Fordham alumni who served with JVC in 2016–2017.
Read about two sisters who both went from Fordham to JVC.
Discover the connection between Fordham’s Global Outreach program and JVC.

The sisters credit Fordham’s Global Outreach (GO!) cultural immersion and service program for giving them “the chance to find and develop new passions and skills,” Meg says, “and then find ways to channel these into careers that align with our values.”

Meg was entering her sophomore year at Fordham in late August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. A few months later, she was helping with relief efforts through GO!, gutting destroyed homes to see what was salvageable. “It was really raw,” she says of the experience. “It was one of my first times working alongside social workers and people on the front lines of racial inequity and social justice.”

Meg went on to complete four more domestic and international GO! projects. She was a senior when Lily entered Fordham, and Meg urged her younger sister to look into the program for herself.

Lily participated in GO! Mississippi during her very first year at Fordham. The community-building nature of the program particularly attracted her, and she went on to complete two more projects before she graduated. “Going through those eye-opening service experiences with people with different perspectives really helps you get outside your bubble,” she says.

After graduating, Meg went on to earn a master’s degree in social work from Fordham and join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), which places volunteers in one- or two-year positions with communities tackling challenges like homelessness, hunger, mental illness, and poverty.

Though many GO! grads go on to JVC, Lily was initially wary of following in her older sister’s footsteps yet again. She applied to the program in secret, but finally decided that “it didn’t matter if I was following Meg again,” she laughs. “She makes good life choices.”

What started as volunteer positions are now full-time jobs for both sisters. Meg, a licensed clinical social worker, is a senior clinical case manager at Miriam’s Kitchen, a nonprofit that aims to end chronic homelessness in Washington, D.C. Lily is a development manager at an HIV/AIDS transitional housing facility in New Orleans called Project Lazarus.

While Meg works in a clinical setting, Lily focuses heavily on communications and event planning. “It’s cool having similar but unique perspectives on social services,” says Meg, “because we can keep each other in check, and remind each other why both sides are important.”

For Lily, one of the most rewarding aspects of her job has been seeing the difference between Fordham and some of the other volunteer groups that assist at Project Lazarus. Fordham’s students are “not just people who sign up for a trip to New Orleans,” she says. “They make a conscious commitment to service. It makes me really proud.”

That distinction is also one of the reasons Meg is excited to speak at this year’s GO! Gala. The timing is particularly poignant for her. In early March her mentor Joseph Currie, S.J., JES ’61, GSAS ’63, former associate vice president for mission and ministry at Fordham and the speaker at last year’s gala, died suddenly.

“He was a chaperone on my first GO! project to New Orleans and encouraged me to apply,” Meg says. “I’m lucky he called to give me tips on my speech before he passed, so I got the opportunity to show him my gratitude for everything.”

It was that first trip that got Meg interested in social work, and that put both her and Lily on the path they’re on today.

“You can’t forget or unsee the realities of systemic injustices, privileges, and oppression that you’re exposed to,” Meg says. “We both chose to build on what bothered us most. It certainly struck a chord with me. It tied into my faith and also into what feels right for me in giving back and fitting into this world.”

Through the two organizations, these alumni have been placed in one- to two-year positions in nonprofit and community resource organizations like schools, faith-based centers, food banks, and homeless shelters, where they work directly with the local population to address myriad social, educational, and environmental concerns. It’s this immediacy that past Fordham volunteers say creates such a strong bond between Jesuit Volunteers (JVs) and the local community.

“Our JVs are fully committed to living intentionally and authentically in relationship with those on the margins of society,” says Tim Shriver, president of JVC.

Each year, members of the Fordham community complete more than 1 million hours of volunteer work in New York City and throughout the world—a commitment recognized earlier this year by Washington Monthly, which ranked the University No. 28 in the country in service, educating students who give back to society. Besides JVC, Fordham alumni are also strongly represented in the Peace Corps, with 15 alumni currently serving worldwide and a total of 446 having served in the Corps since it was founded in 1961.

The alumni now serving as Jesuit Volunteers majored in various subjects at Fordham, including mathematics, English, psychology, environmental policy, philosophy, and humanitarian studies. But despite their diverse interests, they all share the same drive for creating positive change.

Since 1977, 220 Fordham alumni have served with JVC. Here is a complete list of Fordham graduates who are beginning their service as Jesuit Volunteers this year:

Jesuit Volunteer Corps
Deborah Adewale, FCLC ’15, St. Francis Mission, St. Francis, South Dakota
Anna Teresa (Tessa) Bloechl, FCRH ’16, St. Peter Claver High School, Dodoma, Tanzania
Chris Boland, FCRH ’16, St. Matthew Catholic School, Phoenix, Arizona
Julia Casey, FCRH ’16, South Bay Community Services, San Diego, California
Sarah Champlin, FCRH ’16, Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School, Camden, New Jersey
Clare Deck, FCRH ’16, Casa Marianella, Austin, Texas
Katelyn (Kate) Dooley, FCRH ’16, Catholic Charities Community Services, Phoenix, Arizona
Anthony (AJ) Golio, FCRH ’16, Harry Tompson Center, New Orleans, Louisiana
Kathryn (Grace) Hulseman, FCRH ’16, Hand in Hand Ministries, Belize City, Belize
Shannon Marcoux, FCRH ’16, Xavier High School, Chuuk-Xavier, Micronesia
Madeline Ping, FCRH ’16, St. John the Evangelist Catholic School, Tucson, Arizona
Matt Rogacki, FCRH ’16, My Friend’s Place, Los Angeles, California
Gianna Sciangula, FCLC ’15, Link Community Charter School, Newark, New Jersey

Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest
Carolyn Ambrosich, FCRH ’16, Second Harvest, Spokane, Washington
Elaine (Laney) Danielczyk, FCRH ’16, Low Income Housing Institute/Urban Rest Stop, Seattle, Washington
Mark Espina, FCRH ’16, Catholic Charities of Spokane, Spokane, Washington
Cara McClane, FCRH ’16, Catholic Community Services, Tacoma, Washington
Alyssa Melendez, FCRH ’16, Gorge Grown Food Network, Hood River, Oregon
Emily Tormey, FCRH ’16, Recovery Café, Seattle, Washington

—Emily Mendez