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Interview with Lydia Hornbaker - Service-Learning Newsletter

May 31, 2018

In April, senior, Lydia Hornbaker, was awarded the inaugural Service-Learning Award at the Benedictine College Honors Convocation. The award will recognize one student each year whose involvement in service-learning has exemplified the College’s mission to educate men and women within a community of faith and scholarship, particularly through their academic excellence and authentic, mutually transformative encounters with the community. Lydia received the award for her work with the First Judicial District CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) Association through the service-learning course, Psychology Service Experience (PSYC 4850). We took a moment to ask Lydia a couple questions about her award.

Center for Service-Learning: You seemed very surprised by the award – did you have any idea ahead of time?

Lydia: I honestly was very surprised! My teacher, Dr. Posey, had mentioned that she wanted to nominate me, so I knew I was in the running, but I had no idea I would win. Benedictine College is a Catholic college where students are taught the virtue of charity. Volunteering is something we all do here! I know so many of my peers who have gone above and beyond in giving and who have really done amazing things to better the community of Atchison, so I was completely shocked and honored that I won the award, and extremely excited for the generous donation to the CASA organization!

Center for Service-Learning: What motivated you to choose CASA as your community partner for the class?

Lydia:  When I first found out about CASA, I realized the organization had volunteers and employees who worked as advocates for children in the legal system. My career goals are to become a lawyer working for children in the foster care system and who have unfortunately become involved in human trafficking here in Kansas City.

Center for Service-Learning: In what ways did the readings and discussions in Psychology Service Experience help you as you served at CASA? In what ways did your work at CASA help you better understand the academic content of the class?

Lydia: The content of the course that helped me the most was learning about diversity and how to combat issues relating to diversity in these types of environments. As I have mentioned, the families involved with CASA are usually low income families with backgrounds completely different from my own. In class we learned how to work around differences and how to act when we are in a situation that is hard for us to handle… Now I know what to look for, and how to handle myself around diverse family groups.

Center for Service-Learning: Tell us about the final project you did for your class – about the toys.

Lydia: My final project for CASA was actually a school project for the fall semester. I started CASA through my Service learning class for my psychology major [Psychology Service Experience], and we were tasked with coming up with a way to help our organization. Children entering CASA have gone through numerous traumatic experiences, which can really hinder them physically and emotionally… Research has shown that children benefit greatly from play therapy, which is when a therapist supervises children playing, usually without guidance, and writes observations he or she notices. When people go through a traumatic event, they need to process that event. There are numerous studies that show children begin to heal from their experience with the help of a play therapist.

Unfortunately, getting licensed play therapists to work with these children would require more funding, let alone convincing judges and others that play therapists are needed. Really this is going to be a slow process, but I wanted to get a jump-start on it for my project. Play therapists need tools, namely toys, to help these children, so I conducted a toy drive last Christmas here in Atchison! I advertised the toy drive throughout Atchison and held the drive for the last week of school before Christmas break. I received a lot of generous donations, and was able to take a lot of toys to the Atchison site of CASA! CASA can always use resources and volunteers, so it was very nice that the community came together and helped out the children!

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