Last week Wednesday, I attended the Rose Cafe with guest speaker Laura Rodriguez de Simons. Laura’s talk was about her work at the Ithaca Advocacy center. The advocacy center provides free support services for anyone who has been a victim of any type of abuse. She started off her talk by first describing how she got involved in advocacy programs and also described her first couple of jobs in Africa and South America. From then on, she began to describe what her job entails and her own personal thoughts and opinions on the work that she does. I never realized that advocacy programs helped so many people not only here in Ithaca, but in Africa, South America, and the rest of the world. It must be extremely difficult for people who have been abused, whether it be emotionally, mentally, or physically, to open up to others and talk about it. It must also be difficult for those who work at the advocacy center to hear about all the traumatic events that these people went through and to see what effects those events have on them.

While most of her talk did focus on the importance of having an advocacy center, the take away message I got was to do whatever you are passionate about. Just from her talk, I could tell that Laura truly cares about helping all of her patients and loves being able to be there for them in their time of need. I find it inspiring to see people who are extremely passionate about the work they do and it motivates me to follow my passions as well.