Give Me A Chance has new executive director

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OGDEN — When Daughter of Charity Sister Maria Nguyen began offering sewing classes to low-income women in 2010, she saw it as a way to help them gain better-paying jobs but didn’t imagine it would lead to an organization that now provides a number of services to help those most in need in the Ogden area. 

Sr. Maria was reassigned by her order in 2016; since then, Give Me A Chance has had three other executive directors. Sister Frances Vista, DC, who stepped into the position a few weeks ago, has many years of experience running similar agencies. 

A Daughter of Charity for 43 years, Sr. Frances is originally from Manila, the Philippines. She grew up in a Catholic home with a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart and as a child felt drawn to the religious life. However, as she got older, she forgot this prompting for several years and didn’t discern her calling until 1975, after she and her family moved to San Francisco, and “just suddenly, I saw a sister, one of the Daughters of Charity, and it just dawned on me at one point I thought of becoming a sister, and that was the beginning of the reawakening of the calling,” she said.

Prior to moving to the United States, Sr. Frances attended college for two years but was working as a cashier when she decided to become a Daughter of Charity.

“I decided I’d go back to school and went to San Francisco Community College, and then I finished my associate’s degree there, and then that’s when the journey of the vocation was going on,” she said. 

During her student years Sr. Frances worked at Seaton Medical Center in Daly City and at a skilled nursing facility in Pacifica. She became the caretaker for a group of single men but encountered some barriers when she was denied access to meetings of their medical team because she did not have a degree in social work. 

“That kind of started my going back to school,” she said.

She enrolled at San Francisco State University to pursue an undergraduate degree in social work and went on to complete a master’s degree in the field.

After completing her education, Sr. Frances was assigned to the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Ariz. There she started a nonprofit life sharing center and St. Jude Food Bank, the first non-profit food bank on the reservation.

She ministered on the reservation for 13 years. Then, because of her experience working with indigenous people, she was sent to Anchorage, Alaska, to be the director of Catholic native ministry there for three years. 

Following that, she returned to San Francisco to serve as the director of the Jesuit Service Corps, a volunteer program for post-graduate students. Sr. Frances then went back to Alaska to again lead the Catholic native ministry. She was there for seven years before accepting her new assignment in Utah.

“I’m so grateful for the dedication of committed volunteers, and the staff” at the Ogden nonprofit, she said. “It’s very impressive, and I’m hoping that I could help make a difference for their commitment to the service of Give Me A Chance. We continue to move forward to better service and expand basically what we’re already having now.”

Although Give Me A Chance is considered a job education and after-school program, it is much more than that, she said. Beyond those services, Give Me A Chance has become a significant community resource, she said.

“It’s like a go-to center; people call for whatever their needs are,” she said. “I would look at it as almost like an unknown resource center.” 

Along with the resources that they offer, Give Me A Chance connects callers with local Catholic parishes for other help, she said, adding that she hopes to continue providing these services to the community and to expand its offerings in the future. 

“My goal for now, it’s not really to make a whole lot of changes, but to see how we can improve and expand what’s going on,” she said. “It’s also to listen to the people more than anything.”

An avid angler, Sr. Frances said she was a little disappointed to be moved right before prime fishing season in Alaska, but she already has been invited to check out Utah-style fishing at Flaming Gorge, and hopes to be able to do so in the next few months. 

She has also been involved in music ministry in the past and would love to have the opportunity to be part of it again, she said.