has eight full-time staff. When staff works together, they provide great services and programs. However, we cannot do the work alone. Volunteers have joined in many endeavors over the last 30 years. In 2011, more than 200 people of all ages volunteered in youth programs, job readiness, in City Greens, the community garden and doing much needed work projects.
Some volunteers have become committed to the mission. Jeanne volunteered for 17 years until she passed away. Sylvia has spent more than 20 years greeting neighbors on Tuesdays. Mary and the ladies of Reading Club tutor children every week. Mary and Dot started an effort to help teens prepare for college. Jack has provided pro bono legal advice since 2001. Bob, Mary Alice and Tony organize trivia night and Bob makes the golf tournament a success.
Tony exemplifies volunteering at Midtown. He is on his second round as Midtown’s board chair. He spends Thursdays at the cash register of City Greens Market and comes on Saturdays to help in City Greens garden. Tony has developed the advisory board into a group of hands-on volunteers who are connected to those we serve. Tony and Bob have been involved with Midtown for more than 20 years.
As Midtown celebrates 30 years of service in 2012, we thank all those who have given their time to meeting and helping those we serve. Some may have left, but they are always remembered with much gratitude.
Freedom…is authenticity, truthfulness, fidelity to the pursuit of truth and to truth when found…in its intimately Christian sense, however, freedom has a higher meaning than all this. Freedom in the deepest experience of it is love.
To be free is to be-for-others, an impulse to the service of others.
John Courtney Murray
STUDENTS
I supervised nearly two hundred social work students from St. Louis and Washington Universities, from University of Missouri—St. Louis and Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois. I taught students who were becoming ministers, including church deacons, sisters and lay people. We had younger students from high school nearly every year. Younger students came for weeks to fulfill school requirements. College students spent one or two semesters with us.
The students brought energy, new thoughts and willingness to their work. They were treated as any other staff or volunteers. They learned the same things we were all learning—about poverty and the treatment of African Americans in our society. They worked in City Greens Market and with the women’s groups. They helped people with family assistance and did home visits. They worked with children in after school and teen clubs.
We had students from all over the Midwest who were attending college in St. Louis. The students had varied backgrounds. Early on, a Jewish woman wanted to do her practicum. I asked her if the religious affiliation would matter. I told her it didn’t matter to me. She was kind and generous, did well, and continued to hear about and support the agency throughout her career.
Another student was President of the Gay Student Alliance at St. Louis University. He was interested in our setting. I talked to him about our work and he told me about his experiences. When we talked about him coming to MIDTOWN, I reminded him a primary value in social work was “putting the client first”. I told him he was not doing his practicum with us to promote his work at SLU. I said if anyone asked him about a button he might be wearing, or what he did at SLU, he would be free to answer. He did well in the practicum and there were no issues between him and our neighbors.
Many students came from other countries. One student was a native Formosan. Her people were treated as second class citizens by the Chinese who had come from the mainland and declared the island Taiwan. She came to learn how to serve her fellow Formosans and help her people fight oppression. Another student came from Japan. He was a joy to have as a student. He was very friendly, open and gentle. His English wasn’t the best but I told him people would listen to him and he had to listen carefully to our neighbors. In all, everything went well for him.
My favorite student came from The People’s Republic of China. She was a police officer in her small town. Her work involved teenagers in trouble with the law, visiting them and their families. When she told me, she was a police officer from China, I was concerned. She came to MIDTOWN for her practicum and was open to everything. She proved, by her personality and openness, that her job must have been very different from police in America. She “loved” her experience. Here are some thoughts she wrote to me after she left:
I will always remember my practicum experience at MIDTOWN. MIDTOWN is a place full of care, hope and love. MIDTOWN opened the door for me to understand social work in practice. As time goes on you get more and more of a sense of “mini-collectivism”. …everybody is welcomed. The door is open, the programs are open, the staff respect and cooperate with each other, and clients are respected and get involved in all kinds of activities. The relationship between staff and clients is so active, positive and close.
…from the experience of MIDTOWN, you are learning that for a social worker, the most important thing is not only to apply professional knowledge and skills, but also to work with happiness and hope…everybody’s hard work lets you know that social work might be the most ordinary work but most meaningful in the world.
OUR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
I worked long enough to celebrate our 25- and 30-year anniversaries and just missed the 35th. We grew from a staff of one in 1990 to 14 staff and hundreds of volunteers. Our budget increased from $35,000 to nearly 1 million dollars in 2016. Our programs expanded from youth services and family assistance to programs serving the whole family. Community involvement began as neighbors connected more fully and was evident in City Greens Market, the community garden and Voices of Women Development Corporation. The following article, from The NEIGHBOR, summarizes what we knew by our 25thanniversary and what we hoped to accomplish in the next 25 years.
The NEIGHBOR 25 YEARS OF SERVING OUR NEIGHBORS February 2007
MIDTOWN has been serving neighborhood families for more than 25 years. After such time, staff has witnessed children in the community growing up healthy and starting their own families. They have rejoiced and cried with families at births and deaths, college graduations, new jobs, new homes and new lives. In the tradition of the settlement house, staff has tried to respond to the needs of our neighbors with creative, timely and cutting-edge approaches to their concerns. As we celebrate 25 years, we look forward too many more with our neighbors. What will the services be and what upcoming issues may affect our neighbors? Here are some possible concerns!
Housing, affordable to families living under the federal poverty guidelines, is not being created to meet current needs. Housing affordable for those at 30% of the median income is quickly being replaced by housing affordable to families at 60% of median or higher. In other words, lower income families would need to at least double their income to afford housing currently being built. Families are being forced out of their neighborhoods by such redevelopment.
Urban schools and education continue to decline, producing generation after generation unable to do basic math and read the newspaper. Lack of jobs will lead to more hopelessness and intergenerational poverty. Churches still do not welcome the poor! The underclass this continues to build will become more permanently outside the mainstream.
MIDTOWN serves its neighbors whatever their concerns. The bottom line is we must continue to meet people where they are and be hopeful. We must seek positive opportunities which are uplifting even as people are more oppressed. This happens only as neighbors meet each other and learn to know and trust. We may then work together to build peaceful communities no matter our race or economic status.
OUR
