Daniel Ryave has participated in a variety of service activities through the Center for Civic Engagement and Learning and Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. Photo by Mike Sands.
On an unseasonably warm Sunday morning in early February, Daniel Ryave reclines, ankle over knee, in an old spindle-backed dining chair. The Case Western Reserve senior wears a black fleece pullover with an embroidered Spartans logo and a pair of comfortably worn jeans. He occasionally tugs at the knit black cap that covers his head.
He could have spent the morning eating breakfast with friends, recapping a Saturday night out. Or he could have slept in. Instead, he’s reading a Winnie the Pooh children’s picture book aloud to a small group of adults—residents of a community home operated by Hattie Larlham, a nonprofit serving people with developmental disabilities.
The scene is a familiar one for Ryave, who has devoted most of his Sunday mornings since his junior year to reading, playing games or just sitting quietly with the residents, many of whom are visually impaired and nonverbal.
Ryave found the Hattie Larlham community home through the university’s Center for Civic Engagement and Learning (better known as CCEL, or “Cecil”). As the CCEL leader for the site, Ryave is responsible for recruiting other student volunteers, driving them to the home on Sundays in a CWRU van and prompting them to reflect on their service during the return trip to campus. It’s not a role Ryave imagined for himself when he started college. But today, he says, service sustains him.
“I came to CWRU the way a lot of people do: I wanted to do eight semesters and then go to medical school. I thought I’d get a research job and be involved in some extracurriculars as a nice bonus,” he explains. “And now I’ve really shifted my life view where I want civic engagement to be a part of the rest of my life.”
Ryave’s aspirations are shared by other CCEL volunteers, including seniors Arun Murugesan and Chakira Smith. All three students are Civic Engagement Scholars, meaning that they pledged to complete 50 hours of service during the academic year and to attend trainings and educational programs about community and social issues. Each of them has volunteered for at least two years at sites such as Hattie Larlham. In addition, they have all found time for other service activities, such as organizing blood drives, attending CCEL-sponsored Alternative Spring Break programs in Detroit and Nicaragua and serving as leaders in service fraternities.
When Ryave first visited Hattie Larlham in the fall of 2014, he had high hopes. He wanted to be useful, and he wanted to feel that he was making a worthwhile contribution. But that’s not how things shook out at first.
“I was frustrated. It was difficult to spend so much time with the residents and not know whether what we were doing was making a difference,” Ryave says. “A lot of my previous volunteer work, like tutoring, had really clear benchmarks, so you knew if you were doing a good job.” That validation was nearly impossible to get at Hattie Larlham because of the nature of the residents’ disabilities.
Ryave began to feel disheartened, so he called his mother, hoping she might be able to give him some perspective. “She told me that what I was doing was the best kind of mitzvah: giving my time to others without being able to get anything in return,” he says. “My mom’s words really helped me remember why I was doing what I was doing.”
From then on, Ryave altered the way he viewed his work at Hattie Larlham. “We’re some of the only volunteers there, so it makes what we’re doing all the more important,” he says. “Over the last two years, the other volunteers and I have been able to create relationships with the residents.” The nature of the connection he’s made is revealed by the residents’ body language as he reads to them—a gentle nod in his direction, an excited clap when a favorite book is chosen, a giggle in response to his description of an illustration.
Ryave’s work with people with disabilities has not been limited to Sunday mornings like this one. He was an organizer of the first Spartans for Special Olympics, a daylong event that brought more than 100 students with special needs from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to CWRU for games, sports and a carnival. But he especially values his long-term service at Hattie Larlham.
“It’s been a really fulfilling experience,” says Ryave, who won a Dr. Dorothy Pijan Student Leadership Award for Outstanding Community Service in 2015. “I couldn’t imagine a better site.”
Murugesan also has made meaningful connections through service. During his first year at Case Western Reserve, he began volunteering as an adult GED tutor at the Thea Bowman Center in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. The center is only three miles from University Circle, but the neighborhood’s empty storefronts and foreclosed homes with boarded windows make it seem a world away. For Murugesan, this meant it was the right place for him.
Arun Murugesan has volunteered as an adult GED tutor at the Thea Bowman Center in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood for most of the past four years. Photo by Mike Sands.
At Thea Bowman, Murugesan’s course work and his service intersected. He had read Robert Lupton’s book, Toxic Charity, for a class on nonprofits. He was intrigued by Lupton’s argument that charitable groups, seeking to help those in need, often serve them in ways that have “toxic” long-term effects. After reading the book, Murugesan felt strongly about giving people the tools to advance and sustain themselves independently.
He smiles broadly when he talks about his first student to pass the GED, a truck driver who mainly needed encouragement. Murugesan worked with the man for more than six months, preparing him for the math section of the test, and he still remembers the day the student called to say he had passed.
“I was so happy for him,” Murugesan says. “For some people, passing the GED is the best way to raise their socioeconomic status and improve their lives. For him, it meant a lot because he earned a promotion.”
Earning a GED was a longtime goal for many of Murugesan’s students, and he watched them pursue it against seemingly insurmountable odds. “There are people who work all day and then come straight to Thea Bowman to study,” he explains. “And then they have to go home and get dinner for their families.” But he also recalls students who doubted themselves and felt trapped by their circumstances.
“I’ve had a lot of hard conversations with the adults I tutor,” Murugesan says. “They ask me, ‘So I get my GED—then what? Who’s going to hire me?’ I realize that there are a lot of things I can’t solve. And that’s hard to come to grips with.”
Last year, Murugesan took a step toward advocacy, writing to state and federal legislators about changes to the GED—changes Murugesan and other critics argue are beneficial to relatively privileged, homeschooled students but not to the low-income adults he tutors. He was discouraged by the test’s online-only format and greater focus on critical thinking. Many of his students don’t have regular access to computers, and they haven’t been in an academic setting that fosters critical analysis. Where some saw simple changes to a high school equivalency exam, Murugesan saw a barrier for students already disadvantaged by educational and socioeconomic inequality.
Murugesan was hoping for a response and was disappointed when he only heard from one representative, whose office sent him a form letter. “I know you can’t address systemic issues very easily. It takes time and money and influence in the right places,” he says. “One day, when I do have the resources and the connections, I want to come back to Cleveland, maybe as an elected official, and try to influence public policy.”
As a CCEL leader, Murugesan has tried to inspire other students to move beyond the environments they know. “Every time I have a new student in the van on the way to Thea Bowman, I’m educating them,” he explains. “I noticed early on that so many people have closed-minded views on the GED students, and I want to break those stereotypes.”
The Bigger Picture
Chakira Smith also uses that “reflection time” in the van as a way to educate volunteers. She’s been leading other CCEL students to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland since her sophomore year.
Chakira Smith (left) bonded with 7-year-old DeMario Teague during a recent Saturday at the King Kennedy Boys & Girls Club. Nine-year-old Jaterra Banks sits at an adjacent computer. Photo by Mike Sands.
“On the way there, I use the time to tell volunteers about the history of the Boys & Girls Clubs,” Smith says. “Then, on the way back, we talk about meeting the kids, who they spent time with and what their impressions were. That reflection piece is important because it gives people a connection to the bigger picture around their service. It’s the ‘This is why I’m doing this’ and the ‘This is why it’s important’ piece.”
Even for a veteran volunteer like Smith—whose parents regularly involved her and her two older brothers in service—reflection has provided a valuable perspective. This was especially true at her first Boys & Girls Club site, on E. 59th Street, where she initially felt overwhelmed.
“There were so many activities and so many kids who wanted to talk to us,” she says. “I didn’t know whether I should focus on one child or a couple, or try to interact with them all. But after going a couple of times, I realized that I was drawn to some kids, and those were the ones I spent most of my time with.”
Smith also realized that if each volunteer spent time with a small group of children, the activities were more free-flowing and enjoyable. This proved a valuable lesson when she moved on to a larger club in East Cleveland and then to the club where she volunteers now, on Broadway Avenue in Cleveland. “Regardless of the club’s size, spending my whole service time with one group of kids makes that day more meaningful for me and for the kids.”
During the past three years, Smith has formed close bonds with some of the children. Her sensitive, gentle manner makes it easy for her to help them with their homework or settle them down with an art project.
When it was time to say goodbye to the first group of children she worked with, the relationships Smith had developed made it hard to leave. But a Boys & Girls Club mentor told her not to worry. The children saw the volunteers in much the same way they saw their teachers, who sent them off to a new grade at the end of every school year. The mentor encouraged Smith to see herself that way, too. “He told me that they’ll remember I was there for them,” she says. “They’re not going to forget it.”
This spring, all three students earned their bachelor’s degrees: Ryave in cognitive science and psychology, Murugesan in biochemistry and Smith in medical anthropology and sociology. Each of them plans to pursue a career in health care. Like Ryave, Murugesan hopes to attend medical school, and Smith will graduate in 2017 from the Master in Public Health Program at the CWRU School of Medicine.
In the short term, Ryave leaves in June for 27 months with the Peace Corps in the West African nation of Togo. “The Peace Corps was never part of my plan, but I realized during my time here that it’s something I want to do,” he says.
Smith will be able to stay on with CCEL and the Boys & Girls Clubs while she finishes her master’s degree next year. Eventually, she wants to focus her professional life on issues surrounding premature births. “We need to look at the entire spectrum of health care, making sure mothers are able to access the health system,” she says. “Then, after a premature child is born, we need to answer the question of how we care for a baby who has come into the world without everything she needs to survive.”
Murugesan will spend a gap year before medical school working as a researcher at the Epilepsy Center at University Hospitals Neurological Institute. His professional goal is to become a neurosurgeon, and he believes that his volunteer experience has helped prepare him for his chosen career.
“CCEL helped me connect with more people than if I’d just lived in a bubble,” Murugesan explains. “It taught me how to connect. I think it will help me one day in my practice to be culturally competent and to deliver the best health care to everyone I encounter.”
Jennifer Kuhel is a freelance writer in Shaker Heights, Ohio.