Hi, I am Melissa Pietrkiewicz.
I am part of the alumni class of 2002 at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work.
Right now, I am employed by Erie 2 Boces Maple Academy, which is an alternative education program.
We have middle schoolers to high schoolers.
Partners in Kind is a community group, and I use the word group loosely because we’re
a movement, and ultimately, we started as a Facebook group and what was happening was
that, just like social workers everybody has something that they specialize in, everybody
has a gift to give, and not everybody has money.
Maybe there are people in our group that are a stay at home mom, and they have the time
to go hang flyers for us.
You know, and so what I’m trying to get away from is that everyone thinks that when
we give we have to pay and we have to buy, and what giving needs to be more of is coming
together as a community and letting people see that we are the change, and walking the
walk and talking the talk at the same time.
A couple of the projects that we’ve done so far are we collected feminine hygiene products.
Chautauqua county has a very large homeless and transient population that walks the creek
in the summertime, and so we wanted to make sure that during that time of the month these
women were given the means to menstruate with dignity.
Which is an issue that not a lot of people are paying attention to.
It is also no question that there is an opioid crisis, and what we’re taking a look at
is the kids that are being affected by that.
The kids that are being pulled out of these homes and they can’t bring anything with
them because their bedroom had a meth lab underneath it.
And that’s not okay in my book, not as a social worker, not as a mom, not as a woman,
not as a human being.
So, our June project we looked to our community to do a drive where we did book bags, and
then we filled the book bags with slippers, pajamas, hygiene products, stuffed animals,
arts and crafts activities, so that when you have a child who is pulled from this circumstance
when they’re brought to a foster home or brought to someone for a safety plan they
have something that feels like home to them still.
We do a lot of things with our kids, so right now as you pulled in you saw the hats and
the gloves that are on the line.
And that’s a really easy way that makes a huge difference in our community because
there’s not a lot of public transit, so we have a lot of people that are walking and
they’re cold.
You know, if it comes between them or buying hats and gloves for their kids, they’re
going to buy them for their kids.
And so, we want to make sure that people that are out there that are struggling know that
there’s help here for them, and it keeps their pride in tact too because they’re
not signing up somewhere to get this help for their family, they can literally just
walk up to one of our food pantry boxes, or one of our diaper stashes, or one of our hats
and gloves on line and take it.
Okay, so the piece that I’m most excited about is when we’re talking about the opioid
crisis is that for our holiday giving we are doing a remember the magic event, and we’ve
opened it up to all kids who have been affected by loss.
Santa is going to pick them up in a limo, and they’re going to come back to a local
gym that is a huge community partner to us and we’re going to just have an afternoon
where things don’t have to feel so sad.
This holiday is going to be hard for a lot of area families that were hit with loss,
and we want to instill that hope again.
So, there will be presents, there’s going to be hot chocolate, and there’s just going
to be fun and giving kids an opportunity to feel like kids again.
So, some of the things that we’re trying to do here at the Academy at Maple Avenue
to make it more trauma-informed is right now we’re working with the Western New York
Food Bank, we’re trying to establish ourselves as a food bank site.
What the research says about people with trauma is that they’re activated, and you know
if someone’s activated and their fight or flight is kicking in obviously, they’re
not going to learn.
So, what we did is we kind of peeled a layer off of that, and what we’re trying to do
is meet kids where they’re at.
Making sure that they have clean clothes, we’re getting a washer and dryer.
Giving them an opportunity to shower, to wash their hair, to start fresh when they walk
in our school.
There’s a lot of community service that’s getting done through Partners in Kind in this
school, and what that’s doing is having these students feel connected to their community
because what we know so often with trauma is that it isolates people.
And the other big thing that we’re doing besides meeting the basic needs is developing
a sense of community through that service and having our students be proud of where
they come from, knowing that they have an opportunity to change their life and utilizing
us as a tool to get them there.
The other big part of that is that they’re sharing their stories, and that we’re not
talking to them like victims, we’re empowering them to be survivors, and creating opportunities
for them to share and hopefully inspire some of our younger kids, who are going through
some of the same things that they are and showing them I can get through this, you can
get through this too, and I’m going to help you.
Social work at times can feel that we’re very confined to our job, and our roles and
the regulations and the policies, and the beautiful thing that I’m seeing most in
my life with a MSW, is that you can do anything with it.
You know, take those opportunities to step outside your comfort zone and do things that
make you uncomfortable whether it’s going that extra mile to help a client or maybe
giving a presentation sometime, because you have a light to shine or else you wouldn’t
have been drawn to social work, and you have to shine it bright.