“My Job is to Provide Hope”

Amalia Saborio on the Importance of Social Services at Canal Alliance

Amalia Saborio, Senior Case Manager on the Social Services team at Canal Alliance joined our staff over four years ago and serves as a primary entry point for clients. Every day she meets with individuals to hear their stories, listen, and serve as a finder for people who need additional resources from within — and outside of — of Canal Alliance.  

Amalia and our social services team together serve approximately 1,260 individuals a year, providing upwards of 2,250 unique service offerings annually.  

Amalia connects with people who have arrived at Canal Alliance’s doors after overcoming impossible odds. These individuals often fled their countries of origin due to violence, abuse, or poverty. As if their circumstances were not difficult enough, Amalia notes that most of her clients endure additional hardships in their journeys to — and across — the U.S. border: hardships like theft, the death of children and loved ones, hunger, exhaustion, and extortion.  

“When clients arrive at Canal Alliance, they are desperate. They are terrified, hungry, and have no idea where to start,” says Amalia. “My job is to provide hope.” 

Amalia takes this responsibility seriously, which is a big reason as to why she brings her heart and soul to her work. “Even if I didn’t need to work to earn a living,” she says, “I would do this work for free. I love providing hope and love to fellow immigrants. It is a way for me to pay it back, and to pay it forward.” 

Amalia says the entire social services team brings this same love and empathy to their roles, and collectively they offer protection to clients, knowing that without complete confidentiality clients would not feel safe enough to ask questions or share the of their circumstances. The trust that Canal Alliance has built in the Latino community over the years is profound, says Amalia, especially considering what a vulnerable community this is, and what these individuals have endured back home and on their way here. “That they choose to trust anyone ever again is incredible, that they trust Canal Alliance is an honor.”   

According to Amalia, part of the trust clients place in Canal Alliance and the social services team is based on the shared experiences of so many of our staff. “Many of us are immigrants too, people who came here — or whose parents came here — under the most difficult of circumstances. We aren’t just understanding, we understand.” In fact, Amalia says it isn’t uncommon to hear clients say — either to the Canal Alliance reception team or case managers — “I didn’t know where to go, who to ask. Canal Alliance is a blessing. You are my salvation.”  

The social services team, in turn, works to maintain this trust every day. 

By way of example, Amalia shared the story of a woman that we will call María. A year ago, Amalia says she found herself face-to-face with a new client, someone she had never met before. She was a mother who had just traveled by land – most of the way on foot – to the U.S. from Guatemala with her five children, then 17,15, 13, nine, and four years old. Offering her empathetic and loving ear, as always, Amalia worked to get to know the new client. She soon learned she had fled Guatemala after a local gang had extorted money from Maria’s family and, when they were unable to pay, murdered her husband as a punishment. María and her daughter managed to escape, and immediately fleeing to the U.S. with the rest of the children.  

“She was profoundly traumatized and didn’t know where to begin,” recounted Amalia. “I worked with her over the course of a year to find her affordable housing and a temporary job. Our team helped to get the children enrolled in school, and I referred the family to a legal aid organization to represent their asylum claim (which isn’t a type of case Canal Alliance’s immigration legal services team can currently take on). Then, Amalia supported the family in applying for passport appointments at the Guatemalan consulate. It was a hard and beautiful journey for this family, for this mother, but we worked together and now they are safe, fed, employed, and the kids are in school.” Amalia says that in cases such as this one, with so many traumas occurring one after another, she also does all she can to destigmatize enlisting the support of a trained therapist, referring willing clients to Canal Alliance’s behavioral health staff as much as possible.  

In another story, Amalia recalled helping a 16-year-old boy who was forced to stay here in San Rafael on his own when his mother had to return home to Guatemala. The two of them had come together, crossing the border in search of a better livelihood, leaving his three younger siblings back home in Guatemala in the care of his grandmother. But, during their journey to the U.S., his grandmother unexpectedly passed away, putting his mother into an impossible position. Ultimately, his mom came into Canal Alliance, explained their circumstances to Amalia. His mother found a room for rent for her son before returning to care for her three other children. At the time this boy spoke no English, extremely limited Spanish, and fluent ‘Quicheʼ, a Mayan language of the central highlands of Guatemala and Mexico. Amalia was not discouraged by their language barrier and began by securing him an urgent medical appointment with a specialized optometrist at UCSF, calling repeatedly until she was able to book the follow up appointment he needed. After receiving his new glasses, he came back to see Amalia to say thank you with a smile on his face. Together they hosted a video call with his mom back home so he could tell her how much better he could see.  

The humanity and tenacity of our Social Services team doesn’t end there, Amalia says. She has also found herself supporting clients battling cancer in more the one instance, most recently helping a client who feared she would lose her apartment while on leave from work to complete a course of chemotherapy. Determined, as always, Amalia was able to connect the client with the SOS program, run by Community Action Marin, Amalia completed the application with the information provided by the client and submitted it for review which was approved and allowed the client to pay her rent while undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Once in recovery, Amalia says this woman came back into Canal Alliance’s office to thank her, and to ask for her help in sending a thank you to her medical team, too.  

“While no one story can illustrate the breadth of services we are able to provide, or secure, for our clients,” says Amalia, “I think these three stories illustrate our approach to the work, which I summarize like this: ‘If Canal Alliance can’t address your challenge, we will always figure out who can.’”  

Amalia goes on, “I want my clients to know they matter, that they are important, that we care about the challenges they are facing, and that we will do whatever we can to remedy those challenges. I want them to feel heard, and to do what I can to alleviate some of their fears. When I see clients leave our offices with a smile, or with a little bit more hope about the path ahead, I am reminded again how grateful I am to do this work, to do this work for Canal Alliance. As an immigrant myself, I can say that nobody dreams of crossing the border, the dream is to build a life here, a better life. And here at Canal Alliance, our social services team is an essential link in that chain. We provide the safety, stability, and security to make pursuit of one’s dreams possible.”