My name is Raihana Bosse, and I am the program director for the Urban Family
Center, which is a family shelter for Henry Street Settlement.
Prior to the pandemic, we as service
providers, are there to support the families through their crisis.
And it's their experience, right, because
they are coming into our facility, they are homeless.
We're assessing their needs, and we're trying to support them.
But since the pandemic has hit, it's not exclusive to just the residents.
We are all living through this at the same time.
And so it's really been a challenge to not
only support the residents, but support my team.
And just managing my own feelings and my own anxieties has been a heavy lift.
I always say, like, I tell my team, I tell colleagues, whatever.
Even though I'm the program director and
I'm an administrator, I'm a social worker first.
And you often hear a lot of social workers
say they got into the field because they want to help people.
They want to make a change.
And I think there is something to that.
Like, there's this ingrained sense of someone's in need.
I can possibly provide some support.
I need to be there.
And I think that switch automatically flipped when we were in the worst crisis
that all of us have experienced in our lives.
It's just like, all right, while I'm
scared and there's so much unknown, I'm still in some sort of position to provide.
And so whatever I can do, I will do and I want to do, because at the end of the day,
it kind of sounds cliche, but like someone's got to do it.
And so they were just all these mixed emotions.
But I remember I used to commute by public transportation, and when everything
started happening, I switched to driving into the city.
And I remember the first day driving home
at, like, 5:00 in the afternoon, which would typically be like rush hour.
And it was this eerie sense of, like, it was just desolate.
There were no cars on the road.
And I'm just on the highway by myself, and
it just felt like a scary movie, almost like you didn't see people on the street.
And I think it hit me at that point when I was driving and I was just alone on that
highway, and it was just like, wow, this is a big deal.
Henry Street as an overall organization kind of sprang into action.
It was overwhelming to see how Henry Street responded to this pandemic.
We haven't closed, so we're a 24/7
facility, and we never shut down during the pandemic.
Seeing how resilient my entire team has been, it gives me the energy.
I'm just like, okay, I'm not in it alone.
At times it felt unfair because we are
considered essential workers, and you're going out there, and it's just like, I'm
here taking care of other people and their families.
And my family is worried for me, and I'm worried for them, but also it kind of gave
you a sense of like, all right, I have to do this.
This is what I'm here to do.
I have to provide the support to these individuals.
It's almost like none of this is new. You know, the fact that the pandemic
hit communities of color and low-income communities harder than others, the fact
that we are now in another civil uproar and unrest.
None of this is new.
I think the way it came together was almost like this horrible but perfect
storm in that the pandemic stopped everyone from moving.
You had no choice but to be still.
Prior to it you were able to be distracted
because you had somewhere to go and something to do.
It's not my problem and you just look the other way.
And then when the situation happened that you watched a life be taken in broad
daylight in public and it was like you no longer had the space to ignore it.
You couldn't close your eyes, it was everywhere and you had nowhere to go.
And being a social worker in this time it's scary, but it's just like we've been
fighting these fights at levels and different levels in different spaces and
it's kind of like we all are now in the same space.
So, yeah, Henry Street has really given us
a space to actively and continually process what we're going through and make
changes within the organization as a whole to be more equitable.