St. Vincent de Paul volunteers get practical tips on helping the poor
GREEN BAY — Facing threats of a home foreclosure, a job loss due to downsizing and critical delays in receiving unemployment checks, Ethel Quisler of Wausau didn’t know where to turn for help.
Attorney Monica Bogucki, chairman of the Voice of the Poor, an advisory arm of St. Vincent de Paul in Rochester, Minn., addressed the North Central Region of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul held in Green Bay June 25-27. Statues of Blessed Frederic Ozanam and St. Vincent de Paul are seen in the lower right. (Steve Wideman | For The Compass)
Friends recommended a financial seminar that only compounded Quisler’s questions about her situation until one seminar attendee, a Vincentian (member of the Society of the St. Vincent de Paul Society), offered her answers and guidance.
Today, the foreclosure threat is gone, financial stability has returned and Quisler has joined scores of Vincentians in the Diocese of Green Bay in helping the poor cope with their own challenging life issues.
“I very much appreciate what the Vincentians have done for me,” said Quisler during a three-day meeting of the six-state North Central Region of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul held June 25-27 at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Green Bay.
The conference drew attendees from North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Upper Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. One focus of the conference was how Vincentians can cope with shouldering the stress of those in need while facing a widening gap in services and funding, said attorney Monica Bogucki, chairman of the Voice of the Poor (an advisory arm of St. Vincent de Paul) in Rochester, Minn. and adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. Her Saturday presentation was titled, “Practical Tips for Working with Those Living in Poverty.”
“The poor are falling further and further behind,” Bogucki said. “Some simply can’t access services to help them and there is a decrease in funding for those services.”
She noted that some services provided to poor people haven’t increased their benefit amounts for 30 years.
“Our challenge is to continue working with our friends in need to solve their emergency issues and to prevent a crisis, while focusing on long-range goals to help (them) transition out of poverty,” Bogucki said.
Safety net programs, she noted, should be designed to be compassionate “so they do not create suffering.”
Bogucki said that many current safety net programs have not seen cost-of-living increases for years. Because of this, not only adults, but children as well, suffer.
“If children do not have enough to eat, for example, it hurts their concentration in school and they can fall behind academically,” she said.
The need for these safety nets, she stated, will not go away. “I think it is important to understand we will always need safety net programs,” she said.
A key component of all St. Vincent de Paul programs is the home visit, whereby Vincentian members visit the homes of all applicants seeking assistance.
“It’s important to let our friends know they are not isolated or alone,” Bogucki said.
But making those home visits, where Vincentians shoulder the pressures facing applicants, can be very stressful for the Vincentians, said Bogucki.
“We go to the home visits, as Vincentians, with a servant’s heart which is a heart filled with compassion and empathy. To see our fellow friends in need, suffering, struggling and going without, can really take a toll on a servant’s heart,” Bogucki said.
She said bureaucracies are overwhelmingly supportive about helping the poor, but the maze of complex laws and aid programs in individual states — and often at the local level within states — makes it difficult, and highly stressful, for Vincentians to maneuver when developing plans to help the poor.
She maintained that practical tips to educate Vincentians about all the resources available to help the poor and explain how systems work will help reduce those stress levels and increase efficiency.
Informing Vincentians about all available resources is important because knowledge brings hope, said Jeanne Harper of Marinette, national vice president of the society’s North Central Region.
“We are the only ones that do home visits. We don’t want people standing in line to receive services. We go right to their homes,” Harper said. “As Vincentians, we are gifted to bring the Gospel alive. To be a Vincentian is a vocation. It’s about partnering with our friends in need on a journey through life.”
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