When Social Work Club members head to Chicago tomorrow, it will be to do what they plan to do professionally: Help people.
The group will provide care packages to Chicago’s homeless while they tour the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
“Jane Addams was the founder of social work and social work values,” said Marisa Walsh, a junior majoring in Social Work and the club’s social media manager. “We’re going there to learn about her history, what she has done in Chicago, and to teach us more about social justice and the things social workers care about.”
The organization is focused on helping.
“One of our bigger events … is called gotcha backpacks,” said Jada Addo, a junior majoring in Social Work, who is a club officer. “We collect a bunch of donations and then we pack a bunch of backpacks with essential care stuff, comfort items, school supplies and then we go and take them and pass them out to the CPS services around here so that …when a kid comes in with nothing they can give them that backpack.”
The club packed around 80 bags during their gotcha backpack event earlier this year
Though the group is open to all students, many of its activities seek to benefit people who need help.
“Our club is mainly for the other Social Work majors but we are open to other people on campus and we like to encourage other people to come out to our events,” said Addo. “It is a great group of people … our professors are very involved as well and they’re pretty much at every event.”
The group recognizes that a lot of people need help – and that social workers, though often underappreciated, can provide it.
“I feel like social workers have a lot of value as a whole that people do not realize, like our therapeutic knowledge and our resources in the community,” Walsh said. “I wish people were more curious about what we do because I feel like people have an idea like ‘oh, social workers, they just take kids away’. That’s something we have to do, but it’s not the only part.
“We do a lot and we have knowledge on many different things,” she said.
