THANKS for doing that
A podcast CELEBRATING people and ideas that make this world a better place by exploring the things we do, the reasons we do them, and why IT MATTERS.
THANKS for doing that
Jenny Jessup on Building Bridges at Spring Institute
Jenny shares her journey from teaching English overseas to becoming a career coach for internationally trained professionals (ITPs) at the Spring Institute. With a heart for diverse cultures, Jenny discusses the challenges and triumphs of helping professionals such as doctors, dentists, and educators navigate the complex path of credential recognition and career reentry in the United States.
Through personal anecdotes and success stories, Jenny highlights the resilience and determination of the individuals she works with, as well as the systemic obstacles they face. She also offers valuable insights into how the general public can support immigrant and refugee communities, emphasizing the importance of proximity, understanding, and inclusive communication.
Heather and Jenny explore the broader contributions of immigrant and refugee populations to society, the economy, and the workforce, while also acknowledging the nuanced views on immigration. This episode is a testament to the power of community, collaboration, and the human spirit.
✍️ Episode References
Spring Institute
Migration Policy Institute
American Immigration Council
The Ungrateful Refugee (book)
Upwardly Global
Office of New Americans
Simplify Language
Colony House (band)
---
🎙️ Thanks to Headliner for the show notes help!
Catch more of the story @thanks.for.doing.that.podcast!
Hey, there you are listening to Thanks for Doing that a podcast celebrating people and ideas that make this world a better place. I am Heather Winchell, your host and chief enthusiast, and I'm on a mission to bring you conversations that encourage, inspire and delight. So stay tuned for another episode where we explore the things we do, the reasons we do them and why it matters. Today, I am joined by my friend, jenny Jessup, and we are going to explore her work with Spring Institute. So, located in Denver, colorado, the mission of Spring Institute is to build a thriving intercultural community through learning, language access and advocacy. They offer a wide variety of resourcing and education to immigrant and refugee individuals and families. Jenny, thank you so much for joining me today, and would you share with us a bit about what life looks like for you right now and how you ended up working with Spring Institute?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, good morning Heather. I am so happy to be here. I'm just kind of chuckling inside because this has taken a while for us to get together and we're actually getting to meet and talk and I am so honored to be here. So thanks for having me on today. Yeah, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, a little bit of what life looks like and how I got here. Yeah, it's quite a journey, and I will start off, I guess, with when Heather and I used to work together I'm usually with the same company and I went overseas and I taught English at universities in China for two years and I was also in Tunisia for three years. In between there, I also worked in Fort Collins, colorado, as a recruiter for recruiting teachers to go overseas and work and live and experience different cultures. I ended up coming back to the States, and how I ended up. Working with Spring Institute is just a heart for different cultures and a heart for differences. Yeah, there's this sense of just excitement, unknown confusion and fun that comes with working with different cultures, and I know it can be really intimidating or, yeah, a lot of miscommunication and misunderstandings can happen, but I just find a lot of common humanity when getting to encounter different cultures, and so when I came back to the United States, I was looking at places where I could still encounter different cultures, and Spring Institute came up as a nonprofit in Denver, which is where I'm now located, and there was a position for career coaching with internationally trained professionals.
Speaker 2:So those who have come to the United States, whether by choice or not by choice, and find themselves looking to start their new career and, yeah, this matched pretty well with education as a background, with working to help people reach their full potential. As an educator, I always wanted to do that, and now, as a career coach, I would like to do that, and so what life looks like right now is developing programming materials, support and doing one-on-one career coaching with internationally trained professionals. So we call ITPs, but internationally trained professionals are those who have work experience or education background from a different country and now are in the United States hoping to use those skills in a career aligned occupation, and we mostly work with health care, so I worked with a lot of dentists, doctors, nurses and pharmacists, as well as education K through 12 educators who want to get relicensed or recredentialed in the States in order to reenter their career. It's a big journey. It's a long journey, it's a costly journey, and so the people I get to work with are just incredible incredibly talented, motivated, resilient people and inspires me every day. Also challenging and frustrating at times to work within the systems that we're in, but in general, yeah, we do programming that helps connect other ITPs with each other, and then also the one-on-one career coaching to help set goals and create an action plan for them to stay accountable to. Yeah, I get to work with a great team. I'm lucky no company's perfect, but very lucky to work with a small and mighty group.
Speaker 2:At Spring Institute we have a big variety of services that aren't just career coaching. We also have ESL classes that are aligned for those needing more English development. And then we have part of the vision that you mentioned, heather, was advocacy. So we have a whole advocacy team who is working at the state capital to put legislation and bills and policies into place that will help support and represent the immigrant refugee population in Colorado. And then language access we advocate for a few of those bills that are actually going, hopefully, on the floor next spring. And then we have a lot of other services again in the community, especially in the Aurora or East Colfax area. That is family literacy. We have youth programs and we do not childcare but preschool oriented programs to help families prepare their kids to go to preschool.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, wow, it sounds like there are so many varied, helpful ways that you guys are engaging that population to holistically support them. So that is really wonderful, and I think it does feel important to acknowledge that there are many complex and nuanced, perhaps even divergent, views on immigration, and this isn't the focus of our conversation. But I'm wondering whether Spring Institute does any community education, or if there are any books or other resources that you would personally recommend to people that desire some perspective.
Speaker 2:Definitely important to bring that up. It is extremely complex and extremely nuanced, so by no means is one conversation solving the problem or is one perspective my perspective one that is better than another. It's certainly a learning and growing process as coming back from overseas and just realizing and learning a lot, and so, as I continue to learn and see all the different views on immigration, yeah, there is continual resources, especially with the political nature and the social nature of our country right now, that is changing every day. There's things that truly are changing every day, and I would say Spring Institute doesn't do education, like we don't put on forums or we don't have a community education platform. There are some local organizations that are doing that, but something that helps myself try to keep up with the most recent data and information, and hopefully not misinformation, but the information of what's really happening.
Speaker 2:There's a few organizations. One's called the Migration Policy Institute and the Migration Policy Institute. They come out with great reports. That is data-driven, and so from those reports we'll have some conclusions made from those. The state offices also have information and data. The Office of New Americans is a new office that was actually just started in Colorado about three years ago, and it's under the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, so CDLE, but the Office of New Americans is a great one-stop shop for resources. The goal is integration for new Americans, so I'd say those two are really good. There's another one, american Immigration Council, and they have pretty good, updated information. And then, as for books, this is just a general recommendation, but any books that are written by immigrant or refugee populations to get a perspective, they're probably going to be very story oriented and very personal narrative, but it can still give a perspective of what the journey was like. So yeah, those are a few.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually. A couple of years ago I read a book called the Ungrateful Refugee.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think it was that book that actually really opened my eyes to how not only do people go through the difficulty of being forcibly made to leave their country or, by their own choice, fleeing for safety, for safety so not only do they work through the difficulty of that, but then you know to the population that you work more specifically with people that hold professional degrees and just really it can really be a struggle to be able to utilize that knowledge and to utilize those degrees in other places, and so, even in light of my own limited experience in engaging these stories and resources, I can immediately see the helpfulness that Spring Institute brings in providing assistance in navigating that really difficult journey that was a great book.
Speaker 2:I read that one as well. It's good perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know that you and I have both had the opportunity to live overseas, so we definitely know firsthand how difficult it can be to navigate a new culture. Even still, I imagine the disruption we've experienced is relatively minor chose to go spend time in another country. I had a lot of support in doing that. I was welcome in the country that I lived in. So, yeah, just even from that limited perspective, I can see how wildly different it would be. What would you say are the biggest obstacles for those that you work with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, many obstacles. Yeah, I think that's a good differentiation you mentioned with choice and the individual stories, and I think that's always good to know is that everyone's story is so different and unique, which causes some of the challenges for supporting this population, because there is not one process or protocols to follow that will relate to every single person, because stories are so unique, and so that's the beauty also of what this population brings to our society. Is that diversity and is that resiliency, that even though, coming from different backgrounds, the goal of integration is possible and the contribution is boundless. So, with that process, the obstacles are unique to each person, but probably I was thinking of all these obstacles and trying to narrow them down, but there's many is language is going to be the top one. It is a part of a person's identity and so not only learning how to interact with daily life, there's just the nuances with each context that someone is in, so professional language. There's a company called Upwardly Global and they also support internationally trained professionals and they have some really good reports as well. Actually, I'd recommend that as a resource, but one of their reports was about roadblocks for young immigrants who are in their 20s and 30s, who have great potential for the future of their career, and some of the largest roadblocks was professional language. So not just English, but specifically professional language and how to express your skills in your career. To express your skills in your career and even in the United States and people born and raised here we have trainings, we have career fairs. If you go to higher ed, we have all these support structures that teach you how to sell yourself and how to advocate for yourself and how to talk about your skills. So that's a huge barrier One. You're doing it in a second or third or fourth language, but it's really career aligned language that's difficult for immigrant refugees.
Speaker 2:Another big barrier is networks. You arrive to a country. You don't know people. We experienced this Heather, just on a small scale. You don't know people in a new country and it's hard to get to know people. So your networks are so small and when that comes to job and career, it limits it greatly limits your doors that you can walk through. So trying to find a job obviously is limited without networking Around. 80% of jobs are found through word of mouth or through friends, family, linkedin, all these resources that we have accumulated over 20, 30 years in this country when you've recently arrived, your networks are very, very limited. So that's a huge barrier, not just how to network and sell yourself, but just meeting new people and finding, especially in your career, that you want, if it's in healthcare or if it's in education. How do you tap into those resources?
Speaker 2:Yeah, another one would be credential recognition. So we work again with this. If it's internationally trained professionals, this if it's internationally trained professionals, their credentials are probably not received by employers as valid and then to get them evaluated it costs money. It is a really long process to get the credential again. In the United States, for example, doctors have to go back to residency oh wow. And they have to match. So these international medical doctors are competing against all of the domestic medical graduate students to match to a residency and then get two more years of residency and then they can eventually get their license. Dentists same thing. They have to go back to dental school for two years. So to get the credentials again it's just a really big barrier and it's financially burdensome and that'd be.
Speaker 2:Another barrier is finances. So a lot of immigrants and refugees again, whether by choice or not by choice, come to the country and they have family in their home countries. That often will be supported financially. So the people who come to the United States and find jobs, they feel an extra burden to care for their family back home. So finances are strained and often the most tangible job that's at their fingertips, that's easy to get, will be something not skill aligned, so it will be maybe a dentist or a doctor who's working as an Uber driver or an Amazon deliverer and not necessarily using the skills, but it financially supports enough and it can help serve their family back home. So finance is a huge strain. And then the last thing I'll say I know there's a lot of other barriers, but one other thing that we encounter a lot. There's something to think about, especially if you're a business owner, if you're an employer who could potentially employ immigrant refugee.
Speaker 2:Talent is work experience puts this population in a strange strain where a PhD student or a PhD candidate is applying for an entry-level position. They're overqualified for it, so the employer disregards the application, but then they're underqualified for it because they don't have US experience. And so the employer or whatever applicant tracking systems, whatever HR committee, is going through this application and will disregard these types of applicants pretty easily because, again, overqualified for an entry-level position but they don't have US based experience. So it's actually a good place to start to get us-based experience and you can't get that job without having it. So it's kind of the chicken and the egg type right situation that really employer hiring and employer practices needs to change and it's a bit to accommodate because it benefits it greatly benefits the employers in the end when there is a robust support system for onboarding. The data shows that immigrants and refugees one retention is higher in the immigrant and refugee population for employers and employers. Typically their mindset is they have a hard work ethic and will contribute to the company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, you know, even though we've all experienced working on a team with people that think very differently than us, and and so maybe some of the first thoughts that come to mind in a situation like that is it would just be easier if we were all on the same page or if we all had the same vision or something, and so it can be agitating to have to work through differences, but it's actually so much more strengthening for there to be different perspectives, and I, you know, having had the privilege of living overseas, even just for a short season, I really see the benefit of working through whatever agitation it may bring for people to have different perspectives, to learn to appreciate the other perspective and to see it for what it is, as opposed to what you might initially see it as. And this is a funny example and not at all related to like professional work. But I remember when I had the opportunity to live overseas it was a kind of a few months in, so the honeymoon period had worn off. I was starting to feel how different my home culture was from this culture that I was living in. But it was the start of fall, and so I was kind of one Saturday morning, relishing and like, okay, even though so much about this culture is different, it's still fall. It's fall here just like it was fall back home, and the leaves are turning and they're beautiful. And Jenny, I'm not joking Like literally within minutes somebody came, like a groundskeeper came and started beating the tree with a broom to get all the leaves to fall down.
Speaker 1:And I was so angry because I was like why would you do that? This culture is so weird. And but then you know, and honestly, I was really agitated, but I I sat with that in prayer and just thinking like, why, why? And it came to me that it's because it's so efficient If you're going to have to clean up the leaves, to kind of help yourself out, and if you have so many other things which in this culture, I can guarantee you that the man that was working the grounds of this apartment building had far more on his plate that he had to get to, and so I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's a very simple example, but it just highlights that sometimes we see things and it's maybe offensive or agitating and very different than the way we would perceive something, but actually pushing into understanding can really open perspective and show you like. Oh, I don't have the only right view on this. That actually makes sense too, and with the things going on for them, maybe that was the better choice. I mean, I still don't know if I would want to get rid of the leaves before they naturally fall, but you see what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the creativity increases and ideation, like you, can really expand ideas to a broader level of diversity of perspectives. And that is true, yeah, with companies that have diverse perspectives, I think it will create some more nuances of how company culture will work and how does recruiting, hiring and onboarding and upskilling and all of the other parts of the business work. But this is more on the other parts of the business work. But there's this is more on the economy side of the United States and what immigrants and refugees can contribute A large, at least in the state of Colorado. I was just looking up some numbers but immigrants and refugees are about 10% of Colorado and 80% of that population is of working age and so, with our demographics changing in the future of our country, we do have an aging population. We will have less working age numbers in our country.
Speaker 2:The possibilities to contribute from the immigrant and refugee population into our workforce is great and very, very great. And so with that I think is exciting to think of wow, this, the ideas and the creativity and the different ways that companies will work or that our workforce will gather. This new information that is different and uncomfortable creates these endless possibilities that can be progressing our community and our society to a new, a different level. I won't say a new level, just a different level, a different space that does show the beauty of humans and the beauty of this world that we were all created to discover. But it's hard when we don't encounter it all the time, mm-hmm. And so I think, yeah, it's exciting to think of what value this population contributes to our community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Contributes to our community? Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So I know that you and Spring Institute have a lot of vision for that value and have set up programs and these different areas of support. I'm wondering how would you say you have seen Spring Institute succeeding in its mission?
Speaker 2:succeeding in its mission.
Speaker 2:There's two ways, I think of this very individualized behind each number there's a person, and each stat there's humans, and it's always important to remember that.
Speaker 2:So, since I work on such an individual level with direct service and working one-on-one with these participants, I get to see the internal work of someone's life, and that is such a privilege. I do get to work with partnerships and programmatic elements, so larger scale changes too, which is also really exciting. One example would be we Spring Institute this is before I got there but helped pass a bill House Bill 221050 is for international medical graduates, so international doctors, and we have gotten to develop that program and now support those international doctors in partnership with Denver Health Hospital. And that partnership from the bill to now creating the program to now actually having 20 participants this last year experience that are more of the systemic programs that's like, oh, that's really cool that this actually came to fruition. It actually happened Lots of kinks to work out, but it actually was developed. And now again there's 20 from last year. We have 15 new participants who just got chosen for this year and partnering with Denver Health, one of the largest healthcare systems in Colorado.
Speaker 2:So that's more of the bigger picture, but for me I love the individual part, so the successes of seeing a person's confidence grow, especially internationally trained professionals who come from an established career, a bright future, where they were a doctor for five years, thinking, oh, I'm going to be an OBGYN, I'm going to be a specialist in Russia, and they're working their career and suddenly they have to leave and coming to a new place. Confidence and that self-awareness and I experienced it too where you're just not yourself, and there's a whole mental health aspect as well of how why don't I feel like myself, I don't feel confident, I have lost all these skills, I can't speak the language very well and you feel like everything you were confident in was stripped away from you. So seeing those little pieces of confidence come back to their lives is so exciting and rewarding. And again, ultimately I just think what a better place as they continue to grow and gain that confidence back, what a better place their workplace will be, their family will be, their community will be as those skills and sense of self comes back. So I get to see that on a more personal level, which I'm very grateful for.
Speaker 2:A really basic example just this last week we had our company had our annual fundraising event and we usually have a participant perspective, and so we had actually one of my participants who's a dentist from Russia and he came four years ago. He had been a dentist for five years. He arrived to Colorado four years ago and was wondering how do I become a dentist again? So he had to learn English. He only knew Russian and he knew Armenian because he has Armenian roots. So he had to learn all of his English because he didn't know any before. And now, four years later, he's on his way. He's passed the dental boards, he is creating his application for dental school, he's getting his letters of recommendation, he's getting dental experience, he's writing his personal statement, getting his resume ready all the things for a university application.
Speaker 2:And this last week, at our annual event, he was the guest speaker for our event. It was the first time he ever spoke English in front of people and it was 150 people at the event, so we really threw him in to speak in front of the whole group, but prepping, practicing beforehand. He was super, super nervous, but he went up there and just gave an incredible speech. Super, super nervous, but he went up there and just gave an incredible speech. He did a great job with all of his emotion and his depth of his story and got to share that with 150 people, and so he I know he was very excited after that and just those little opportunities and steps that again grow confidence, his sense of self comes back and he's developing, reclaiming a lot of his who he is and his career here in the States.
Speaker 1:Oh man, jenny, as you share that story, I just I'm, I can feel the delight for that in my like body, you know, and I'm not even connected to him, and I'm just struck by that's a really beautiful outcome and that was a lot of hard work. I mean thinking about somebody that was fully proficient in their field and basically landing here has to kind of start over in some really big ways and yet persevering in that element and also in learning English and then speaking to a group of people with a newly learned language, I mean just yeah, just tenacity, inspiring courage, resiliency those are some words that come to mind. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's really meaningful Well.
Speaker 2:I have. I have one other story that I'll share. Just to make it more personal. With the individual stories, I do, yeah, of course, have like, yeah, lots of them, but this one in particular stands out because it was a couple husband, wife and they've both been a part of our programs, but he's a doctor and she was a university professor in Afghanistan and she didn't know any English when she came in 2022. He knew some so he was able to find an entry-level medical position and still in, he's still in Denver Health as eye technician, but she's who I've mostly been working with and as a university professor.
Speaker 2:What transfers to the United States? Let's say you're 45 years old, you have four children and you're a professor. You, your whole family arrives and you've established a very, very good career as a husband and wife team in Afghanistan. He's a doctor, she's again university professor, so she had to learn English and her level got to a good communicative ability and we're looking for jobs when can she work? So over the last year, she's applied and been rejected. She's applied, had interviews prepared, been rejected.
Speaker 2:Still working on her English, she did a sewing class. She did a pre-early childhood education class. She was trying to do everything and figure out where is a good fit. Well, finally, in August this year, she had interviews at a school called Placebridge Academy and she finally obtained a job and is just so excited to be in the school, work with children again, get experience, work on her language proficiency, understand the system, and now she's at the same school that her kids are at too, so she gets to be with them. It won't be where she is forever, but, as for a great stepping stone, that's an example of okay, get into the system. Even though she was overqualified but then also underqualified at the same time for a lot of positions, this was a good fit for her to be a teaching assistant and, yeah, it's been a month now.
Speaker 1:She just texted me. That's really wonderful. What would you say? So you've kind of talked a little bit about what's been rewarding. What would you say is challenging, about the work you do?
Speaker 2:I think one-on-one stuff. It is hard to know. Obviously, career coaching is specific. We don't do counseling. We don't have other fields. We work with healthcare and education.
Speaker 2:So some of the challenges are knowing your limited scope of services and being able to refer that out. Being able to refer that out, it's not a challenge. On one hand, it's a challenge because, of course, we want to help as much as we can, but it shows the beauty of collaboration and the need for partnerships. So we refer out quite a bit and that's a challenge to be able to make sure. Okay, who are our referrals, who are our good partners? Who can we pass off someone to another company, organization who is doing the same work and is doing good work? And Denver has a lot going on and we're so thankful for that that there are other organizations that we can refer people to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the other challenge is definitely more of the systems that we're a part of like getting recredentialed. The pathway is unnecessarily difficult. There are some barriers that there's some policies in the country right now in specific states that are trying to tighten up the pathway so that it's shorter but also withstands the standards for these regulated industries like healthcare. But yeah, that's a big challenge is just working with large governing bodies like the dental boards and the American medical boards. These are big policy issues that there's again Upwardly Global Migration Policy Institute these companies are doing really good work with yeah Well and, like you said earlier, these companies are doing really good work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and, like you said earlier, it is really hard when you live in a reality where there are, because of scope, process and systems in place, yet working with such unique and diversified individual stories, and so it's just holding the tension of how yeah, I understand there needs to be a process and a system, and sometimes that can really work against what makes most sense for this individual in their skill set and their capability or competency or what have you. So this has been a really helpful and fruitful conversation, jenny, and I'm wondering how can the greater public practically come alongside those that are living as immigrants or refugees, and is there anything that isn't helpful but that people commonly do?
Speaker 2:I like that phrase isn't helpful. I'm not asked this commonly, this commonly, and yeah, I think I've.
Speaker 2:I'm a strong believer in there's power and proximity, and so when we do not put ourselves in places where we can't encounter immigrant or refugee populations, populations it will be forgotten and the rhetoric said or seen willy nilly on the news or through our apps or through anything that we're scrolling through will become most prominent. And so I just encourage people again, there's power in proximity. If there's someone who's different than you or a way to read, different perspectives or an organization to help, then try it or have one brief conversation. It doesn't have to be a passion project, like it, doesn't have to be your whole job. It doesn't have to be everything that's. I understand people have limited time. People have limited time, but I'd encourage because this population is so important in our country politically, socially, economically it is something that we should encounter. It is impacting our lives, whether it's firsthand or secondhand, through our economy or through our social networks, that it would be important to be informed about it. So go on to those websites I talked about. Subscribe to their newsletters. You can get their newsletters every week that they send. Read some literature.
Speaker 2:I know in Northern Colorado, which is where you are, heather there's the immigrant refugee center in Greeley. There's actually a few. I think there's a coffee shop in Fort Collins that's working with refugee youth. There's ways to encounter the population. It could be a neighbor, even, or it could be, yeah, an event that's happening Once a year on June 20th, there's the World Refugee Day, and there's always an event in Denver that's put on by the Colorado Refugee Speakers Bureau Really cool event. The Speakers Bureau is an organization run and the participants are all refugees who share their stories at this event, and so that I went last year and that was a really powerful time just to again hear perspectives and then something that isn't helpful. That's a good question. I think a lot of this is it's hard work because it's all in it's internal Some of our perspectives and immediate thoughts internal, some of our perspectives and immediate thoughts.
Speaker 2:So language does make a difference when interacting with immigrant and refugee populations and we actually did a training with a company called Simplify Language a while ago and he brought up a really good point that it's easy to.
Speaker 2:It's easy to put the responsibility of someone who's learning a language put the responsibility of forming to my version of English that all of that responsibility is on the language learner, someone who's learning the language and doesn't know it.
Speaker 2:I expect them to form and conform into my language abilities, whereas actually that responsibility can really be on the general public to say I will make sure that the way I speak whether it's acronyms, idioms or all these phrasal verbs, all these different ways that we speak when I'm aware of who's around me, I can accommodate my speech to make sure that it's inclusive. So that's something that could be helpful. It's not helpful when we expect language learners to understand all my acronyms and all my inside jokes and all the jokes from the 90s and the food and the movies from the 90s. That's not relevant to them if they didn't grow up in this country. But maybe I can learn about what was popular in the 80s and 90s for them and what was the cool music or food. Like these inside cultural jokes can be a way to connect with someone from a different country and not assume that they're a part of what I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think something that comes to mind for that is just this understanding that communication is for the benefit of others and certainly you're trying to be understood, but communicating for the benefit of others. And I just think that subtle distinction is really powerful and speaks to what you're saying about just being aware, being socially aware, being aware of where the other person's coming from and trying to meet. You're saying about just being aware, being socially aware, being aware of where the other person's coming from and trying to meet them in that place, as opposed to maybe just settling into. Well, this is the way I talk and this is the way I show up, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It also just strikes me that another thing that you know, as the general public, we can do is really seek to approach people with generosity of heart and kindness and just being very aware of the internal thoughts we have or the ways we've separated people from their common humanity. You know Well, jenny, I really like to finish out my conversations with some fun questions, so I have some fun questions for you. Okay, so if you had to be stuck in a specific holiday for a week think Groundhog Day wake up in the same holiday every day what holiday would it be, and why?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to cheat on this question and I am. This isn't a holiday, but I am going to choose the holiday of leaf peeping, looking at the leaves in the fall. So I don't know if there's a holiday for that, but going to wake up in the same day, it would be September 30th and the leaves would be perfectly golden and I'd be in the mountains. So I just made up my own holiday and would wake up every day.
Speaker 1:That sounds wonderful and as an exercise in our own resilience, I have to ask you, jenny, what would you do if, every day you woke up to that, somebody was beating the tree to get the leaves to come down?
Speaker 2:Well, I would, the leaves would magically show up again, right, okay, sure so excellent morning. Maybe they'd fall in the evening and could jump in them in the evening there you go.
Speaker 1:Hey, look at you, good pivot. Okay, if you could have a theme song every time you walked into a room today, what would it be?
Speaker 2:would it be Oof. So I would choose. It's just a song that I have really liked for a long time. But if you know the band Colony House, I don't I'll have to look them up. Okay, look them up, colony House. They have a song called why Even Try. Now it sounds kind of sad because it's like why even try? But the premise is that, uh, like the very very end it talks about, um, the load is too heavy to carry, so why even try? It's the purpose is to it's shared with each other. We need to share our burdens with each other. Stop trying. In life, it means share it with people because I'm right here, I'm your friend, I'm right here, share it with me. Or hey, you are someone who I could share something with.
Speaker 1:Why am I trying to carry all this by myself? Cool. Okay, if you had to become proficient in a skill or hobby that you don't currently have, what would it be, and why?
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, too many things, but I I would say, oof, probably sewing, okay, so many cool things that you could do with sewing. I mean this kind of adapts to like crocheting and knitting too, which I do crochet but if it was like next level, like you can make anything and you can fix anything, that's very practical, I realize.
Speaker 1:But also it's actually really meaningful and theological too, because I was reading a recent article in CT Magazine about the lost art of mending or repairing and just like how if you get holes in your sock, you just throw them away and you just buy more, or something like that. But there's actually this beauty to be found in taking things and mending them and repairing them and restoring them. So it's not just practical. I think it actually touches something at a soul level too, which is cool.
Speaker 2:Way to bring that all full circle. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So, jenny, now I would really love to give you the opportunity to give a shout out. So who would you want to say thanks for doing that too, and why?
Speaker 2:I am so thankful for this is general but just with the work and information that we talked about today, the hundreds of volunteers who give time, space, energy, resources to helping immigrant refugees integrate into community Faith-based communities, churches, mosques there are tons of communities that are helping this population integrate. And, small note, my parents actually helped with Afghan family in Grand Junction, colorado, because there was a group of 10 families resettled into Grand Junction which has very few resources for the whole idea of refugee integration. So it was all teams of volunteers who gave their time and resources and went through relational strain. You know like it's not easy to work often in these cross-cultural interactions and so the beauty of how now it's a couple of years later, how the families are becoming self-sufficient and they're going to schools and university and have jobs, and just amazing to see the power of volunteers and when people give and are generous give and are generous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that long-term ROI right, the really difficult thing to do but then truly results in such long-term beautiful things.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah Well, jenny, again, thank you so much for this conversation. It's really been helpful to me and, I trust, will be helpful to the listeners as well. So, as the final thing before we close out our time, I have a haiku that I've written for you as an expression of my gratitude and as just a way to say to really highlight why I wanted to have you come on the podcast with me. So I'll close this out by reading that to you. Thanks for doing that Building community towards a brighter future. So I'll close this out by reading that to you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for doing that Building community towards a brighter future Amazing, I appreciate you so much, heather. I've loved getting to talk with you today and thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1:You're so welcome. It was my pleasure. Thanks for doing that. Is presented to you by the apiary a place for beholding and becoming, and thank you for joining us for today's episode. Before you go, I have a couple of invitations. If you found it meaningful, could I invite you to take two minutes to rate and review the show. I also invite you to help me create an upcoming episode of Thanks for Doing that by nominating someone or suggesting a topic. Let's link arms to call out the good and the beautiful that we see around us, because I really believe that finding delight in our divided and difficult world could make all the difference.