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Lena Sclove

EDITOR'S NOTE: Lena Sclove of Amherst, 18, offered the following remarks at the Paragon Awards ceremony Thursday to explain the work she has done as a volunteer writing coach at the shelter run by Safe Passage since June.

NORTHAMPTON - I often see the shelter as an exaggerated, mini-version of the world: there is pain, suffering, strength, racism, classism, poverty, wealth, prejudice, love and healing.

Out in the world, we all have a story. Similarly, everyone in the shelter has a story. However, many of the women I work with have been living in fear and silence for years. They might not be ready to share their story. But in my writing group, I give them a chance to write with the group assumption that their work is fiction.

So instead of being psychoanalyzed, they take on a new identity: that of being an artist.

I am constantly reminded that I don't know anything. Just when I start to think I am beginning to get how this work goes, something new smacks me over the head. But that is what is exhilarating about the work. That's what makes it my work, and nobody else's. The work is constantly a teaching in humility. Acknowledging my own privilege. Acknowledging my own ignorance. Acknowledging that is okay to make mistakes as a volunteer - volunteers are humans too.

The children blow me away as well. In my kids' writing group, often I work with bilingual kids, who aren't confident writing in English. I always tell them they are welcome to write in Spanish. But often, they end up reading something in English. "It just sort of came out," they tell me later.

They never had anyone care what they wrote before. They never knew writing mattered. And then all of a sudden, they like school, because they realize so much of school is writing.

And they are bringing pages and pages of English stories to the group each week that they worked on in the cafeteria, or at recess. What started out as "story-writing time" quickly transforms into a method of encouraging literacy. I feel I can't take much credit for this. All I do is give them a space to express themselves. The rest comes from them.

I think the single most important aspect of volunteerism is acknowledging and voicing the reality that I gain just as much, if not more, from the experience, as the people who I work with.

I work tirelessly to remove any sense of hierarchy in the writing group. I am not the teacher. In fact, in most cases, the women are at least twice my age. I am there to give them an opportunity to be heard.

To be respected. To discover their inner brilliance. And as they read me their writing, I feel honored and privileged and undeserving to be blessed enough to hear their words.

In the writing group, I always write with the women. I write raw and personal things that make me just as vulnerable as they are when they share their writing. They have taught me so much about my own writing.

Because in the sacred writing space of our group, we don't listen with our minds. We listen with our bodies. We feel a visceral reaction. We listen with our hearts. We don't judge each other, and we don't criticize each other, because we are simply telling stories - how can a story be wrong?

Listening with the body and the heart is the only way to hear stories of abuse, rape, and murder. The human mind can't conceptualize all the emotions that go into these experiences. But hearing a woman read about it - I feel my blood boil with anger, my breathing quicken in fear, and my heart come alive with empathy.

As humans we are all capable of these reactions, and in fact, we can't control them. What matters, though, is what we do with these feelings. In my opinion, signing up for a training, or showing up at an agency, is not the only way to begin volunteering.

I feel that we should first start by listening. So many of us go about our days without really hearing those around us. And if we don't hear, how can we expect to understand? And if we don't understand, how can we expect to change things?

Listen. Be the one to give someone who has been silenced by society a chance to voice the injustice. And then, use your understanding, and your resources, and your passion, to find a place for yourself in the volunteering world. I never would have thought that something as seemingly simple as listening could bring me so close to women from completely different backgrounds.

But I listen to her. She listens to me. By communicating across barriers, about the barriers, we break them. So I beg all of you to break the silence. Listen. Speak. And use what you learn to make a difference in your personal lives, in your communities and in the world.

Lena Sclove, a senior at Amherst Regional High School, will attend Tufts University in the fall. She won this year's youth award from the Paragon Partnership.