Many of Safe Passage’s staff and interns took a walk together on Friday, October 2, 2015. We had been looking forward to a rare Friday morning when immigration court was not holding a docket of unaccompanied children. The fact that it was a little rainy and windy was not going to stop us!
We started off at City Hall Park in Manhattan, posing in front of the fountain designed by Jacob Wrey Mould (originally installed 1871 and rededicated in 1999). We then took a walk across the windy Brooklyn Bridge (opened in 1883 as the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge). In Brooklyn, we stopped briefly in Brooklyn Bridge Park (it’s on land that was a ferry landing in 1642) before having lunch together.
The chance to recharge our batteries was important because of the emotional demands placed on people who work with victims of trauma. Many of the unaccompanied minors that we help are trauma survivors. The issue of secondary trauma is important for our staff and for our volunteers.
At the end of the walk, we returned to the office reinvigorated to help unaccompanied children. Especially after we changed into dry clothes!
