Cooper Gallery

At first glance, the view from the 7th floor Camden Coalition men’s bathroom looks like a simple overhead Camden skyline on a cloudy day. However, the elements in the photo combine to represent the health disparities that people in Camden often face, and the work that Camden Coalition is putting in to help the residents facing those challenges. At the bottom of the photo, we see an alley, with some living setups of people facing homelessness. I often see people relaxing on the sidewalk here, no matter what is happening with the inconsistent New Jersey weather that day. Behind the alley, we see several medical buildings in the Cooper health system. The crane highlights the brand-new hospital building that is in the works, which adds on to the older hospital building on its right. Camden is a health hub for so many people living in New Jersey, but there is a systemic failure that blocks many Camden citizens, such as those in the bottom of this picture, from receiving the care they need. This can be due to lack of finances, education, transport, or trust in the system. Many people facing homelessness have complex care needs that are either a cause or effect of their living situation, making their care more necessary but also more difficult to juggle. It is unjust that in a city where the volume of healthcare provided is visibly increasing, it remains difficult for everyone to reap the benefits.

This direct view from the Camden Coalition office is a reminder of what the team here is working for. Camden Coalition has several programs trying to combat the inequities that many Camden residents face, at individual, community, and regional levels. For example, the Housing First program finds people facing homelessness who are frequent ED visitors due to their complex care needs, and enrolls them in a system that provides both housing and healthcare coordination services. As represented by the photo’s gloomy weather over Camden, it can be hard to fight against a broken system each day without getting frustrated and burned out. I often feel guilty and privileged looking down at Camden from my air-conditioned buildings (both the Coalition office and my medical school which can be seen in the top-right of the photo), seeing people who are facing problems much greater than mine. While these feelings are important to acknowledge, making a change requires not allowing negativity to win. On the left side of one of the foreground buildings there is a mural called “Bridging the Digital Divide,” which is painted by artists who were born and raised in Camden. It shows scenes of past and present Camden, and symbols of technology represented as a positive tool to foster growth of the community and the Camden youth, leading to a hopeful future. Positivity like this is necessary for the Coalition to reach their goals, and I hope that all future workers in the medical field can reframe their negativity into positivity to make a difference.

Social work encompasses more aspects of serving individuals and communities than always apparent. Pictured here is a supply closet that accumulated donations from clothing drives, orders for community outreaches, sports equipment from past field days, and other useful items without a home. It was our first official task at our site placement—The Wiggins Center, an office of Center for Family Services—to organize this closet. My BTG intern partner and I jumped at the chance to be productive (to do something, anything!) and contribute to the active environment at Wiggins, where all the staff bustled working through their usual busy caseload.

“This is something we’ve had to do for so long, but we just haven’t been able to get to it,” our supervisor explained in her quick break between two meetings.

This photo shows the beginning of our morning spent sorting through Christmas toys, arranging stacks of books by age, organizing toiletries by function, and programming a new spreadsheet to keep inventory of the closet. What is left unpictured is the time spent by Wiggins staff moving all the items here in the first place; the stress weighing in the back of their minds knowing this is another chore they have to take on top of their case load.  Social workers are often stretched so thin that they are forced to make capitulations—to choose certain clients to start services first or cancel an outreach to allow grant funds to be used elsewhere. Organizing a closet is the least of these priorities.

Past our first day spent with the closet, my partner and I engaged in more meaningful interactions with Wiggins staff and the community they serve, but many principles we learned harken back to this photo: people are so important. While ostensibly not the most perspicacious analysis, these idle items evidenced that material goods are useless without having enough people and enough effort to order, organize, and distribute items to those who need them. And we learned that scarcity manifests in different ways. Having a closet full of generous donations is something any social worker will accept with alacrity. However, this does not solve larger systemic issues that come with being underresourced, such as not having enough staff members to manage heavy case loads which trickles down to affects tasks such as organizing the aforementioned closet full of eleemosynary goods.

As pictured, this supply closet testifies to the quiet labour that sustains a community—the countless tasks completed behind the scenes so that families can receive the support they deserve. The shelves of social work are held up by a compassionate workforce being outpaced by those who need them, and my hope is for decision makers to better support—financially, emotionally, and all the ways in between—social workers who keep our neighbourhoods afloat. Let’s take care of the people who spend their careers caring for others! 

The above image is a drawing created by a child with severe asthma in response to the prompt in his workbook, “How does your asthma make you feel?” While describing his drawing, he shared that he had planned to dress as Black Panther for Halloween but had to stay home because of his asthma. His story showed how asthma can affect not only a child’s physical health, but also their ability to participate in meaningful childhood experiences and feel in control of their own body. For this child, his asthma meant missing an event he had been looking forward to and feeling separated from his peers. Several children at camp also shared their asthma had become severe enough that they had to go to the hospital and stay overnight, further demonstrating how disruptive asthma can be to their childhood.

The drawing does not show the many of the barriers these children face that are outside of their control. During my time at camp, one little girl asked whether she could take a practice inhaler home because she did not have a quick-relief inhaler of her own. Another child shared that her parents frequently smoke inside the home, triggering her asthma and making it difficult for her to breathe. Through skits and other interactive activities, we help the children identify their asthma triggers and practice speaking up when something is affecting their breathing.

One child explained that asthma makes him feel as though he does not have control over his own body. This loss of control can be made worse by factors such as medication access, smoking in the home, poor air quality, or flooding that disrupts camp activities. Although the children can learn how to manage their asthma and advocate for themselves, many of these larger barriers cannot be addressed by the child alone.

I hope this image encourages decision makers to listen to the experiences of children living with asthma. These children need reliable access to medications, safe environments, and consistent support from the adults and systems responsible for their care. The camp gives children the knowledge and confidence to speak up, but their families, healthcare providers, and policymakers must also be willing to listen.

At first glance, this photograph shows an ordinary playground beside the Wiggins Center in Camden, New Jersey. The colorful equipment, painted walls, and fenced-in play area suggest that this was once a space filled with children. However, the empty playground creates a different feeling. It appears quiet and almost forgotten, as though it has not been used for its original purpose in a long time.

On our first day at the Wiggins Center, my fellow Bridging the Gaps intern and I had difficulty finding the building’s entrance. We were unsure whether the building still functioned as a school. During our tour, we learned that it had operated as a school until 2021, when it closed amid budget challenges and changes in Camden’s educational system, including the expansion of charter schools. The former classrooms have since been converted into office spaces for Center for Family Services programs, including Youth Re-engagement, workforce development, and Multisystemic Therapy.

The photograph does not show the people and programs now operating inside the building. It does not capture the staff members working to reconnect young people with education, assist individuals with employment, support families experiencing crises, or connect community members with needed resources. It also does not show the relationships that have been built within the space or the determination of the staff to leave each person’s situation a little better than they found it.

Behind this image are larger structural issues involving unequal school funding, educational access, neighborhood disinvestment, and the limited availability of safe and supportive spaces for young people. The closure of a community school affects more than the students who attended it. It can also remove a gathering place, a source of stability, and a symbol of investment in the neighborhood.

I hope this photograph encourages decision-makers to look beyond appearances. An empty playground should not simply be viewed as unused property. It should raise questions about why the school closed, what resources Camden’s youth have lost, and how existing community spaces can be supported. Although children may no longer fill this playground each day, the Wiggins Center continues to serve as a place of opportunity, support, and hope for the Camden community.