Joslyn LaMorell

I was a nursing aide for years. I love caring for the older folks. Now I’m a realtor in Brooklyn, New York, and, doing that kind of work, I’€™m flexible so I volunteer at least two days a week.

One of my jobs is as a community representative with New York City’€™s Administration for Children Services (ACS), the agency tasked with monitoring at risk children in their homes. Whenever there is a report of a child being abused, they call us in to sit in on a case. We are observers, simply a support system to the family. Because of the threat of children being taken away, people are not trusting. So we act like a buffer.

I also work with the foster care system, and attend visitations where parents whose children have been taken away have time with them. At a certain stage, when the parents are being trusted with the children, that’s where we come in, facilitating the visit between the biological parent and their child. We report on how the parents are doing – if they were on drugs or under the influence of anything.

As a Christian, I’ve been doing community work all my life, so this is a natural progression. It’€™s all volunteer, but we get training and retrained every so often.

I’m passionate about this work because I have a heart for children -€“ I have three of my own. There is a lot of abuse in homes that we don’t know about and if you can save one child from that, you’€™re doing a lot. A lot of times, the parents we deal with are so grateful for the support. A lot are young women going through something and I give them advice and pray for them. As a group, we volunteers are making a whole lot of difference.

I was born in Trinidad and was foreign to this country and I got a lot of help when I arrived here. So this is my way of paying it forward. It’€™s also kind of selfish. I want my children to live in a better world, so I’€™m taking part in something that will help the generations to come.

My advice is to find an organization you like and start giving back. Do one thing and a lot of doors open up. Do a little bit and it snowballs.