Dominic Carter ( political news anchor NY1 News) Inspires May 2009 Graduates with his personal experience of the Social Work Profession

Dominic Carter (political news anchor NY1)

provided an inspirational message to new MSWs as he addressed the graduates at the hooding ceremony of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work on May 22, 2009.

In his remarks Mr. Carter challenged the graduates enthusiastically with very poignant imagery drawn from his personal experience of the Social Work Profession.

"As your speaker today… I want to be clear and unequivocal about this…. way to go school of social work at Yeshiva University!!!! It is a great day in the City of New York today. I’m not talking about some weather forecast. But today is a great day because of graduates like you, on the move, trying to better society. It is a great day today!

Dean Gelman wasn’t aware of this, but I had a serious scheduling conflict. Just a few hours ago I was in the State of Wyoming, speaking at a national conference on child abuse.

I had to make a decision, stay at the conference or catch a late flight to be here with you.
Actions speak louder than words because I’m here.

And Dean Gelman, as the head of one of the best schools of social work in the entire country, and for you, President Joel I have a gifts from Yellowstone National Park.

Graduates I want you to know that if it came down to having, one or the other on my team, on my side you, or students at Ivy League institutions like Harvard University, guess who I would rather have on my side? Graduates of Yeshiva University

As illustrated by you being here today, you work very hard at achieving goals and no one has given you anything.

I would like to do something that is a little different.

Graduates the day belongs to you, but I want your parents to stand. Please, don’t ever forget these are the parents that have greatly sacrificed for you to be standing here today.

Please stand

You are entering a field where the mere fact that you committed to it, says a lot about your character. It proves you have a heart of gold that you want to help others, that you are committed to making a difference not just in the United States, but in making the world a better place. That, as far as I’m concerned, you are taking an ultimate challenge.

What you will do, on a daily basis, can determine whether a person lives or dies. You can single-handedly improve someone’s quality of life; bring a smile to a child’s face. You will have to ultimate power of with the stroke of a pen, deciding in our great country of material, wealth. whether a person has a meal for the day.

Pursue your dreams with passion! Pursue your dreams with passion!

These are trying times for our country.
You are entering a world full of problems:
a global economic recession
the high school drop out rate in Detroit Michigan is 66 percent

All one has to do is turn on the television to see the unprecedented times we are in now. TV commercials for cars that vow if you lose your job, the company will pay your car payment for up to a year.

But challenging times also provide great opportunity.
So I ask are you going to stand on the sidelines in life, and watch things happen, hope that you’re lucky and fortunate.

Or, are you going to be so good at what you do professionally that you create your own opportunities?

Perhaps one of the greatest lessons I learned, since graduating from college, is time will go fast, make good choices, smart decisions.

Winning in life is not measured by the amount of money in your bank account, or the number of homes, or the degrees on the wall. You become a real winner in life, when the winds of fate knock you down, and you manage to get back up.

You graduates are on the front line of saving lives. And your success, in the field you are entering, is personal for me, as personal as personal gets.

I grew up poor in the housing projects of this city. My grandfather was a heroin addict. There was no father in my life. He never signed my birth certificate. Laverne Carter, my mother suffered from severe mental illness. She heard voices telling her to hurt me, to choke me or throw me out of a window.

But people like you stepped in and saved my life!

I have found, and with the help of people like you.

It doesn’t matter where we start at in life.

It’s where we are going!!!!!

I am very proud of my mother, though hobbled and hampered; she staggered to the finish line. And she may not have had much in life, but she had me. I am her living will and testament to the fortitude of the human spirit. My mother was a survivor, and I inherited that same tenacity to overcome adversity…what a gift she gave to me. When my mother died, I was annoyed that yet again, everything fell on me and that she left nothing material. I was so wrong. My mother left a legacy worth more than any insurance policy. My mother lost her mind and managed to take it back. I am quite humbled by that achievement.

In life ,Graduates, we have to turn negatives into positives.

I want you to always remember your words carefully when you are dealing with others.

You graduates are on the front line of saving lives.

I went to five high schools in this city. And I had an African American guidance counselor, who looked just like me; tell me not to apply to college, because in his words, I would be either dead or in jail.

I turned his negative words into a positive in my life.

I thought I was the dumbest kid to ever graduate from the NYC public school system and I ended up graduating in 3 years instead of 4. Naysayers said I would never make it, but look at me today.

When you are helping others, I want you to always remember the photos I’m about to show you. (Shows photos of himself: on cover of NY Times TV guide; Photo with Nelson Mandela; Photo with President Bill Clinton; Photo with Oprah.)

You are joining a select group of graduates, the Alumni of the School of Social Work at Yeshiva University.

I want you to always remember:
The power you have in Social Work
and

The trust that in being put in you.

Best Wishes to you all"

Toronto Fundraiser for International Scholarships August 23, 2009

Please plan to join Toronto Area Wurzweiler School of Social Work Alumni for an afternoon fundraiser to benefit, Canadian Social Work Students at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work.

Tickets are $50.00 per person and should be purchased in advance.

email: cmmiller@yu.edu
or call: 212-960-0127 for more information.

Block Graduation 2009: Ruth Messinger

On July 21, 2009, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger MSW President of American Jewish WorldService, delivered the commencement address at the 32nd Block Commencement and Hooding Ceremony of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University. This class of MSW recipients represents a varied international demographic including, Japan, Canada, Israel, France and the US.

Ruth Messinger's speach:

"What a privilege it is for me to speak at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. I know your Deans well. I have been a social work supervisor for Wurzweiler in the past. I am a social worker so I have the honor of welcoming you to our distinguished profession.

We at American Jewish World Service now run service programs in the developing world for YU and Stern College undergraduates. And, the VP for External Affairs at AJWS, Phyllis Teicher Goldman, is the daughter of your school’s founder and first Dean, Morton Teicher, still a distinguished writer and activist in the Jewish community.

I appreciate the Dean’s introduction and hope to speak with you from my current perspective on the world—not so much about the challenges where AJWS now works but about my conviction that service alone is not sufficient, but must be accompanied by advocacy.

A word first to the parents, partners, children and friends of these graduates, I confer on you the degree PST which stands for Putting Someone Through and, with the graduates, I thank you for all you have done to support them with encouragement and love as they made their ways to this day.

And now, to the graduates: Take risks. Be bold, courageous and strong. Strive to make a mark on the society in which you live.

Remember, you are what you do. Not what you think or what you want or even what you dream. You are what you do.

You are the people who will shape the next century of our country and our world. And unfortunately that world is broken, a world of extreme poverty and obscene wealth, a world in which, as astonishing as this sounds, the 500 richest people earn more than the 416 million poorest. This is a world which offends our commitment to fairness and insults our belief in justice.

These inequities are further challenged by the current global recession. There are people we know who have suffered the loss of jobs, health coverage and retirement savings. Some are probably in this room, and you will undoubtedly be working with others. We must try to help these individuals maintain their dignity and self worth, for they still have much to contribute.

There are others we may know whose investment portfolios have shrunk, also probably in this room. They might think their lives have been substantially altered -- and in some ways they are right -- but for many of the world's poorest, shrinkage in their portfolio means going from one meal a day to none.

When we have less money than we used to have it hurts; it may limit our options and it can damage our sense of self. But we must remember that money is not everything. It is a tool. Our values and our integrity are the true essence of who we are as individuals and as a society, and we cannot let them diminish because our financial resources have shrunk.

We will be judged ultimately more by our values than by our monetary value. And there is no value more important than working to improve the way things are.

When you counsel a family with immense health care problems, you realize that the system of health care in this country must change. When you help cope with the life situation of many of our immigrant families, you know that that system needs repair. When you work with young people who are languishing in our schools through no fault of their own, you realize that service is critical but not sufficient, that advocacy is needed to change the way things are, to make our country—and then the world—a more just place.

I hope that as you shape your lives and build your futures you will do this work that you will choose to act for justice. Engage the problems that threaten the future of our nation and the world, and embrace a responsibility to people in need, locally and globally. Do it at any and every job site, as a voter, in the community where you live and as an individual seeking that higher sense of self. This is our 21st century challenge.

It is really very much a question of how you use the resources you do have -- of money, yes, but also of professional skill, of values, commitment, energy, time, leadership and organizing ability–- to make a difference.

There are, as you all know, national and global problems of climate change and of health care, of shelter and of sanitation. But the worst consequences of growing inequity are seen today in the eyes of the children, those dying of hunger in Africa and those neglected in our own communities, the children here or there whose futures are being unfairly curtailed as we sit here this morning.

I would like to dedicate the rest of my remarks—and our shared work—to these children.

In our own country -- still, by far, the richest country in the world, where 12 million children were below the poverty line last year -- the assumption is that 17 million children will have fallen below that line by the end of this year, their families coping with unemployment, rising food costs and the disappearance of affordable housing.

Globally, children of every race and nationality have the same problems, but they are of an almost unimaginably larger magnitude. There are 27,000 children a day -- yes 27,000 children a day -- who lose their lives to an abject poverty which is both a cause and an effect of hunger and disease.

There is no easy way to say this and no easy way to hear it. But I pray that you do hear it, and that you do not retreat to the convenience of being overwhelmed. Let me repeat that: We cannot retreat to the convenience of being overwhelmed. There is work for us to do, and these children need our commitment if we are not to lose more of them to inequity and injustice.

For the first time in history, the world has the knowledge, the resources and the capacity to move all people out of poverty, to effect change in every corner of the globe. The question is whether we will all take part in this effort, whether we will bend our minds and our voices, our energies and our material resources to helping the other and the stranger and to pursuing justice.

Those of you receiving your degrees today—whatever your background, your area of expertise, your life work to date, your plans for your future—graduate to positions where you can influence and redirect people’s lives. You have made many life choices and faced many challenges to get to this day.

What I wish for you is the capacity and the determination to keep making choices, to keep challenging yourselves, and to strive against many obstacles to live your faith and your values. My hope is that you take to heart the teaching of Gandhi that you must be the change you hope to see in the world. This is the only moral course of action for the 21st century.

We can act individually. Think for a minute of what contact you have had with other countries and their citizens since you woke this morning. Did you drink coffee or cocoa picked in the developing world? Do you know where every article of your clothing was made? We can respond, paying attention to what we eat, where we buy our coffee and our clothes, whose employment benefits we protect, how we limit our impact on the environment, what we do with our time and our money to strengthen these connections for good.

We can act collectively, at the governmental level; to ensure that the world’s industrialized nations invest in creating greater equity. We can start with that health care legislation or with immigration reform or with work for better school systems. We can move on to urge our governments to provide full forgiveness on debt owed by developing countries. They can dismantle trade agreements that allow their countries and multi-national corporations to become wealthier at the expense of the world's poor. And for the price of two months of war in Iraq each year, we could put all children in school, eliminate avoidable infant death, wipe out malaria and cut global poverty in half by 2015.

Significant progress has been made, but there is much more to do. We have a long journey ahead. What is required, first, is that we embrace our responsibility to humanity, commit to help those with whom we do not share a faith, a neighborhood, a country, a language, or a political structure.

What is required, next, is that we keep these intentions front and center in our own lives. As you build your life, as you create the person you will be, keep your eye on the pursuit of justice. Own the problems, accept responsibility and commit to work for change.

Do not do this work by yourself. Step forward, get involved and then exercise your power to mobilize, to organize, to convince others. Be inclusive, build a community of activists, and convey a sense of hope and possibility to those with whom you work.
And undertake these efforts with a mixture of patience, of hope and of fun. Understand the often complex, always too slow, ways to get from here to there. Believe in the possibility of change. And don’t forget the fun. If we want joy and friendship and laughter at the end of the struggle then we must have them along the way.
This is what I wish for all of you and for all of us. Hone your political will and your moral determination. Act with integrity. Build a better world for all children, wherever they live. The child in a homeless shelter in the Bronx, or the child holding an empty bowl in the slums of Delhi might one day cure Parkinson's disease or stop global warming.

Be of service but remember: being of service is not sufficient. Help tackle the root causes of injustice, plan for larger social action, demand new policies and appropriations, and embrace advocacy.

This is not someone else’s job. We must become the leaders we have been waiting for.

Act without waiting to be asked, give and do more rather than less. Live your life so that your children can tell their children that you not only stood for something but that you acted on it.

Heed the observation of Rabbi Heschel that “living is not a private affair of the individual; it is what we do with God’s time, what we do with God’s world”. Accept the challenge to do the most you can with your time in this world, constructing lives of commitment where acts of loving kindness and acts of political courage are woven into the fabric of your days.

As our text teaches, the answers are not in heaven and not beyond the sea. As long as there is poverty, violence and oppression any place, we are all from an underdeveloped world. It is within our reach in the 21st century to end global poverty, expand human rights and build civil society. The future of the world is in our hands.

As you embark on this work of building prophetic community, I know you will keep in mind the wisdom from Pirke Avot which teaches that we are not required to complete the task but cannot refuse to participate.

This same thought was very powerfully expressed by the faith leader who inspired the peasants with whom we work in El Salvador. Let me close with those words from Archbishop Oscar Romero:

We accomplish in our lifetime
Only a tiny fraction of
The magnificent enterprise
That is god’s work.

This is what we are about.
We plant seeds
That one day will grow.

We water the seeds already planted
Knowing that they hold future promise
We lay foundations that
Will need further development…


We may never see
The end results,
But that is the difference…

We are prophets
Of a future not our own".