FYI staff members Alessandro Guimaraes (left) and Jeremiah Roman load boxes of food into a delivery vehicle in front of New York Common Pantry, who supplements our food deliveries with donations from Fresh Direct.
Alessandro Guimaraes is an FYI Social Worker at Gregorio Luperon High School. Recently, he has driven all over northern Manhattan and the Bronx as a part of FYI’s emergency food response. We interviewed Alessandro about how his role in the organization has shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, what were the key elements of your job?
I have a several responsibilities at Gregorio Luperon High School: One of the most important aspects of my job is individual counseling. I get referrals from teachers about students who are looking for advice about mental health, and I offer therapy sessions or guidance. However, I also run the “Green Team,” which is the recycling club, with the environmental science teacher Ms. Gomez, the Guitar Club, and a recreational soccer practice for students to get some exercise. All of these programs relate back to my training as a social worker and to work with students on emotional regulation, problem solving, and support.
How has your work changed?
It’s changed pretty drastically. Offering remote counseling has been a little more difficult: sometimes a student’s phone will die, or they will have trouble with the internet. It’s generally a bit harder to get in touch with students.
I’m part of a great team of social workers and mental health professionals who have mobilized to meet the needs of our families. When families reach out to the FYI phone bank, Jessica [Parra] or I help families fill out applications for SNAP or unemployment. There are still families are having difficulties filling out these applications even though their workplaces have been shut down since March –– can’t understand the form in English, don’t have access to internet, etc.
I’ve also been investing my time in the food delivery process by delivering meals directly to families in need.
What have been the biggest challenges during quarantine?
I am very physically active at work. If there’s a referral, I look for the student, I don’t wait for them to come find me. I figure it’s better to be proactive than reactive. I am always walking around. Since we’ve started working remotely, my living room has become my office. Distancing myself from my work has been very challenging: I miss the kids; I miss shaking their hands in the hall when they come into school in the morning and when they leave in the evening.
We’ve also seen a lot of new referrals and many more cases of serious mental health concerns. It’s become a lot more intense. We see an escalation in conflict within the family, especially where there were existing communication problems before COVID. For some teens, home is not a safe space, and parents don’t know how to manage having their children home all day. The lack of privacy for counseling sessions also makes it harder to work with students.
Which part of the food delivery has stood out to you the most?
When we put out a call to the staff to see who would be able to help deliver food, we got more than enough responses from folks who were willing to participate. So, the willingness of the team to work together has stood out to me, as well as the participation from the New York Common Pantry by providing food on a weekly basis.
Alessandro with a group of students from Gregorio Luperon High School on a college trip to the University of Pennsylvania in the Spring of 2019.
It also has been great to have a little piece of human connection. Many of the families that receive food are participants who I know and have worked with, so it’s good to see them in person. Of course, we’re seeing each other from a distance, with masks on –– no one has gotten a haircut in a while, so we’re all a little shaggy –– but it’s good to see them nonetheless.
What are you looking forward to as the city reopens?
I don’t expect the food delivery services to stop right away: we have to keep up with the needs of our families to the best of our ability. I hope that some of our families can go back to work as the city reopens, but I know it will take some time for their first paycheck to come in, they may have to catch up on rent or backpay some bills. It’s hard to not think of other the families that live in multi-generational households, who live with elderly family members, or are otherwise at a greater risk; it’ll be a slower reopening for them. I don’t expect the food delivery to end in the summer, and we’re prepared to continue as long as we need to.
In social work, we talk about the Pyramid of Needs. On the bottom layer are food and shelter. If families do not have access to food or shelter, we can’t do the work that we were focusing on before the pandemic: academics, coping skills, social-emotional support. We have to take it step by step.