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Acts of Goodness & Kindness
“It’s hard to juggle work, wife, mother. But at the end of the day, it’s so rewarding. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”https://cms.touro.edu/terminalfour/page/content#
I grew up in an orthodox Jewish family. We have a large family. And can be a little crazy at times, having a large family. And it teaches you a lot about yourself and sharing and working with one another, and being there for each other when, you know, we're all going through our different things in life.
I think it helped me grow as a social worker because you have to work with a lot of different personalities, understanding that each person has a different personality, and we all bring that to the table. Right now I'm a clinical social worker at Ohel Children's Home and Family Services, and I work in the preventive care unit.
There's a tremendous amount of pain in this world, but knowing that we all have a mission to better this world and to make this world a better place can help us get through those times when we feel like we just can't do it anymore. We can make this world a better place by doing some act of goodness and kindness, it really can help us get through the process of what's going on around us in our society, because we realize that we have a mission. We're not just here in this world, you know, to do our mundane things. But everything that we do is holy, and we're helping other people. And that, I think, is what made me really want to become a social worker.
“Three years,” GSSW Class of ’12 graduate Chana Lazar told her husband. Three years until she goes back to school to pursue her doctorate, with the hopes of further researching ideal care for young adults and veterans in nursing facilities.
While doing field work for Touro, the Brooklyn-based social worker—who’s currently employed in the Preventive Care Unit of Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services—discovered this expanding, underserved demographic, one she says “is growing and seems to fall through the cracks.”
She describes a 40-year-old female patient suffering from esophageal cancer who came to the nursing home for care. But neither the woman’s sense of isolation, nor her clinical diagnosis, prevented Lazar from instilling her with hope. “Through the group work she felt empowered to stand on her own,” she remembers. “She helped me grow and gave me so much. Today she’s off the feeding tube, in remission and well on her way to gaining the independence she sought.” And Lazar is already blazing her trail to make a difference.
This is Chana Lazar’s story.
