Doing good is in Meta Bodewes' blood. The daughter of civil-rights activists, she has always wanted to work on behalf of social justice. Now, after receiving master's degrees in social work and public administration from Columbia University and incurring a mountain of student debt, she has finally landed her dream job.
Bodewes, 33, works as a social worker at the Children's Aid Society in the Bronx, where she manages a team of five social workers and oversees the casework for 75 families. In her free time, she is a volunteer guide for hikes sponsored by the Central Park Conservancy. She shops at farmers markets and charity boutiques so her money will “go to a good cause.”
But her idealism comes at a high price -- close to $90,000 in student loans. Each month, after paying $1,000 for her rent-controlled apartment and nearly the same amount toward combined credit card and student debt, Bodewes has little left to save.
Despite the rigors of a full-time job, she often baby-sits on weekends at $15 per hour to make a little extra cash. She rarely goes out to eat. She shops for clothes at second-hand stores and furnishes her apartment with hand-me-downs; an ex-boyfriend’s aunt gave her a couch.
Reporter’s special
My beat is Flushing, a neighborhood famous for excellent Chinese food. But now, Chinese restaurants are struggling to stay in business. When I ask people on the street “Who’s feeling the pinch?” they usually point to a restaurant owner. Proprietors are doing their best to lure customers back into restaurants -- they hand out fliers and give out two-for-one deals, coupons and discounts. One mom-and-pop restaurant owner offered me a “Reporter’s Special” if I published a good review of the restaurant. I didn’t take it -- but I can’t say I wasn’t tempted.
Foreclosure blight
Given the high profile of national housing woes, I thought it would be easy to find foreclosures data on New York City neighborhoods. But it seems that very few organizations track foreclosure on the micro level. When I was finally able to get a list of foreclosures by zip code from the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, I was shocked. Mapped out, it looked like blight was slowly engulfing the entire borough of Queens. The neighborhoods of Jamaica and Hollis alone are on track to have more than 2,000 foreclosures in 2008. I had no idea it was so bad.
—Malia Politzer
Bodewes is an example of a growing trend -- young, idealistic professionals eager to make a difference in the world, only to find themselves weighed down by student debt and other financial burdens. For some, financial pressures end up breaking them, forcing them to abandon their ideals for more lucrative fields. But Bodewes is determined to stick it out, come what may.
"She's an incredibly hard worker and has a very good sense of herself,” says Jennifer March, associate director of alumni relations at Columbia’s School of Social Work. “Meta knows what she wants to do and is not afraid to go for it,…Meta is the kind of person you gravitate to because she's passionate about what she does."
Nor is Bodewes easily rattled.
"My general philosophy is that something happens and I find a way to pay," she says. "A babysitting gig pops up at the last minute when it looks like I'll be eating rice for a week. Health insurance reimbursement will come in when I desperately need it. The universe ends up taking care of me."
