Sarder 1 Meherun Sarder SOC 309 Professor Soyer December 15, 2016 Final Research Paper: South Asian Women's Dreams The United States has one of the most diverse populations in the world. From different ethnic groups to different gender orientations, all kinds of groups can be found here. Just as there are many groups, there are that many social service providers that are catering to each kind of need for each group. My volunteer experience it's a journey that began with a suggestion to find an organization within my own community, the South Asian community. When a friend had recommended I volunteer at Sapna NYC, a small community-based organization up in the Bronx, it had just the right feeling. To understand the needs of this minority group was my initial plan, upon starting my volunteer assignment. This was in order to understand the reasons of social change and movement. But I had realized that it's so much more complex. There are so many layers to understanding the needs of this group, to understanding the barriers they face, to try to acknowledge them, and perhaps one day start a social movement. As C. Wright Mills had said about the sociological imagination, the actual acknowledgment of the outside world, acknowledge that there actually is a grand scheme in life
Sarder 2 where everything and everyone is affected by one another, is crucial. We must stop living in our own bubble, and see what is going on around us, and bring change where there needs to be. My first encounter with a client showed me this part of the " world" that I was inattentive to, in my own community that too. Throughout my volunteer experience, time and again I understood that I am actually making a change but there was always a wish that I could do more. Working with South Asian immigrant women at Sapna NYC, I was helping translate and interpret for those who cannot speak in English. I was helping our social worker take initial intakes of new women who came in looking for services provided by us such as ESL classes, health and nutritional classes, programs aimed to treat depression in group settings, financial literacy classes and much more. I even had the opportunity to track goal setting plans with two clients that are a part of one of our economic empowerment programs called the Tiffin Project. It is one of these women in the Tiffin Project that I had chose to interview for my research, with her consent. Sabera Begum emigrated to New York from Bangladesh last year with her family, in hopes of a better future for her children. But when she came to this foreign country, she found herself unable to even utter a few words of English to speak to her son's teacher when she enrolled him into school. Having left a good paying job as a paralegal in her homeland, she came to the US and now was jobless because she believed didn't have