Social Work LIVE: A LatinX Perspective on Violence Against Women

Professor Michael Friedman’s guests this week are two of Columbia’s MSW students, Yasmin Campos-Mendez and Marisol Castañeda. Their conversation will provide a LatinX perspective on violence against women.

About This Week’s Guests

The daughter of Mexican immigrants to California, Yasmin Campos-Mendez (bio), MSW’20, worked as a volunteer at La Casa de Las Madres, a Bay Area-based non-profit that advocates against domestic violence. She says that this experience challenged her to recognize the cycle of violence and trauma within her community and to learn more about psycho-education. It is also what inspired her to enroll in Columbia University’s MSW program. For her first field internship, she has been working with LatinX populations in Washington Heights. Recently selected for the Fisher-Cummings Fellowship, Campos-Mendez will pursue a policy field placement in Washington, DC, next year, where she hopes to strengthen her knowledge of the social services available to victims of domestic violence.

Born and educated in Mexico, Marisol Castañeda (bio) has worked in a variety of Mexico City-based social service organizations, including the Mexican Foundation for Social Reintegration, which assists incarcerated youthful offenders with reentry, and Ednica I.A.P., a community organization that promotes human rights and provides services for children and youth living on the streets of Mexico City. She has also witnessed the uprise of feminicidio (homicides against women motivated by gender-based reasons), a phenomenon that contributes to women emigrating to the United States or sending their children to live with family members who are in the United States. At Columbia, Castañeda is following the Advanced Generalist Practice & Programming (AGPP) track. She is particularly interested in restorative justice practices and is hopeful such practices could help stop the cycle of abuse in LatinX families.

About the Host

Michael Friedman is a social worker with over fifty years of experience in mental health and public policy. He has chaired, founded, or directed numerous city and state agencies and published approximately 200 articles, chapters, and essays, including a parody, The Diagnostic Manual of Mishegas. Since retiring he has continued to teach at the Columbia School of Social Work and to write about mental health, aging, and other topics at www.MichaelBFriedman.com and in a column for MedPageToday. He is also a semi-professional photographer and jazz pianist.

Questions?

Please contact swcommunications@columbia.edu.

*Links to FB Live Sessions are not generated until the event has started. Register to receive a reminder as well as a link to the stream shortly after the program begins (the link isn’t generated until we go live). Alternatively, you can go to CSSW’s Facebook page at noon. The stream will appear as the first post on the page.