2022 Valedictorian Spotlight: Hope Sanders
Being chosen as CCF’s 2022 Valedictorian is a humbling experience. When you move in your purpose and not for acknowledgement, being acknowledged takes some getting used to.
In March of 2020, when COVID locked New York City down and we had to switch abruptly to remote school, I almost quit. I thought, “How am I going to be a social worker without socializing?” It was stressful for all of us. I saw classmates balancing childcare and Zoom classes, trying to focus with their child on their lap as the world we knew changed forever. The pandemic forced us to adapt to a whole new way of learning and we stayed the course. We didn’t limit our challenges; we challenged our limits.
When I started my college journey twenty years ago, I was an 18 year old girl incarcerated at Bedford Hills. I obtained my GED, started an Associate’s degree at Mercy College with excellent performance in my classes. I was only 13 credits away from an A.A. when TAP and Pell were banned for people in prisons and thus almost every prison college program in the country ended.
When I was released in 2008, I couldn’t wait to go back to college. I enrolled in CUNY Lehman through College Initiative but soon after developed an auto-immune disorder and was forced to withdraw from my classes. I was devastated. I promised myself I would return when I recovered.
After 10 years of various auto-immune therapies I received approval from my doctor to return to school. But I didn’t have any money. A counselor named Victor Rojas from the Fortune Society pointed me toward CCF. This is where I found the support I needed to work through my anxiety about starting school and persevere.
I pursued a degree in social work because I wanted to help people. Throughout the 18 years I was incarcerated the conversations I had with other women helped me understand that it was failing and biased social systems that made incarceration almost inevitable for us. I want to fix these systems to help those directly impacted and help create preventive measures to keep people from being incarcerated in the first place.
I am proud to say that 20 years after I first enrolled in college, I’m graduating from Lehman College with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work with honors, and CASAC-T. I will be starting the advanced standing MSW program at Columbia School of Social Work this Summer specializing in Policy! I overcame and I endured..
My fellow graduates and I all have the common bond of endurance. We are strength personified. We have a different view of life that others who haven’t been through what we have can’t understand. We pay it forward in the service we give to others.
According to the philosopher, Emmanuel Kant “the only thing good without qualifications is good will.” Good will is what drives our actions and grounds the intention of our act. It is good when it acts from duty. We do the right thing every time and don’t worry about the consequences. We don’t allow popularity to cloud our judgment. We walk in our purpose.
To my fellow graduates of the class of 2022: When your name is mentioned let it always be attached to what’s just and fair. We must hold integrity in our actions. We must serve as role models and mentors for those that follow. We can remove barriers for those that come after us, just as CCF has removed so many barriers for us.