Since an early age, Maria Carvalhaes has always been concerned with helping those from underprivileged communities.

A native of Brazil, Carvalhaes started helping poor communities in her country at 16. Initially, she thought becoming a nurse was her path, but Carvalhaes realized it wasn’t for her.

“I wanted to help people in a more therapeutic way, so that is why I decided to do social work,” she said.

Carvalhaes will be graduating with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock this May.

As a graduate student, Carvalhaes interns in counseling services, where she gives individual and group therapy for students. One group session that she leads is a mindfulness group on Wednesdays at noon that is open to the UALR community.

“People don’t know much about mindfulness,” she said. “It’s not a philosophy or a religion. It’s just a way to learn to live in the present moment. We can’t change the past, we don’t control the future, and when we bring mindfulness to our daily lives, we rest our mind, and this brings us more tranquility.”

In her group session, she tries to add to the mindfulness model using her own background and experience in research, training, and yoga.

“The research shows that college students are having a lot of problems with anxiety, more than depression, so I want to help students learn tools that they can use now in college, and later in life, to decrease the level of anxiety and to have a better quality of life,” she said.

Carvalhaes also holds a second group therapy session on campus that helps members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community.

“When I moved from California to Arkansas, I felt a big difference in the way people treated the LGBTQ community,” she said. “That’s when I thought I needed to be more involved with this population as a light. I saw that I could use my service, my abilities to help them.”

As part of her social work internship, she holds group therapy for transgender women in the speech and hearing clinic on campus. A therapeutic and support group, participants visit the clinic to have individual speech therapy and meet together as a group for an hour and talk about issues specifically related to who they are now.

“I believe we are all different, but we are all interconnected, and if we don’t treat people well, regarding anything, we cannot live in a fair place,” she said. “My work for this community is to bring more awareness of their issues and educate people about that. This is very important for me.”

Not only is Carvalhaes an intern on campus, but she is also vice president of the Student Social Work Organization, where she promotes new information models and approaches. She also works with the volunteers on campus, recruiting students to help with events and organizations.

When she graduates, Carvalhaes would like to work with young adults, especially college students or cancer patients. She intends to pursue a doctorate, research mindfulness,  and eventually develop a new model of mindfulness for college students.