Post-Grad Volunteer Blogs Archive

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Why I Go: A Personal Vocational Discernment

– May 8, 2012Posted in: Featured Events, Post-Grad Volunteer Blogs

Melissa HollabaughA personal reflection on why participate in Post-Graduate volunteering.
By Mellissa Hollabaugh 

I am going because I am young and able, and I have no career to endanger. If not now, when?

After I get another degree? After I make some money?

I am going because I have learned to believe that everything starts at home, with me.

I am going because I want my actions to reflect my values.

I am going because if I want peace, I know I must work for justice.

I am going because if I don’t, who will?

I am going because I have innumerable questions that I want to live out.

I am going because a Spanish nun in Peru taught me to salir al encuentro para hacerme amigos
con el pobre. If I don’t know the poor by name, I have not done enough.

I am going in the name of all the poor who asked me never to forget their stories:
Silvana, Aurora, Johan, Miguel, Carmen, Walter, Juan & Esilia, Antonio & Mimi, Miguelina, Elfi, Alma, Sami, Genesis, Luchi, Orquidea, Junior, Estalin, Pedro & Kristina, Canene & Antigua, Pimpa, Boba, Carmen, Juana & Luis, Oscar, Antonio.

I am going because there are a million more stories that need to be told.

I am going because I have been blessed with an education to justice, a community of friends that
encourages me, a loving family that sustains me, and a desire to experience all the joys
and pains the world is willing to offer me.

I am going because I, too, have always wondered,
Why don’t more people stand up?

I am going for all the times I have remained embarrassingly quiet and cowardly in the face of
injustice, prejudice and ignorance.

I am going because I want to be different. I am going because Kyle Woolley once asked me:
How unusual do you want to be?

I am going because I want to test my values, and I want my actions to reflect those values.

I am going because of what Dorothy Day taught me:
The only solution to the long lonliness is love and that love comes with community.

I am going because I want to know what it’s like to have my heart broken, and then to have it
rebuilt through the presence of the divine in others.

I am going to live out my commitment to Jesuit values: to be a woman for and with others, to do and be more than what is expected, to be contemplative in action.

I am going so that I am challenged to change and grow into a better version of myself.

I am going so that I can share what I’ve witnessed with my community back home.

I am going for the many Creighton professors and mentors who have challenged and inspired me.

I am going because I want to make a preferential option for the poor.

I am going because I believe in this quote: Life begins outside your comfort zone.

I am going because I want to practice giving and receiving intangible gifts.

I am going so I can learn to practice wonder and awe for creation.

I am going because I believe in Dr. Martin Luther King’s message,
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

I am going because I want to learn to live in simplicity and solidarity.

I am going because I would rather be an instrument of peace than an apathetic graduate.

I am going because I want to learn the difference between wants and needs.

I am going in the influential footsteps of all the JPS grads that have gone before me.

I am going because it is the best reflection of Creighton running through me.

I am going so I can learn to live the Easter holiday.

I am going so I can learn to experience the life that occurs beyond a planner. For as I’ve been told,
Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.

I am going so I can paint a new picture of what an “American” can be to Latin America.

I am going for all those who cannot go, and better yet, for those who willingly choose not to.

I am going because I have to believe there is so much more to life than just this.

I am going because I have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I am going because I know there is a different kind of real world out there, and I want to meet it.

I am going now because life is short, and all we have is today.

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Creighton Alumnus Directs Medical Program in Peru

– April 12, 2012Posted in: Alumni/ae, Blogs, Featured Events, Post-Grad Volunteer Blogs

By Mark Willcox, M.D.

Having graduated from Creighton in 2003 and after spending my spring breaks with the CCSJ on service trips, I kept putting off opportunities to spend extended time working with underserved populations until I had more training.

Finally, after med school, residency, and a year as chief resident at Georgetown, I ended up finding an organization serving the rural communities in the Sacred Valley, Peru interested in starting a mobile clinic. These communities for the most part lack running water, electricity, or bathroom facilities and have an extreme poverty rate of well over 25% and a malnutrition rate of nearly 25%, in addition to several other indicators of poor health.

So, I packed up and came down here (Ollantaytambo, Cusco, Peru) in August and have been here since.

Since that time we’ve started a mobile clinic that has served almost 1,000 patients, all of whom have received free care thanks to private donations. There was so much local interest that the local government late last year dedicated its own funds to continue this work, and as of last month started its own mobile clinic which travels to similar villages we have been serving. We’ve re-evaluated our strategy with this development and aim to support their mobile clinic – which is really more like an urgent care clinic – by dedicating resources to screening tests and preventative medicine, a concept that is quite foreign here.

We have also realized that a program targeting education and community empowerment is the best manner by which we can prevent common illnesses and recognize serious ones in these communities. We’re in the process of launching a program to train community health workers in an effort to reduce maternal and infant mortality and communicable diseases and to get sick folks to medical attention sooner.

It’s bittersweet that I will be leaving Peru to pursue a cardiology fellowship this May, but Sacred Valley Health will continue to train community health workers and bring preventative care to these communities in partnership with the municipal government’s mobile clinic. I will oversee the medical direction of this program and support its fundraising and public health programming and am very excited for the potential impact we can continue to have.

Check out our website at www.sacredvalleyhealth.org, or find us on Facebook. We are not currently set up to receive short-term volunteers, although we hope eventually to set up a program with the government clinics for an interchange between interested volunteers and rural medicine. However, undergraduates or graduate students with a background in public health education or global health or who have general medicine training who are interested in long term work, please feel free to contact us.

Again, all my thanks to the work the CCSJ does for the formative programming they do to educate and provide opportunities to open minds to the injustices that exist in the world.

Mark Willcox, M.D.

Creighton Class of ’03

Board Certified Internal Medicine

Sacred Valley Health Medical Director

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Post-Grad Volunteer & Religious Life Missioning Ceremony

– April 2, 2012Posted in: Featured Events, Formerly Featured Events, Post-Grad Volunteer Blogs, Post-Graduate Volunteering, Upcoming Events

Post-Graduate Volunteer and Religious Life Missioning Ceremony

Post-Grad Volunteers 2011

New graduates at the Post-Grad Volunteer and Religious Life Missioning Ceremony in May 11, 2011. Fr. Schlegel, SJ (back left) blessed the grads for his 11th and final time since becoming President of Creighton.

Friday, May 11, 2012, 10:30 am – 11:15 am
Saint John’s Church

Join Timothy R. Lannon, S.J., President of Creighton University, Andy Alexander, S.J., Vice President for University Ministry, the Creighton Center for Service and Justice, and the Justice and Peace Studies Program in celebrating our graduates who are volunteering or entering religious life for the upcoming year. All are welcome, especially friends and family of these graduates.

The Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., Outstanding Student Award
Dr. Roger Bergman, Director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program, will present the The Ellacuría Award. The Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., Outstanding Student Award is presented jointly to a graduating Justice & Peace Studies minor or Justice & Society major by the Justice & Peace Studies Program in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, and the Creighton Center for Service & Justice, in University Ministry. As this collaboration suggests, the two selection criteria are of equal weight: excellence in the classroom and leadership in service and justice activities.

The award is named for the rector (president) of the University of Central America in El Salvador, Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría, of the Society of Jesus, who was martyred along with five brother priests in 1989. He was both a scholar and an activist, a philosopher and theologian who very publicly embodied the faith that does justice and seeks peace. He put his own intellectual talents and the resources of the UCA at the service of the vast majority of Salvadorans who suffered violence and impoverishment. He represents magnificently (and tragically) the challenging vision of Jesuit higher education.

Please RSVP to Ken Reed-Bouley, krb@creighton.edu, if you plan on attending the Post-Graduate Volunteering & Religious Life Missioning Ceremony.

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Providing Community to Maximize Potential

– January 18, 2012Posted in: Alumni/ae, Blogs, Featured Events, Formerly Featured Events, Post-Grad Volunteer Blogs

By Mary Henneberry, Winter 2011 Graduate

So…as of this moment, I’ll be living in Chicago, and working at a non-profit here in Chicago that works with mentally and physically handicapped people (from mild/high functioning individuals to profound/nonverbal, very very limited movement) in order to offer them a community of care that maximizes their potential. The job is pretty hands-on, though I’ll be working with more high-functioning adults in their daily/nightly tasks…especially with younger adults who are newer and therefore are learning what it’s like to be an independent adult. While they may have a developmental disability, the staff really tries to let them be as-independent-as-they-can-be adults (especially for these high-functioning individuals) so my job will be helping when necessary, but really facilitating the residents in learning that they can (and should) be an adult and do it on their own. Sounds simple, right?! I already know it will be a beautiful struggle :)

I officially “started” the job yesterday, but the position actually requires 4 weeks of certification and training, so that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the month. But so far, so good! So far I’ve learned that 1) the bakery is going to be dangerous for the bridesmaid dress I have to wear in July and 2) I have a lot to learn!! Please pray that I can make it through all 4 weeks/pass all the certification tests!

If you are interested in learning about what Mary is doing, feel free to email her, MaryHenneberry@creighton.edu

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Creighton Graduate Volunteers with JVC Northwest

– October 11, 2011Posted in: Alumni/ae, Post-Grad Volunteer Blogs, Uncategorized

Recent Graduates Dedicate a Year to Serving as Jesuit Volunteers

Portland, Ore. — A Creighton alumna has recently embarked on a year of full-time volunteer service with Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) Northwest:

Virginia (Ginny) Michel, New Avenues For Youth, Portland, OR

A total of 141 Jesuit Volunteers (JVs) – 28 returning for a second year – are serving in 20 locales throughout the five states of the Northwest, living in 23 JV communities. Going where the need is greatest is guiding JVC Northwest to expand into two communities this year to serve at Pretty Eagle School in St. Xavier, Montana, on the Crow Reservation and with various partner agencies in Wenatchee, Washington.

“Our JVs will be making a big impact for the people and habitats they will be serving this year; they will participate in transforming the communities where they serve and they will forever be transformed,” says Jeanne Haster, executive director for JVC Northwest.

There are two Jesuit Volunteer organizations in the United States, JVC Northwest and JVC.  Jesuit Volunteers can be found in a variety of urban and rural locations and are challenged to live simply and work for social and ecological justice in a spiritually supportive environment.

Established in 1956, JVC Northwest is an independent, non-profit organization that recruits, places and supports volunteers living in communities across the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Jesuit Volunteers serving elsewhere are part of Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which consists of five JVC regions that merged in 2009.

As a national direct grantee of the Corporation for National and Community Service, most of our volunteers receive the AmeriCorps Living Allowance and Education Award. Volunteers live in urban and rural locations in communities of four to eight volunteers.  This year, the JVs work with over 100 partner agencies across the region in many areas, involved in critical service  advocating for refugees, nursing in community clinics, teaching in schools on Native American Reservations, assisting in shelters, and organizing community garden projects, and many more important works.  Throughout their year of service, JVs focus on four core values–social and ecological justice, simple living, spirituality and community.

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