Editor’s note: Somos day of service returns and is needed ‘more than ever’

“Exhausted” was how Camille Joseph Varlack described feeling after the first two days of this year’s Somos conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ chief of staff was among the first attendees to show up early Friday morning for the day of service. After the programming, workshops, receptions, networking, parties and discussions into the early morning hours, Joseph Varlack and others looked surprisingly rested and ready to give back to the island community. “I mean, this is what matters,” she told City & State, as volunteers boarded a bus for Cataño.

A tent was set up along the waterfront in the town 10 miles west of San Juan for a food and backpack giveaway hosted by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, in partnership with The New York Foundling. Members of 250 families lined up in the sun for the distribution and information on valuable social services. A discussion followed at Cataño’s town hall with a panel of social services experts calling for collaboration among nonprofits and governmental groups that help the neediest of Puerto Ricans. Trump administration cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other federal benefits have threatened the progress that’s being made of moving people out of poverty. María Enchautegui Román of the Instituto del Desarrollo de la Juventud, a child services agency, said poverty, at best, was being “mitigated.” The discussion highlighted child care and affordability issues and ended with a “call for action.” “The reality is with SNAP cuts, the government shutdown, all of these benefits that the administration is cutting, we have to do more than ever,” J. Antonio Fernandez, CEO of Catholic Charities, said on the bus back to the El Caribe. “Now this is the time for us to step up.”