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The painted desk and our charity

Apr 9, 2007 Posted by Rich Harwood

I have a visceral negative reaction when I hear about “charity” these days. I’m not sure my reaction is either healthy or wise, but then again it keeps coming up. I can’t seem to escape it as I travel the country. Maybe someone can set me straight. Think about the following: • When I brought my daughter to visit colleges this past week, all the schools talked about “service.” Indeed, at one university, the tour guide proudly proclaimed that a few “needy students” are brought to the campus green every year to paint their desks with the help of college students. She beamed when telling us how great her fellow co-eds feel about the experience. • I am running into more and more people who have taken or plan to send their kids to Costa Rica (or some other destination) to build housing for the poor. • During my recent visit to New Orleans, I was taken aback by the sheer size of that community’s challenge and yet how long it takes for a single group of individuals to rebuild a single home. • A recent Google Foundation study noted that a significant portion of charitable giving does not go to people in need, but supports things like religious organizations (non-soup kitchen-type activities, like a concert I just attended) and people’s favorite local non-profits – all worthy causes, but many support of our own immediate interests and not the most needy among us. These and other efforts lead me to a series of questions that I hope you’ll have something to say about: • What happens when the efforts of volunteers get more emphasis than the people in need? This question is no red herring. Increasingly, for baby boomers and their kids (I’m just barely included in this group!), we’re told over and over that “It’s all about you!” and “We’re working hard to give you a great volunteer experience!” While it may be essential to find new ways to ‘hook” people into volunteering, we must not make volunteering the next new consumer-driven experience. It’s the person in need who should be the focus of our concerns. • When people go to another country to volunteer, do they understand that needs exist right here in their local communities? I’m not saying that having an “international experience” is not useful or important. After all, the Peace Corps is wonderful and has been for years. But as I hear people talk about volunteering, especially for a week or so, it sometimes seems as if they’re going on a travel excursion or vacation rather than going off to help their fellow human beings. At times, we can sound on the verge of creating a culture of “designer volunteer trips.” What’s more, some of the same people who boast about their international volunteering seem to have little knowledge of the needs right next door. • When is volunteering important but not enough – and when should we push for change? Indeed, it seems that we can sometimes use volunteering as a way to put-off larger societal decisions that we need to make. Take the magnitude of the Gulf Coast situation: while individual volunteers are needed (and do incredible work), a larger collective response is required, too, if that area is to combat inadequate public schools, poor housing, and other ailments. I believe that citizen action in areas like the Gulf Coast, and in our own communities, is pivotal to bringing about real and sustainable change; but such action must be more than the kind of volunteering I’ve mentioned above. • How should we think about the impact of our volunteering? Surely, we can talk about the personal and spiritual growth that occurs within each volunteer. I’m all for that; indeed, I have personally benefited from such engagement. But what about the impact on the students with the desks I mentioned earlier – while one or two, or even five, newly painted desks are all for the good, let us not mistakenly think that we’ve licked the educational problem in that or other communities. Nor should building a few homes in Costa Rica allow us to believe that fundamental issues in that area have been resolved. Instead, in our desire to help, in our genuine giving, we must maintain a clear sense of understanding in what we have achieved – and what remains to be done. My concern is that we sometimes allow the very idea and act of volunteering to lull us into a safe comfort zone in which we don’t have to face up to the larger change that is required in society. I’m sure some of us feel that we can’t effect larger change, so we’ll start by painting a desk or two. Then, at least someone is helped. True enough, someone is helped by such acts of kindness. And these acts help to make a better society, in many, many different ways. But when it comes to volunteering, I want us to be more forthright about our efforts and more focused on those people truly in need.

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Re: The painted desk and our charity
Jun 8, 2007 | Ann Petersen | annspetersen@yahoo.com

Once in a women's bible study group in Manhattan Beach, California (a wealthy community), we were studying the fruit of the spirit and we had gotten to "kindness". We were thinking of ways to express kindness. One idea was to crochet or knit blankets and hand them to someone to give to AIDS patients. My idea was to create gift baskets of toiletries and bring them to battered women in shelters. This would involve sitting and talking with them and giving them facials and manicures, etc. This was rejected because it involved venturing into 'unsafe' neighbourhoods. I think one more reason it was rejected was because we would have to face the wretchedness of women who'd been through hell. And if one actually feels their pain, as a Good Christian, one would be obliged to give more of one's self than would be comfortable. No, they preferred a more antiseptic and faceless type of kindness.

In this individualistic and success-oriented culture, It is hard for people to understand that what appears to be a sacrifice of time, money and comfort can actually be more than a gift to the recipient; it can bring deep joy and meaning to one's life. It takes courage to climb down into the trenches to do the work that makes a difference. Coming face to face with the pain of those who need help leaves an indelible impression on one's conscience. If we avoid their pain, we add to it. If we face it, we will either create distance by judging the or we feel the compassion that fuels a drive do something about their circumstances.

For a year and a half, I was homeless and lived in shelters. I was painfully aware of the disdain cast my way as I pulled my luggage on wheels around Santa Monica. I witnessed a community viciously fight against the building of a shelter in their neighbourhood. There is so much fear, so much separation, so much condemnation built on ignorance. Again, prejudice reared its ugly head.

This struggle for acceptance was not foreign to the founders of the Delancey Street Foundation. Now some thirty years later, they run several facilities across the nation and they are wildly successful. They have no staff but are run entirely by shelter residents, the supposed scum-of-the-earth ex-felon types. These people built their facilities and started flourishing businesses that serve as training schools for themselves and sources of income for the shelter. Delancey Street residents are glorious proof that if given a chance, even the worst can become the best.

I mention Delancey Street because I believe that if we create mini-communities where every citizen is valued, encouraged, supported and given the tools to grow into self-sufficiency, then these individuals can spread that philosophy into the outer communities as well. As they gain personal power they can mobilize to make big changes happen within and through the world of politics.

My dream is to incorporate the social and economic structure of the Delancey Street Foundation into my own future shelter. I would add natural health care (and orthomolecular psychiatry) into the program so that those with health and mental health issues would also be given this opportunity to thrive.

I am seeking others of like mind that would join me in this effort.
Re: The painted desk and our charity
Apr 18, 2007 | Richard Puffer | rapuffer@byerlyfoundation.org

Maybe "volunteering," even in its present more consumer-oriented form, is one of the sweet spots that will help bring people back into public life. I understand the idea that citizenship should be different from consumership but with our current culture, we might first have to engage many people by showing them what is in it for them and letting them discover the difference their participation can make.
Re: The painted desk and our charity
Apr 13, 2007 | Bobbette Rose | blrose@wiscmail.wisc.edu

The comments in this article on the way in which we volunteer are well taken. I wonder though if responding to problems/crisis (which is often what volunteering about) as opposed to working on systematic change is more a reflection of our cultural participation and ethos generally.

Working to prevent something tends to take more faith and risk than to wait until it is a problem to respond to. I need no faith to believe that the person bleeding in front of me needs to be helped…I might need time or compassion or other resources but for sure I understand there is a problem and there is some sort of direct action that can be taken to address this particular problem.

I think we are generally more responders to problems than builders of life. Within medicine we are much more about doing procedures and treating illness than about promoting health. We are putting more money and effort into building prisons and reinstating death penalties while we are closing schools and cutting back on programs to help kids (obviously talking from my Wisconsin experience which has one of the largest youth of color incarceration rates in the nation.) We see the response to drug abuse among youth is to make the penalties stiffer rather than help our kids grow to be people of strength and hope believing they have a future.

And its made harder in this current day when systematic change seems to have to happen through the political system which seems so unable to address anything well. (I admit my cynicism grows by the day when I see how our politicians act.) It seems like it will take more than compassion and a strong shoulder to address the underlying issues to homelessness but with just those two things I can take a Saturday out to help build a Habitat for Humanity House for some one family in my community. And I don’t know where to begin to help elderly people get the resources they need in light of problems with social security and medicare…but I do know that some specific people will have a meal today if I take it to them through “meals on wheels.” I can’t figure out how to change the policies that have pushed a lot of mental patients out onto the streets in recent years but I can walk beside one person to help them through the system of papers and forms and procedures to allow them to get plugged in somewhere so hopefully they won’t end up on the street.

So not only are we culturally a people more prone to responding to crises, we live in a society that is much better at creating crises than it is about developing avenues to address long term solutions.

Somehow we have to do both…meet the crises at hand and work to change the system. I don’t think the problem is that our volunteerism is off base. I agree with the comments of the previous writer, what can start out from one motivation can deepen into something more. I think its that we don’t have a place to go with that deeper understanding of the situation once we get it.
Re: The painted desk and our charity
Apr 13, 2007 | Pete Hutchison | phutchison@unitedwaygenesee.org

I am struck by a number of issues you raise in your blog about the painted desks. As always many of your points I am in perfect agreement with, however, there are some fundamental assumptions that you make that I’m not sure are correct. The first is that “charity” and volunteering somehow are connected. I believe that there are many volunteers that do great work that have nothing to do with “charity” but have everything to do with promoting the greater good. I believe that we are all born with unique gifts and that our purpose in life is to develop these gifts and utilize them in such a way that they benefit the common good. I believe that there is a grand plan and that we have all been given certain skills that when joined together form a perfectly functioning whole. There are many instances of people who don’t have the opportunity to use their skills to make a living. For example there are only so many opportunities for professional musicians, however, there are almost infinite opportunities for musicians to perform for free in an environment that will bring pleasure to those that hear it, i.e. nursing homes, hospital wards, street corners in depressed neighborhoods, block parties, etc. Many of these opportunities have nothing to do with “charity,” but are enhancing the environment within which we all live. I believe that we are called upon to utilize our gifts in whatever way we can that is of benefit to others, even if we do it for free or volunteer. It should also be noted that we often find ourselves with opportunities to utilize our skills even when we have not necessarily planned on them. My faith tells me that often God puts me in situations where I need to be not where I want to be. Therefore if a young person is presented with the opportunity to exercise their gifts over-sees or where ever should we not encourage them to do so, even if we think they should be somewhere else? Maybe the question we need to ask is what are we doing to address the need that we see locally and how are we providing opportunities for people to share there gifts to make it better – or put another way what are we doing to be a catalyst for civic engagement.

Secondly there appears to be the issue of motivation. I don’t disagree that we all should be doing good works because it is the right thing to do, however, this is an internalized response that is taught over time. Many of us learn this in our homes, the way we are brought up, however, some don’t have the opportunity for that learning and they need some sort of external motivation to get them involved initially. It has been my experience in a large number of volunteer ventures that often once a person begins volunteering they will continue because they see the value in what they are doing, not because of the external motivator. It is always amazing to me to see the number of people (certainly not all) who are ordered to do community service that continue on after their community service hours are done. So it is my hope that although the university’s are externally motivating people to volunteer, once they do it they will continue for the right reasons.

Thirdly, I agree that there are systematic changes that need to be addressed and I believe that there are those with the gifts to assist in that work. It seems to me that the Harwood Institute is an example of this. I would propose that it is problematic if those with the gift of advocacy, with the gift of organization and system change are not actively working to make the necessary changes we need made in our society. However, I don’t think that everyone is suited for that type of work and those that can swing a hammer or handle a shovel or push a broom need to be exercising their gifts as well.

Finally, I believe that community by community we are internalizing these lessons. That we are finally grasping the fact that it is not always about me. We are beginning to see the fallacy of the marketers that are pushing self-interest and satisfaction. In Flint as in many communities across the country we are working hard to identify our gifts and to exercise them for the benefit or all. Equally importantly we are learning how to appreciate, accept, and encourage each others gifts realizing that we all have a unique role to play. Unfortunately this takes time; it is a house that may take a long time to build but is being built on a solid foundation that will last and not one that will wash away with the next storm.