Tucker Foundation | Tucker Points

Lessons From My Fellowship Experience

by Natalie M. Bachir '97

As a recipient of a Tucker Fellowship last spring, I traveled to Denver, Colorado to volunteer full-time at the Volunteers of America - Brandon Center, a homeless shelter and safehouse for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse. I was eager to learn. I wanted to have a concrete sense of how advocates, lawyers and social workers were attacking the problem of domestic violence. I wanted to know what the woman who is a victim of domestic violence does when she decides that she and her children have had enough. But most of all, I wanted to work hard and make a difference.

Inevitably, my idealism was questioned. I found myself surrounded by skeptics and their pressing questions. Just how much of a difference would I be able to make? What would I be able to offer women and children from whom I had a completely disparate economic and social background?

I plunged into my work. I answered the hotline, conducted intake interviews for new residents, translated between Spanish-speaking residents and staff, and monitored at meals. I also worked on other projects: I established and taught English classes for the monolingual Spanish-speaking mothers, established and ran a reading program for the children and created an extensive resource file on educational and training opportunities available to the residents. If I had spare time, I happily went outside to the shelter playground and played tag with the children.

One afternoon, I felt unsettled. I felt as though I were not doing enough. On break, one of the counselors mentioned that someone was needed to supervise childcare that night. After offering to take care of the task, I remembered that I had already promised one of the kids I would read a book with her at that time. Little was certain in these children's lives. The least I could do was provide them with something that they could count on. I asked around, hoping that one of the other counselors would be able to take my place and read with the child. Everyone was busy. Finally, one of them looked at me and said, "Natalie, why don't you ask her mother to read with her?"

She had a point. Though ideally the moms were busy finding themselves jobs or studying for their GED exam, surely they could find a spare fifteen minutes during the day to read with their children. It was then that I realized why I had been so frustrated with my productivity. I was trying to be everyone's mom. There were 100 women and children living at the shelter, and I was trying to make sure every child knew the value of an education, encourage every mother to set new goals for herself, and teach everyone that they could accomplish anything as long as they respected themselves and did their best. This was too much, I realized. Even though my work would help further the goals of the shelter, I would not be able to change these women's lives unless they themselves decided that they wanted to change their own lives.

It is now obvious to me why Dartmouth, through the Tucker Foundation, adamantly supports the student who wants to take a break from the norms of college life and volunteer for a semester. I was truly a changed, grown, and more aware young woman after my summer's fellowship. This term, I was the one who tested myself on what I had learned, and who gave myself a grade at the end of the term.

Natalie M. Bachir is a '97 at Dartmouth College and hopes to attend medical school after graduation. She extends her thanks to the Tucker Foundation and the warm and welcoming staff at the Brandon Center for making her summer experience possible.