"Feel Like a Person Again" Despite Unemployment and Homelessness

Mariana is a woman who should be at the peak of her professional career. At age 47, she has a CPA, an MBA, 27 years of work experience and is fluent in English. However, Mariana is unemployed.

When the Argentine economy went into a recession, Mariana lost her job and since has only been able to secure temporary employment. Her luck continued to deteriorate in December of 2001, when Argentina’s economic crisis worsened. Now, Mariana was unable to find even temporary employment. By April of 2002, she was completely broke; she could not afford her rent and lost her apartment. For the first time in her life she was homeless.

Thus, Mariana decided to contact the Jewish community. She went to the new AMIA JCC, and was directed to JDC’s Social Assistance Center. JDC enrolled her in a housing program and provided her with food. Now that she had basic sustenance, JDC pointed her in the direction of the Ariel Job Center and started to help her rebuild her career. Mariana said, "There I felt like a person again. I survived thanks to my community, to the help they gave me."

Mariana continued by saying, "It was amazing and refreshing to see so many volunteers working to keep others afloat, to help feed them, to help them find work." At the Ariel Job Center, Mariana has built up a network of colleagues and friends in similar situations. With the support of her new friends and JDC, she is actively sending out her resume and pursuing a new job. She feels that she is no longer in the desperate situation that she was in April of 2002.

She says, "My favorite book and one of the few things I managed to save is Victor Frankl’s ‘Man in Search of Meaning.’ He survived the concentration camps and in the book he explains what makes one go in extreme situations, in moments when suffering is beyond belief. He says that 2 thing are the most important: to love somebody and to have some unfinished business; something that you must do, something worth living for."

Mariana concluded by saying, "I stick to that. I stick to my love and to all the things I still have to do."