Wishing On A Thousand Cranes: One Spring at the Upper Valley Haven
Kaite Yang, Class of 2009
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleagured by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
W.B Auden, from “September 1, 1939”
I first heard about the Upper Valley Haven through an anthropology methods course taught by Professor Hoyt Alverson. Professor Alverson focused his students’ ethnography projects toward observing and participating in the ways of life in the Upper Valley’s impoverished communities. I suspected that an underlying reason for these projects was to bring Dartmouth students to the center of the region’s struggles. Hopefully, it would jar us out of our comfort zones on campus and inspire us to serve with all the capacities of some stellar education. We visited the Haven on a brilliantly sunny autumn afternoon. Tom Ketteridge, the managing director, took us on a tour of the facility, focusing on the three dominant features of the Haven: The Family Shelter, Homework Club, and Food Shelf. We learned that the Haven is unique in that it focuses solely on helping homeless families get back on their feet to find permanent housing and sustainable vocations. It operates from the understanding of these individuals as part of a family unit and in need of help in navigating through the world. That afternoon, Tom specifically elaborated on the importance of the education department at the Haven as a main factor of change in the lives of impoverished individuals. He emphasized that the Haven provides activities, tutoring, consistent support to former and current shelter kids to create hope through enrichment and opportunities. Even though I decided to study the elderly poor at Roger’s House, Tom’s words on reaching out to children remained in my mind. Of course, I did not know that a simple visit with an anthropology course would lead me to intern for a term at the Haven, where what I witnessed, learned, and accomplished will inevitably reverberate through the rest of my life.
I returned from my fieldwork at Roger’s House with an understanding of ethnography as a discipline of empathy. Specifically, it involves caring enough about a group of people to try and pursue a working knowledge of their way of life. And that is precisely why I love anthropology! Working with the elderly poor inspired me to ask how I can serve the less fortunate in the opposite age spectrum. While this was turning in the back of my mind, I wanted desperately to intern with the Dartmouth Partners in Community Service program. It sounded like the most inspired use of a Dartmouth term, with amazing support and an extended period of direct work. I knew that I wanted to work in the Upper Valley because I felt Dartmouth College to be my home. Hence, as a student living here, I wanted to give back faithfully to the place that became my “heartland” and home with just my first look at its stately pines and granite hills. Considering my interests and abilities in arts, crafts, and literacy in some cultures, I wanted to use them to help with the Haven’s mission of childhood enrichment. I immediately contacted Eva Langlois, the director of Education at the Haven and found that we were extremely like-minded in our interests in art and cultural enrichment. I knew that at the Haven I could both learn and give a great amount. Even though I was calling from my study-abroad host family in New Zealand and Eva had never met me before, she made a leap of faith and accepted my offer to volunteer full-time with the Women’s Group and Homework Club.
Upon arriving at the Haven, I was quite shy about how I ought to serve. I entered with a very limited knowledge of the Haven’s culture of residents, programs, and staff. As a general expectation, I wanted to learn what it was like to operate on the frontline of poverty, especially with the Haven’s unique focus on childhood mentoring and enrichment. I hoped to keep my eyes open, work hard, and carefully observe the dynamics of what happened within the groups in which I worked. Although I had the opportunity to serve in the diverse areas of the Food Shelf, Tom Ketteridge’s secretary office, and the Development Office, my consistent workspaces at the Haven were in childcare, artistic enrichment, and mentoring in the Women’s Group and the Homework Club. And later within Homework Club, there arose what I called the Thousand Paper Cranes Project to send one Haven teenager on a journey of her dreams.
During the winter, Eva introduced me to aspects of working with the Homework Club and Women’s Group. Upon arriving at the Haven, I was only aware of helping in these two structured activities. However, I quickly discovered that within Homework Club and Women’s Group, much of the interaction called for flexibility and just simply following the train of conversation and daily concerns of the participants. Every single day was incredibly different; I needed to be prepared to respond to anything that could happen at the shelter. And this was difficult to get used to. I expected to receive some set tasks that I would complete, but instead I found myself having to rapidly adjust to the current conditions and struggles of different people. I found that it was an entirely different dynamic to work with adult women and with the Haven’s children. Just as Homework Club provides peer support, mentoring, and enrichment for youth, Women’s Group operates as a safe network and meeting place where former and current shelter guests and at-risk women in the community may gather to relax, chat, and learn a craft. The group meets twice a week in the mornings and the Haven provides childcare for the mothers so they can get a chance to relax and interact with one another. There is always a hands-on activity provided during these mornings. On the first day I came to the Haven to become acquainted with the staff and programs, Women’s Group was hard at work on a project to create tote bags out of upholstery samples donated from an upscale furniture scale. The women sat around the large tables in the classroom cutting up squares and piecing together colorful fabric collages. There was a murmur of several conversations –questions about how to sew a certain line, chatter about kids and frustrations with schools, and inquiries about where the scissors were and so on. All the women were quite excited to make a functional carry-all bag, and ideas were drawn up to make some totes for their daughters. Here, the staff and a couple of community volunteers mingled with the women from the shelter, engaging in the same conversations and asking for second opinions on colors and patterns. Throughout my spring at the Haven, the Women’s Group made tote bags, knitted and crocheted, participated in a storytelling activity, fashioned beaded jewelry, cooked as a team with a gourmet chef, and listened to several workshops on childhood development. I especially treasured the first conversations around coffee in the morning. I would arrive in the kitchen to put on the coffee du jour and chat with Helen about her cat and her amazingly beautiful knitted sweaters.
The women who have moved out of the Haven continued to experience consistency and help from Haven staff. One lady, a mother of two girls and a former Haven resident, experienced huge emotional and financial difficulties surrounding the breakup of her marriage in the middle of my term at the Haven. During this difficult time, she received understanding and practical support from Eva and her former shelter advocate. At the same time, former women of the shelter would empathize and engage currently homeless mothers. A wonderful thing I observed from Women’s Group was that formerly homeless women would give advice, support, and empathy for current shelter guests. Eva expressed this as “having been there” and knowing what it is like to live at the Haven and then get back into the world. This demonstrates an essential dynamic of the Haven’s strategy that I witnessed this spring: it extends a support network for impoverished families that includes many resources in the community, from the formerly homeless to child development experts. One dominant theme that I extracted from William Shipler’s book, The Working Poor, was that impoverished individuals seldom possess the extensive ability to network and draw support from disparate areas of the community. In a maze of bureaucracy, bills, and paperwork –and all the while handling a tiring job and family –it can be painfully difficult to keep everything in balance. The Haven’s staff certainly seeks to address this by helping to tie together all the elements of financial and social stability. Support networks are available and consistent, with shelter advocates guiding an understanding of financial strategies and policies.
In the middle of the term, my role in Women’s Group shifted from participating in group activities to providing childcare. For the two hours of the meeting, I would watch over and play with children of the mothers who came to Women’s Group. Most of these children were living at the Haven. This gave mothers a chance to unwind and get to know other mothers without the distractions of childrearing immediately around them. One of my most memorable experiences at the Haven involved seven children during Women’s Group, ranging in age from infant to second grade, all in the same room for two hours. It felt like ten hours. Arguments over toys and snacks flared up every fifteen minutes, it seemed. I was the only one on childcare duty that day. In some more difficult moments, I wanted to throw my arms in the air and cry with all the other kids. I laughed to myself at how absurdly comical it was for me to hold a crying baby in one arm and settle a dispute over a truck while trying to pour apple juice into paper cups. At the same time, many of these children had experienced stress, trauma, developmental disorders, and social and learning difficulties. Amazingly, this approximates the experiences of Women’s Group mothers every single day. Many are mothers of two, three, and four young children. Even though I had extensive experience in childcare with my own baby sister and as a counselor or camps and church groups, it was an entirely different and challenging time to be with these children at the Haven. My weeks of childcare for Women’s Group certainly shed light on the daily childrearing challenges facing many impoverished mothers and after this I viewed their struggles with great respect.
The bulk of my service at the Haven revolved around the Homework Club, which met from Monday to Thursday in the afternoon. Eva first oriented me to all the preparations surrounding “snack time,” the important social half-hour of Homework Club. This was no ordinary potato-chip and cookies from the bag sort of snack-time. Everything offered to the children is healthy, substantial, and fresh. Eva, Christine –the Children’s Advocate at the Haven, and myself started preparing abundant fruit salads, veggie platters, and an “entrée.” The special entrée could be vegetable stir-fry, fruit and yogurt parfaits, grilled cheese on English muffins, homemade pizza, and anything else that Eva creatively planned and cooked. The high school kids would arrive in the middle of preparations and sit on the stools in front of the kitchen’s serving window and chat about teachers, games, and projects. I especially enjoyed afternoons mixing orange juice and lemonade while the highschoolers explained the intricate details of an online game they all fell in love with that spring. The kids were amazingly receptive to all kinds of ethnic and rarer foods, like couscous, daikon radish, jicama, and sushi. Since Eva loved to provide cultural enrichment through ethnic foods, I made Chinese coconut and almond milk jello, sesame stir-fry bok-choy, and carrots julienne sautéed in soy sauce for snack entrees. I learned that snack-time at the Haven is meant to be an unwinding break to relax from the day’s stress. But it is also a social time where the children can mingle and practice skills to deal with differences and make friends in a safe environment. I witnessed older and more experienced kids, who had been in the Homework Club for years, help orient younger children to the manners and conduct encouraged in Homework Club. I felt that the consistency, continuity, and creativity shown to children on these afternoons are the hallmarks of what makes the Homework Club a safe and intellectually stimulating place to be.
Although I knew that Homework Club would be a big part of my Haven work, I had no idea of the massive fundraising project that would arise on behalf of one of the youth. Over the years, the Homework Club has been successful in encouraging participants to apply for academic programs to engage special interests outside of school. In this, the staff provides help in getting through the paperwork and requirements of admissions that the parents are often unable to help with. On one of my first days at the Haven, Eva told me excitedly about how she was helping Hannah, who used to live in the Haven, gather an application together to travel to Japan on the prestigious Outbound Ambassadors Program with World Learning. She would journey with a group of high school students to Japan, where Hannah would live with a host family and participate in workshops teaching Japanese culture, art forms, and language. Eva explained that Hannah had always loved Japanese anime and was very interested in learning about the language and culture. Hannah wrote the extensive application essays by herself, while Eva helped with the more logistical aspects of obtaining a passport and getting the medical check-up and vaccinations scheduled. Eva hinted that if Hannah were accepted, my job would be at the frontline of raising financial aid for this trip.