Reflection #5 This week at CASSA, my tasks included answering calls for CASSA’s COVID-19 helpline for South Asians as well as performing outreach in the community about information regarding this helpline, so it is more accessible to the south Asian community. The Covid-19 Helpline is funded by the Government of Canada and United Way Greater Toronto and managed by the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians along with partner agencies. It is part of CASSA’s Covid-19 relief initiative to help the community cope with this novel virus. The helpline provides information about health and safety during COVID-19, details on the reopening process, government benefits, and support services available to communities in English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bangla, and Punjabi. My other task for this week included helping with research for CASSA’s anti-hate toolkit, especially on ways people can reflect on their implicit bias and racism. Lastly, my task was also to come up with relevant and current social justice topics that can be discussed in CASSA’s antihate conversation series. The Anti-Hate Conversation Series is a panel-style live-stream series that aims to spread awareness on current hate-related and social justice issues by inviting speakers to provide insights into the underlying causes and next steps for these issues. In this final reflection, I will be reflecting on some challenges I faced completing some of these tasks and how I am working to resolve them. I will also be reflecting on how through these projects, CASSA has provided me opportunities to achieve my goal of gaining direct outreach experiences to build my application for a Masters of Social Work. The Covid-19 helpline is accessible to people from all around the GTA to contact for updates and aid during this pandemic, hence it is a project where I encounter many different people in the community. The challenge I faced while performing my task for this helpline, was dealing with agitated members of the community. This helpline gets a lot of calls for food help during the pandemic and every food security program has certain criteria that must be met so people can Reflection #5 register and get food aid. Many times, the people do not meet the criterias, and when I politely communicate the qualification requirements, they get frustrated because they are not able to get the help expected. This leads to these people venting their frustrations on me and all I am able to do is be apologetic since it is out of my capability to solve such problems. After such incidents occurred a few times, I felt frustrated and challenged regarding what I should be doing during such situations to assure the members of the community and to not be affected by their occasional rude behavior. The way I solved this challenge is through polite and professional communication with the members of the community by letting them know what I can do from my end. I communicated to the people that I can refer them to other similar programs or to my supervisor who has more experience solving such problems. I also communicate professionally with my supervisor if I feel uncomfortable during these situations and this open communication results in them understanding my concerns and perspective accurately and my supervisor is able to give me valuable advice to deal with these members of the community. Additionally, professional, and open communication leads to discussions with my supervisor on what support is lacking in the community during this pandemic and how to better help the community. Furthermore, the class discussion on professionalism helped me resolve my challenges successfully since I was able to highlight my concerns and professionally articulate them, by following the advice given by the guest speakers for that topic. Despite some challenges, CASSA has provided me extensive outreach opportunities that require me to directly interact with the South Asian community. These opportunities have given me valuable experiences through which I can build my resume for the Masters of Social Work, my post-graduate academic goal. The Masters of Social Work requires experience with outreach and interacting with the community directly, something which CASSA has given me a chance to gain Reflection #5 experience through the Covid-19 helpline. For example, in the helpline, I am the first person of contact that community members reach out to for aid and questions regarding the pandemic. I can listen to crucial concerns of the South Asian community and refer them to relevant resources. If there is no resource for them, I can directly discuss specific concerns with my supervisors to plan possible ways to better address the community’s concerns. Furthermore, not only am I responding when the community reaches out, but I am also actively reaching out to the community to spread awareness of various resources CASSA is providing during these unprecedented times such as information about this helpline. CASSA is constantly challenging me and encouraging me to try different ways of outreach for the different projects I am part of, for example through social media or organizing personal meetings with members of the community. These different strategies of outreach provide me a holistic set of experiences that will look very impressive for my postgraduate application in social work. Furthermore, I am given the offer to continue working for CASSA after the placement ends, which just gives me even more opportunities to continue building my outreach experiences for my post-graduate plans with this organization.
