Thursday, January 16, 1997
Service-oriented undergrads help those less fortunate to help
themselves through discussion and encouragementBy Peggy Shen
Daily Bruin Contributor
UCLA undergraduates are reaching out to the homeless, teaching
them how to C.O.P.E.
C.O.P.E., Community Outreach for Prevention and Education,
offers undergraduate students the unique opportunity to interact
directly with homeless residents living in shelters in the Santa
Monica and Venice area.
Once a week, students spend an evening at a homeless shelter and
engage in active group discussions with the shelter’s residents to
promote self-empowerment and encourage independent living
skills.
In the process, students are able to provide resources and
education to improve the health and well-being of the residents.
Information comes not only from the C.O.P.E. interns, however, but
also from the experiences and ideas of the homeless participants
themselves.
"It is not so much like we are going to tell them the answers to
every single thing and every problem, how to fix it, but we help
them to figure out how to fix their own problems," said Sophie
Sobol, a site coordinator at St. Joseph’s Drop-in Center in Venice,
one of the four field sites working with C.O.P.E. "That is the most
important thing."
C.O.P.E. interns work with the clients to motivate them to solve
their own problems by providing useful information, and also by
encouraging communication between the participants.
According to Allen Miller, founder and director of C.O.P.E.,
these activities are the essence of self-empowerment, which is the
goal of the program.
"You don’t want to have a lecture by any means. The best way to
ensure that this is a valuable experience is to get them involved,"
said Sobol, a sixth-year physiological science major.
"Make sure they do a lot of the talking … from there, you can
take them from where they are and help them to a place where you
know they can be more successful," she said.
Marcel Fraix, site coordinator at the Santa Monica Shelter
agrees that teaching through discussion and not through lecturing
is the best idea. The goal is to have a "cohesive discussion,"
which can be difficult with all of the activities going on in the
shelter, he said.
Among the Santa Monica Shelter’s weekly activities is an
Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Residents of the center must either
choose to join the alcoholic group or participate in C.O.P.E. once
a week as a requisite for staying in the transient shelter which
only houses adults.
Stress is also a major concern among the residents, one that
extends to the other shelters.
As the site coordinator at the Lieucap Homeless Shelter, where
only mothers, adolescents and children reside, Christie Arnold
encounters this topic on a regular basis. "The things that come up
a lot are stress and their children," said Arnold, a fourth-year
sociology major. "They love talking about their children."
Although groups are separated between the adults, teenagers and
children, C.O.P.E. interns are still able to help enhance
mother-child relationships and promote family cohesiveness, while
targeting each group’s individual problems.
"I think C.O.P.E. is 100 percent help for the mothers, to
re-establish their self-esteem, to get back into society," said
Kathleen Crishon, who along with her son William, is a former
Lieucap resident.
"It is nice to know there is someone there for (the mothers),
that cares about them," said Crishon, now a cosmetologist.
One of the first C.O.P.E. interns since the program’s inception
in April 1996, Arnold said she appreciates the bonds formed between
the interns and the homeless residents.
"The biggest thing is definitely the relationships," said Arnold
"The relationships that I have established and the potential that
these relationships have."
Sobol at the St. Joseph Drop-in Center echoed these sentiments.
"The best part of the program is really getting to know the people
that you work with and finding out what it is that they need," she
said.
At St. Joseph, the majority of the C.O.P.E. participants speak
primarily Spanish. Sobol said that this makes it a little
different, as this community has parents that need to go over
"Spanish issues," such as getting citizenship or acquiring
vocational skills.
C.O.P.E. clients voluntarily walk to St. Joseph to participate
in the program, which Sobol said she considers an indicator of the
success of C.O.P.E.
"We know that our site is successful because people have been
coming back for six months," said Sobol.
"We know we have to be valuable to them because otherwise they
wouldn’t come anymore," she added.
C.O.P.E. interns are trained and informed of possible issues
that may come up in the shelters in Medicine 190A, offered by the
UCLA School of Medicine each Fall and Spring Quarter. Students are
selected after applications and interviews to attend the class and
then serve on C.O.P.E. for at least one quarter.
While Medicine 190A provides the interns’ basic training,
faculty nurses and physicians also help supervise at the shelters
to address any questions interns or residents may have.
Nevertheless, Tom Kennon, assistant clinical professor in the
department of psychiatry, one of the four faculty members
associated with C.O.P.E., attributes the program’s early success to
Allen Miller and the UCLA interns.
"The faculty are just behind the seams. The students are the
heart and soul."
GENEVIEVE LIANG/Daily Bruin
C, a resident at a Santa Monica shelter, discusses health
education with C.O.P.E. intern Talar Tejirian (r.), a fourth-year
psychology and neuroscience student, and fellow resident Eric
Colson.