Promoting Social Justice: A Career Path - Personal Statement Example

Personal ment My experiences and background will contribute immensely to my capa to work well with persons from all diversities; firstly, I come from a broken family with nine brothers and six sisters and a mother who was ever on drugs all through my child hood years. My siblings and I had so little that we never really enjoyed fine things in life and there was no one to take care of us but ourselves; nonetheless, families like ours were common in my neighbourhood. In this respect, our community was a blend of people from diverse populations based on race and cultural backgrounds, incapacity, social or economic status; I also grew up amongst consumers of social/mental health services, the LGBTQ community and precisely groups with social service requirements, for instance the Latino and African American men. I was lucky because my father took me away from that environment when I was still young and gave me a better life while my other brothers and sisters did not have anyone to run to for help and no one ever came for them. Consequently, they all dropped out of school with my sisters turning into strippers and my brothers selling drugs; up to this day, my siblings are always in and out of jail and I have already lost two brothers to street life and one of my sisters who committed suicide. These early experiences from my childhood and family background predisposed me to people from diverse populations at an early age since I lived among them as one of them in the community; I will be able to work effectively with all these people in my social work since I have great reverence for multiplicity of beliefs, traditions, customs, and lifestyles. Apart from my upbringing, my working experiences have also brought me in contact with people from diverse populations; for instance, while volunteering at the Richmond Bay area Rescue Mission for two years, I worked with diverse populations of women and children who have experienced many life-changing situations. At the Zion Tabernacle Food Program, I used to take donation food boxes to low income families and through my school’s “Discovering the Realty of our Community Project” (DRCP), I participated in community work, championing for the rights of the less fortunate children in the community. Having had these early rich encounters with people from these diverse populations, I do not think I may have any problems dealing with them, particularly because I understand them and I am well versed with the right approaches of handling these different groups of people in the community. Currently, I work with the Community Housing Partnership in San Francisco, CA United States as a Tenant Service Counsellor, where I am serving diverse tenant populations, gaining experience on dealing with ageism, homophobia, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression in the community. I also provide services to homeless individuals, those struggling with substance use or abuse, as well as those with mental health issues and various forms of disability statuses; part of my work entails the research and outreach local community resources. In my line of work, I provide effective services to these diverse tenant populations, working with discretion and in confidence with employee/client information; I manage the different cases I encounter through crisis intervention, conflict resolution, and counselling. I organize the diverse groups through group facilitation and group development schemes and I provide services from a harm reduction model besides conducting Intake/Exit assessments. In addition to that, I also ensure appropriate contract reporting, data collection, record keeping, and conduct chart review, besides coordinating housing retention plans for the diverse oppressed populations in the community that I serve; these rich experiences will be a great advantage to my ability to work effectively with people from diverse populations. According to my understanding, social justice refers to fair-mindedness and mutual responsibility in society, which ensures that individuals irrespective of their ethnicities, gender, socio-economic backgrounds, race, religion, among other factors, are treated equally without any sort of discrimination, so that they can live to their full potential. Social justice is the only way to ensure that the diverse populations in society are treated fairly on equal basis without discrimination that often results to the unfair treatment of some minority groups by the dominant and powerful groups. For social justice to prevail there should be equality and mutual responsibility in society, with all the members of society being responsible for one another, ensuring that everyone has the same likelihoods to prosper in life. Redeployment of opportunities such as access to education, health, as well as jobs in the society promotes equal growth and development for all the members of society, thereby leading to social equality while eliminating all sorts of inequalities accordingly. I want to promote social justice by ensuring that everyone has the chance of succeeding in life by contributing towards social equality through my social work; I will try to provide life-counselling services to the oppressed and marginalized groups in society to give them hope for a better future. I want to become a model of success that others can model towards their own success, besides linking individuals to opportunities for growth and development; for instance, I want to provide individuals with alternative forms of living to encourage then to switch from their usual indecent ways of life that involves drugs and crime on the streets. I will also ensure that these individuals acquire education so that they can be empowered to succeed in life rather than simply remaining marginalized throughout their lives due to lack of opportunities for growth and advancement. My earlier experiences while growing up in a broken family and in tough neighborhood, the difficult life-experiences that my siblings have been subjected to, as well as my working with oppressed people from diverse populations are among some of the factors that have shaped my interest in advancing social justice. I want to help bring individuals out of their difficult situations that often force them to commit crimes thereby helping to keep them out of jail while giving them a new outlook on life; with a positive outlook towards life, individuals can hope to have a brighter future. I want to help establish a group home and a transitional program that can provide individuals out of the group home with the assistance they need to be successful instead of going back to their old environment where they are more likely to repeat their past crimes that put them in the criminal system in the first place. The career pathway that I would love to take with my Social work involves working with children in the Juvenile justice system; I want to help these children around the community to have a better life and I strongly hope that I can help them get a second chance in life. I have a strong conviction that some children do not have the right kind of assistance they need to be successful in life, and not having a second chance to make things right may be a root cause to all of their problems, and the reason why they are committing crimes. Children in the Juvenile Justice System often believe that they have been trapped in the life styles that they live and there is nothing else they can do about it. However, I want to show these children that there is another way to live life, and that they do not have to continue down the road that they are trudging on currently. I want to able provide them with the tools that they need to make it this world, even if it is getting them in the right state of mind, finding them a new living situation or getting them to school so they can make something of themselves. Read More