Volunteers spend year on a mission of Mercy Mercy Corps offers local lay volunteers an opportunity to minister to others By Michelle Martin STAFF WRITER Maria Luisa Rodriguez thought she would be getting ready for medical school now. Instead, the 25-year-old St. Xavier University graduate is working 40 hours a week at the Don Miller House, a residence for people with end-stage AIDS in Baltimore. Last summer Rodriguez joined the Mercy Corps, a 21-year-old program sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy that allows adults to spend a year volunteering to help those in need. She is one of three Chicago-area residents spending this year helping people in other parts of the country. Two Mercy Corps volunteers from elsewhere are volunteering their services in Chicago Catholic schools. The lay volunteer program is open to men and women grounded in Christian values and witnessed by Catherine McAuley, who founded the Sisters of Mercy. They need not be Catholic, said Mercy Sister Kathleen McClelland, but they must be comfortable with the Catholic tradition. So far, all of Chicago’s volunteers have been Catholic, she said. “We have had such normal, such wonderful volunteers,” McClelland said. “You couldn’t ask for nicer people.” Among them is Angela Casey, 24, one of two volunteers working in Chicago this year. Casey, a teacher’s assistant in the preschool at St. Angela, came to Chicago from Cork, Ireland, but she first learned about Mercy Corps when she was visiting her sister on the North Side and read a notice in the St. Margaret Mary Parish bulletin. “I spent two years working with special needs kids and going to college at night, and I knew I wanted to spend a year volunteering,” she said. “It seemed like the right time to do it, before I got attached or anything.” Casey lives with Amy Carignan, 22, who is volunteering as a teaching assistant at St. Malachy School. “I had always wanted to do something like this,” said Carignan, who is from Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Rodriguez joined the corps after she decided she didn’t want the pressure of medical school and found herself at loose ends. The friend who encouraged her to apply, Amanda Wampole, now is a Mercy Corps volunteer at St. Michael School on a reservation in Arizona. Another Chicago volunteer, Kesha Daniels, is working with a team providing services to women at Mercy Center in the Bronx. They are among 41 volunteers who have committed this year to the Mercy Corps. Twenty-nine are 21 to 24 years old, five are between 25 and 40 and seven are older than 50. Time in the Mercy Corps is more than hard work in service to others. It’s also time to live in community with other volunteers and to develop spiritually through prayer and through living a simple life. Each volunteer receives $100 a month in spending money and $100 a month to pool with fellow volunteers for food. Housing, transportation and medical insurance are provided free, McClelland said. Federal Americorps grants and student loan deferments also are available. “It’s really not bad. But they’re not shopping at the Gap anymore,” McClelland said. Some people find it rewarding enough that they sign up for another year, an option Rodriguez is considering; one married couple is on its third year of service. Rodriguez, who has a health-related background, now cares for five men with AIDS. Depending on the shift she works, she gets them up, cooks for them, washes up, does their laundry and sees that they get their medication. “They call me Miss Betty Crocker because I live by the Betty Crocker cookbook,” she said. But the fun is tempered with sadness. The week before she came home for Christmas, one of the residents she cared for died. “He was really sick,” she said. “He was bedridden most of the time. But when he died, I thought all my hard work had gone down the tubes. Then I thought it hadn’t, because I had learned so much, and I made his stay here a little bit more at ease. I know now he isn’t suffering. I know now he can have his cigarettes without yelling at me.” Casey’s days are spent trying to keep up with a classroom of three- and four-year-olds. “It’s fun, but it can be tiring,” she said. “There are good days and bad days.” Both kinds of days have led Casey to decide she wants to pursue a career working with children, possibly those with special needs. They also have taught her more about her own capabilities. “I’ve learned to stand on my own two feet, first of all, and have more confidence,” she said. Volunteers are expected to spend at least one evening a week together in prayer, and to have meals and spend time together, McClelland said. For Casey and Rodriguez, the spiritual component has become an important part of the experience. “It really has brought me closer to God,” Casey said. For more information about Mercy Corps, write Sister Kathleen McClelland, RSM, 10024 S. Central Park Ave., Chicago. IL 60655-3132 or call her at (773) 779-6011.
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