August 30, 2018

Elms College names author, ‘Craigslist Confessional’ founder, convocation speaker

REGIONAL
Staff report

Author Helena Bala, the former Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who founded Craigslist Confessional, will serve as Elms College’s opening convocation speaker in September. (IObserve photo/courtesy of Elms College)

CHICOPEE – The College of Our Lady of the Elms has announced that its convocation speaker this year will be author Helena Bala, the former Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who founded Craigslist Confessional.

The opening convocation ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, in Veritas Auditorium.

Through her work on her blog, Craigslist Confessional, Bala sets a strong example of empathy, humanity, and connection, listening to people tell stories they might never have shared before, not even with family or a therapist. They are stories of trauma, of injustice, of regret; Bala listens with compassion and patience and then re-shares the stories with the world, under condition of anonymity.

“For many, it’s the first time they’ve been able to recount their stories without fear of stigma or ostracism,” Bala has written for her blog. These stories fill her with “awe at the breadth and depth of humanity,” she said.

Bala’s personal story is one of overcoming challenges: She and her family immigrated to the U.S. when she was a child.

“Helena Bala came to this country as a refugee, along with her parents who were seeking political asylum,” said Walter C. Breau, vice president of academic affairs at Elms College. “Her experience of going from a life of relative privilege to that of a refugee here in the U.S. gave her a special perspective on how people may differ from our initial perceptions.”

“When we moved to this country, we were dirt poor,” Bala wrote for The Huffington Post in 2016. “I slept on a futon in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment from age 11 to 18. My mom – a former doctor – started cleaning houses to keep us afloat.”

She ultimately went to law school at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and worked as an attorney and lobbyist before founding Craigslist Confessional in 2014.

Bala’s message of empathy, of listening to people and hearing their humanity, aligns with the college’s 2018-2019 First Year Seminar (FYS) theme and Common Read selection.

FYS at Elms College is a program designed to connect incoming first-year students to the college community, help them discover themselves, and encourage them to explore important topics and issues. FYS courses are connected by a theme taken from Catholic Social Teaching; the 2018-2019 theme is “Solidarity,” which focuses on loving one’s neighbor in an interdependent world.

The 2018-2019 Common Read selection, which all first-years students are required to read and discuss during FYS, is Walking to Listen, by Andrew Forsthoefel. The themes explored in this book – finding  unity in diversity, staying connected despite fear, listening carefully to the world around you – are especially relevant to first-year college students, who themselves are setting out on an adventure, asking big questions, and learning to listen.

“This year’s focus on the Catholic Social Teaching theme of solidarity stresses the importance of valuing and respecting each person we meet as a unique individual,” Breau said. “Ms. Bala’s project is directly aligned with the solidarity theme, reminding us that we need to listen to each other deeply, to break through the generalities and assumptions that we can make so quickly, and to truly understand each person as a full human.”