Life has a funny way of putting people in your path. I’ve actually “known” Meghan for about four years now. She used to work at a non-profit where friends of mine were involved. I thus also got involved. However save for a hello or a short conversation about the weather, Meghan and I never really talked. Four years later the two of us find ourselves working as AmeriCorps members at the same organization. We’ve both had the opportunity to be of support to one another as we navigate our new work environment and feelings of doing AmeriCorps at age 28. She had also mentioned reading and liking A World of Dresses, so I thought it’d be fun to take a lunch break one day to interview her. It was fascinating. I just wish I had had this conversation with her sooner.
Name: Meghan Snyder
Age: 28
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio. From Phoenix, Arizona
So why Xavier if you’re from Arizona?
Well I knew I wanted to study social work and I heard about this concept of a service-learning semester. My uncle is a Jesuit, so I’ve kind of grown up with the Jesuit ideals, I guess. I wanted to try out somewhere new, so not California and not Arizona. So I applied to Xavier, and came and visited. There were daffodils and tulips growing out of the ground. I was like “What? I’ve never seen this before!” They also offered me the most amount of money. So I was like “that helps and then they also have the social work.” I minored in peace studies, and gender and diversity studies, and did the India service-learning semester. So it was all the things I wanted plus they had tulips growing out of the ground (laughs). So that helped.
So why social work? What made you go into that field?
I was kind of a weird child/teen. I guess all growing up, I questioned why things were the way they were. I was always very conscious about inequalities that I saw or different things I heard about some people being less than other people. I was always to my parents like “Why is that? Why is it that like Mexican children at my elementary school have to travel so much further to go to school? Why don’t they get to live in the nicer neighborhood that we live in?” Like I was just like “Why is there mainly white people around?” So then I participated in this program called Anytown, which is in Phoenix. It brought together high school students from all over the Phoenix area. And I learned a lot from people from all different backgrounds and it was then that I was like “I just want to help people.” My counselor was a social worker and I was like “Oh, that’s your job! Helping people and helping them to figure out resources to live well, and empowering people?” So I was like “Okay!”
So social work was it after that.
Yes. So now I’m getting my Master’s at the Mount in Spirituality and Pastoral Care.
That’s cool! So tell me what made you decide to go that route for your masters degree?
Well I realized that in social work, there’s not a lot of emphasis on spirituality and using that as a source of strength for people. It is also a huge way of understanding people from a cultural perspective in terms of religion and also understanding any negative experiences with spirituality or religion. That really shapes who a person is. So I wanted to be able to incorporate religion and spirituality into social work practice.
What do you see that looking like now that you have the social work background and the pastoral care/spirituality masters?
What I would love to do … So after I graduated from Xavier, I lived in Xavier’s Over-the-Rhine semester apartment, which was six years ago, so it was before Over-the-Rhine was like it is now and it was right across the street from Washington Park. We created this urban weekend for students going on other service-learning semesters. I loved creating that and creating ways for students to learn experientially through conversation and through actual like real life experiences, and then adding them together to reflect on what they are learning. So experiential learning with reflection and figuring out action steps.
Yeah because I know Xavier is big on that. There’s the semester in Nicaragua, you did the semester in India, there’s the semester in Over-the-Rhine and I’m sure other ones I don’t know of.
Yes. They only have one in Nicaragua now, but they did have one in India and they used to have one in Ghana.
Cool. So you went on the one in India? So what part of India?
I lived in Delhi and lived with a community of Xavier students, and a community of younger Catholic nuns who were studying at the university nearby
Were they Indian nuns?
Yes. But they were from all over India and so that was a real fun experience (laughs). I worked in Mother Theresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying. I took classes. It was great. Actually that was where I really decided about the mix of social work and spirituality. Because the word there to say hello and goodbye is Namaste, but it really means the God in me recognizes and honors the God in you. So how powerful is it that that’s the way you greet people? So when I was at Mother Theresa’s Home, that was the way we greeted each other and it was helping in working alongside with the women there doing laundry and I just realized this power of putting the two together. The respect and dignity of a human person from a spiritual perspective. That’s why I want to work to help them to be the best. That they can show their assets and their strengths and their talents.
So this was about seven years ago?
Yeah.
So how has that word Namaste affected the way you interact with people now?
I feel like it affected the way I interact with people. I try to have more meaning behind hello than is normal in our society. When you say hello in our society, it’s kind of like a passing thing. I try to have meaning. It’s really taught me the power of just recognizing the human dignity. Each person is God and must treated as such. And being a creation of God means that they have within them all these gifts to offer to the world. When you think about all the people who don’t have the opportunities or don’t have the resources to be able give those.
So that’s probably why you do what you do.
Yeah I mean that’s why I worked at Starfire. I saw how people with developmental disabilities were kept in their homes and kept away from society. We have this whole group of people who can give so much and make the world a better place. I know how cliche that sounds, but like they don’t have the opportunities. We have stripped their abilities to do that.
After graduation, you spent five years at Starfire. How did that time impact your life and where you are now?
Working at Starfire, I feel like I did every job you could possibly do at a non-profit and beyond. So that was really neat just to be able to learn all those skills. But what it mainly taught me was the power of community and that every community, along with every person, has assets. Sometimes you have to work harder to find them because of stereotypes and prejudices about that particular community or about that particular person. We have to tap into these assets and tap into these potentials and then work with the community, work with a group of people and work with an individual to help that blossom. And now when people are talking about a certain neighborhood or ask me about a certain neighborhood, I can name off everything about that neighborhood; where they should go, what coffee shop they should go to, what people they need to meet there and what activities they should do there.
Yeah that’s the whole idea behind Starfire. You connect members to their neighborhoods.
Yeah and part of my job just happened that I did a lot of volunteer opportunities for our Starfire members. So I had this huge binder of all these non-profits and their volunteer opportunities. Then I would look at what a Starfire member’s assets or talents are, and I would connect them to the agency that was in their neighborhood and could be of use to that member’s assets or passions. Then I would go with them to do these volunteer opportunities. So I learned a lot about volunteering and I think that’s why I wanted to be a volunteer coordinator, which is my position now. I’ve seen all the things that can come from having a good volunteer coordinator and I’ve seen how a volunteer coordinator can really be a detriment also. So I wanted to do it so I could be a good one, I guess. Or you know have people have deeper experiences in terms of their volunteering and feel like they’re learning things through it and empowering to work for larger social justice issues. Even from the most menial task like if a person is just filing or something. But place it in that larger context and when people realize it’s part of this larger context that it’s working towards bettering society, I feel like all tasks mean something.
So what are some ways that people don’t manage volunteers well? What are some big mistakes that people make?
I think not educating volunteers on the issues and social injustices that are the reason the non-profit is there. Not putting the agency in context of the larger community, and larger city and network and all that kind of stuff. So I think that you can feel useless or feel like you’re not doing anything important because you’re not understanding the larger picture. I think another issue is when volunteer coordinators don’t tap into the deeper passions of their volunteers. So like if someone e-mails saying that they want to do ESL teaching but asking them “What are your other passions? What things do you love?” That can enable me then to like say we have enough ESL teachers, I can ask them if they love numbers, I can ask them to say do financial ESL because that taps into your love of numbers. Or lets say they love music. I can link them to refugee families who also really like music. They can bond over that shared love of music.
What do you think your gifts are?
It’s hard to talk about yourself (laughs). I guess I’m good at helping people identify their gifts. Like figuring out what people do well and telling them that they do them really well. I’m also creative but in a not-artistic way. Like in a way of looking at what people have identified as issues or problems, and re-framing things and looking at different ways, and coming at it with out-of-the-box ideas.
What does being a woman mean to you?
That’s interesting because my partner is an adjunct professor of women’s studies at NKU, so we talk about women, and women’s issues and women’s studies all the time. I think most about being a woman when it’s any kind of voting day because I think about all the women who have come before me who have worked for my right to vote. I think about all the women in other countries who do not have the right to vote. And I think about how women are not empowered in various ways in the community but our vote is the same. I think voting is a very empowering experience and it makes me proud to be a woman who is proud to be in sisterhood with all these women who have come before her who have made it possible for her to vote.
I think being a woman is for me it involves nurturing in many aspects. I think there’s this need to nurture. Also when I was growing up, my mom had this pin from the late 60’s that she wore in high school that says “the future is female.” And she used to and still does, when I would get down about something she’s like “Megan remember, the future’s female! Be empowered by being a woman!” And I’m like “Okay!” So I think it reminds me of all these amazing women who are breaking glass ceilings and doing things that they’ve been told they can’t do because they’re a woman. And I’m like “yeah!”
So other than your family, who are some of the important relationships in your life?
My partner Emily. She’s amazing. We’re so different but we have so many similar values. We’ve been together for four years. We met when she was a volunteer at Starfire. Our first date, she picked me up. I was living in a community house at the time. All my roommates were so excited that I was going on this date because I had had a rough break-up. They were all excited. It was a nice day, so like all of my nine roommates were sitting on the porch when she pulled up. I was running late because I run late quite often. So she had to talk to them for a few minutes on the porch until one of my roommates ran up to tell me that she was there. I didn’t even know she was there for like those first two minutes. So she had a very quick welcome to my life. We live together in Northside with our dog Sunny. And half the year, we’re foster moms to Patrick Swayze, the bunny who lives at Sidewinder in the courtyard during the months that it’s nice outside.
