You can read the entire World Watch magazine series on Living Earth Ethics here:
Happy reading!
Showing posts with label life of service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life of service. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Life of Service
We are all part of a greater system, and the whole will only be healthy if its constituent parts are. Thus we should help those who are in need, especially in ways that provide a useful understanding of the world and our role in it—namely that we are dependent on and part of the Earth, and that only through sustaining this beautiful, fragile system will we lead meaningful and satisfying lives.
With the current recession, economic insecurity is spiking worldwide. But even before this crisis, there were almost 2.6 billion people living on less than US$2 a day. Those of us with the means to help others less fortunate than we are have an obligation to do so. I won’t justify that statement here; anyone who has seen others suffering and doesn’t feel compassion to help will surely not be transformed by anything I might say in this essay.
Nor will I go into the ample research showing that helping others often makes one happier and more fulfilled. But what I do hope to make clear is that some ways of helping are better than others. There’s an old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Of course, that was before oceans were acidifying and fish threatened to become a rare luxury, but the broader point still rings true. Providing temporary aid that doesn’t get to the root of the problem is futile. (For a detailed discussion of this, see the book Sweet Charity.)
Considering our rising population and declining ecological systems, it’s imperative that we teach people to live simply. Not surprisingly, living simply will actually reduce economic worries, while increasing free time and reducing impact. Too often wealth is conflated with wellbeing, when in fact the two are only tangentially related. By recognizing that a good life depends not on wealth but on health, basic security, community, and purpose, lives can be very good while being simple and low-impact.
Charity, in theory, could be a perfect vehicle to teach this, but is rarely utilized in that way. Instead, most charitable operations provide a fish each day and do nothing to counteract the billions spent by advertisers to teach that unless you have not just swordfish on your plate but a yacht to catch them from, you’re not going to be happy. Hence, people have trouble making ends meet, even when earning good salaries, because they’ve reached their credit-card limits and taken additional mortgages on their oversized homes—all for consumer goods like flatscreen televisions that increase their electricity costs and encourage them to sit still and watch more ads.
Imagine if charities were designed to reeducate “failed” consumers in simple living, ecological stewardship, and informed citizenship, so that when a new family walks into the food pantry they receive food aid, but only after they agree to enroll in a course on financial planning, living simply, media analysis (to help defend against advertising messages), our ecological footprints, and so on. Or when a diabetic walks into a free clinic, he is treated—but only after agreeing to take a course on healthy cooking and to work several hours in the clinic’s community garden. Yes, give fish to those in need, but teach them how to fish while they eat. Slowly but surely, by replacing the influences of the consumer society, people will learn how to live healthier and more sustainable lives, and most likely become happier in
the process.
Of course, one problem here is that few such programs exist. For the social entrepreneurs reading this, consider starting one. For others, don’t let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good. Search out a local urban garden or food security agency that at least understands these points and then push them to do more to address root causes.
Ultimately, the best way to serve may be the least satisfying: lobbying to make major changes in the systems that prop up the consumer culture. But one can be an advocate for change while helping individuals directly. And every person awakened from the consumer dream can also start helping others, both directly and through advocating systemic changes.
This essay is reprinted from World Watch Magazine, May/June 2009
With the current recession, economic insecurity is spiking worldwide. But even before this crisis, there were almost 2.6 billion people living on less than US$2 a day. Those of us with the means to help others less fortunate than we are have an obligation to do so. I won’t justify that statement here; anyone who has seen others suffering and doesn’t feel compassion to help will surely not be transformed by anything I might say in this essay.
Nor will I go into the ample research showing that helping others often makes one happier and more fulfilled. But what I do hope to make clear is that some ways of helping are better than others. There’s an old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Of course, that was before oceans were acidifying and fish threatened to become a rare luxury, but the broader point still rings true. Providing temporary aid that doesn’t get to the root of the problem is futile. (For a detailed discussion of this, see the book Sweet Charity.)
Considering our rising population and declining ecological systems, it’s imperative that we teach people to live simply. Not surprisingly, living simply will actually reduce economic worries, while increasing free time and reducing impact. Too often wealth is conflated with wellbeing, when in fact the two are only tangentially related. By recognizing that a good life depends not on wealth but on health, basic security, community, and purpose, lives can be very good while being simple and low-impact.
Charity, in theory, could be a perfect vehicle to teach this, but is rarely utilized in that way. Instead, most charitable operations provide a fish each day and do nothing to counteract the billions spent by advertisers to teach that unless you have not just swordfish on your plate but a yacht to catch them from, you’re not going to be happy. Hence, people have trouble making ends meet, even when earning good salaries, because they’ve reached their credit-card limits and taken additional mortgages on their oversized homes—all for consumer goods like flatscreen televisions that increase their electricity costs and encourage them to sit still and watch more ads.
Imagine if charities were designed to reeducate “failed” consumers in simple living, ecological stewardship, and informed citizenship, so that when a new family walks into the food pantry they receive food aid, but only after they agree to enroll in a course on financial planning, living simply, media analysis (to help defend against advertising messages), our ecological footprints, and so on. Or when a diabetic walks into a free clinic, he is treated—but only after agreeing to take a course on healthy cooking and to work several hours in the clinic’s community garden. Yes, give fish to those in need, but teach them how to fish while they eat. Slowly but surely, by replacing the influences of the consumer society, people will learn how to live healthier and more sustainable lives, and most likely become happier in
the process.
Of course, one problem here is that few such programs exist. For the social entrepreneurs reading this, consider starting one. For others, don’t let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good. Search out a local urban garden or food security agency that at least understands these points and then push them to do more to address root causes.
Ultimately, the best way to serve may be the least satisfying: lobbying to make major changes in the systems that prop up the consumer culture. But one can be an advocate for change while helping individuals directly. And every person awakened from the consumer dream can also start helping others, both directly and through advocating systemic changes.
This essay is reprinted from World Watch Magazine, May/June 2009
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
A Visit to the Living Earth Cafe
Note: I wrote this for World Watch Magazine for the July/August 2008 issue. I'm adding this and other articles now to get this blog up to speed.
Imagine this. You walk into the Living Earth Cafe, a new coffeehouse that just opened in your city. The décor is simple, and in places clashes with itself. A funky old couch dominates a corner, a few well-worn arm chairs sit to one side, occupied by two patrons engaged in a passionate debate. A mix of eclectic tables and chairs is spread around the space. At the front of the store, a prominent sign explains that all furniture is used, acquired locally from Freecycle, Craig’s List, or secondhand stores. The same sign announces that all electricity comes from renewable sources and that about half the hot water is generated from rooftop solar hot water collectors.
Over by the windows you see dozens of herbs and vegetable plants sprouting from the sills. In the corner, there’s a strange box labeled “vermicomposter” and another sign stating that “1% of our organic waste is recycled here by our worms, the other 99% in composters at our local urban garden, which produces 100% of our herbal teas and a portion of our food.”
You get in line to order a cup of the locally grown herbal tea. In front of you a customer orders a latte to go and is shocked to hear there are no to-go cups. “You can either enjoy your coffee here, sir, or you can borrow one of our travel mugs,” explains the barista. “There’s a $4 deposit, which you’ll get back if you return it.”A bit surprisingly, the guy agrees and borrows one of the mugs and goes on his way.
It’s your turn. Typically ordering tea at a cafe is a humdrum experience, with three or four options, each costing as much as a dozen bags at the grocery store. But there is a long list of tea choices here—served loose-leaf, not in a bleached paper bag—and in several innovative combinations. “I’ll take the mint lavender,” you say.
“Would you like that sweet? We can add stevia leaves, a natural herbal sweetener with no calories.”
“Sure, I’ll try that.”
You fork over three bucks (you can’t help but notice the cafe still charges what the market will bear), and take your little tea pot and mug to your table.While drinking your tea, you read a little brochure about the cafe. On one side is a menu and upcoming events. The cafe offers a set menu, but looking around at what the other diners are having, the food looks quite healthy, tasty, and not served in obesity-promoting portions. The week’s menu offers simple, staple meals from around the world: dhal and brown basmati rice on Mondays, spelt pasta with tomatoes and basil on Tuesdays, green tofu curry and sticky brown rice on Wednesday, and so on. It looks totally vegetarian, possibly even vegan, and minimally processed. The upcoming events described are diverse, too—local organizations’ meetings, lectures, book groups,musical performances, even classes on how to vermicompost and grow food in containers and urban garden plots.
On the back of the menu is a broader description of the cafe, which turns out to be a project of the Living Earth Ethics Foundation (LEEF), a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to promote a code of ethics that will sustain life on a living Earth.”
All profits from this chain of cafes and LEEF’s other mission driven businesses support the foundation’s social service providers: urban gardens that offer skills training and access to healthy food for low-income urban residents; free clinics that are as focused on promoting a healthy lifestyle as treating the many chronic diseases that are side-effects of the consumer culture; homeless shelters that emphasize both empowerment and a new model of success (rather than success through increased material consumption); and several Living Earth Charter Schools where, unlike typical schools, the curriculum centers on building an awareness of the natural limits of a finite planet, developing a deep understanding of the close links between the consumer economy and current exploitation of people and the environment, and instilling a consciousness of our ethical responsibility to the Earth and all beings that are part of it, all while providing the highest level of academic training possible.
Finally, below the description is a box titled, “Love Living Earth Cafe? Become an investor.” It explains that “the capital to run this cafe comes directly from the customers, who receive interest on their investments in Living Earth Dollars redeemable for goods at the cafe. These investments are equivalent to one to five-year certificates of deposit and are currently providing a 5 to 7 percent annual return. For more details, chat with the manager or visit www.livingearthcafe.org.”
Sound too good to be true? So far it is, but much of the model described here has been implemented in one form or another, and creating a more comprehensive model is possible.
There are already restaurants in Thailand that educate customers about HIV, safe sex, and family planning while directing the profits to an NGO focused on addressing these issues in rural populations. There is a bakery in New York City helping to provide skills training to the chronically underemployed while using its profits to support several additional social enterprises and services, such as affordable housing. And these are just some of the smaller, more recently established social enterprises. There are several well-known social enterprises that have over a billion dollars in annual revenue and more than a hundred years of experience, namely, the Salvation Army and the YMCA. Of course, these organizations’ agendas are not environmental in nature, but nothing is stopping the environmental community from comprehensively utilizing the proven tool of social enterprise.
All that’s required is to build not-for-profit businesses and channel surplus earnings into broader efforts than just “harm reduction” advocacy. Currently most environmental advocacy is focused on reducing the worst effects of consumerism, rather than on providing an alternative socio-economic model. For example, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act both set maximum limits on the pollution that can be emitted into the air and water. Current climate change legislative efforts are focused on trying to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent overall—a lofty reduction but one that still won’t get us to where we need to be, especially in a world where population and desire for the consumer lifestyle continue to grow.
Of course, our political system, which is based on compromise and the interplay between competing interests, shapes this harm reduction agenda, but the question needs to be asked: why aren’t environmental organizations playing hardball like corporations do?
Corporations deploy lobbyists and “astroturf organizations” (grassroots organizations engineered by corporations that pretend to represent the public interest) to influence governments around the world, undermining those organizations that actually represent the public interest.Why aren’t environmental groups penetrating businesses’ realm—not just by pressuring them directly to change, as organizations like Rainforest Action Network do, but by setting up social enterprises that indirectly force corporations to redesign how they do business? NGOs could set up wind farms, cafes, ecologically designed funeral homes, eco-banks, or any number of sustainable business that directly threaten corporate chains.
For example, if designed right (i.e., made popular), an environmental franchise like the Living Earth Cafe would be able to pressure Starbucks and other cafes to redesign their model to accommodate the evolving taste of the green consumer. Consciousness would grow to the point where Starbucks could no longer get away with touting their eco-friendliness by serving coffee in a 10-percent-recycled paper cup, but might feel pressured into getting rid of to-go cups altogether.
As importantly, the funds generated by these non-profit environmentalist businesses could be channeled directly into the organizations’ advocacy and education work and into social service providers that, in the long term, could help to weaken consumerism’s hold on humanity and create new environmentalists. In other words, just as a Catholic school or a Catholic based homeless shelter helps to expose people to the Christian God and Jesus, environmentalist schools and shelters could do the same for the Earth. As well, these service providers could help prepare people for the real possibility of a widespread ecological and economic collapse. How many people living in consumer societies know how to grow food? Or make a simple solar cooker and use it to purify water? Or build a composting toilet? We assume that fresh water will flow into our homes (and sewage out of them) long into the future, but there are absolutely no guarantees of either.With the rapid degeneration of the global environment, the environmental community will need to expand its role beyond harm reduction advocacy if we expect human civilization to have even a small chance of thriving beyond the 21st century.
To launch this type of comprehensive environmental movement, we need a philosophy more complete than the average environmental organization currently provides. In the coming months I will describe a vision of the next evolution of environmentalism, including 10 ethical principles that could help orient this shift. Environmentalism does not need to die, as was recently argued, nor does it have to remain a marginalized special interest. Instead it can become a much broader movement, absorbing many of the related social-justice issues into a more unified system—one that, at its core, has a simple ethical code to guide both individual behavior and the movement. And that can mobilize an ever-expanding network of social services, social enterprises, and development efforts, systematically replacing the self-destructive, corporate-driven consumer economy with an ecological social-entrepreneurial system that can be sustained for millennia.
First printed in World Watch Magazine, Jul/Aug 2008 issue.
Imagine this. You walk into the Living Earth Cafe, a new coffeehouse that just opened in your city. The décor is simple, and in places clashes with itself. A funky old couch dominates a corner, a few well-worn arm chairs sit to one side, occupied by two patrons engaged in a passionate debate. A mix of eclectic tables and chairs is spread around the space. At the front of the store, a prominent sign explains that all furniture is used, acquired locally from Freecycle, Craig’s List, or secondhand stores. The same sign announces that all electricity comes from renewable sources and that about half the hot water is generated from rooftop solar hot water collectors.
Over by the windows you see dozens of herbs and vegetable plants sprouting from the sills. In the corner, there’s a strange box labeled “vermicomposter” and another sign stating that “1% of our organic waste is recycled here by our worms, the other 99% in composters at our local urban garden, which produces 100% of our herbal teas and a portion of our food.”
You get in line to order a cup of the locally grown herbal tea. In front of you a customer orders a latte to go and is shocked to hear there are no to-go cups. “You can either enjoy your coffee here, sir, or you can borrow one of our travel mugs,” explains the barista. “There’s a $4 deposit, which you’ll get back if you return it.”A bit surprisingly, the guy agrees and borrows one of the mugs and goes on his way.
It’s your turn. Typically ordering tea at a cafe is a humdrum experience, with three or four options, each costing as much as a dozen bags at the grocery store. But there is a long list of tea choices here—served loose-leaf, not in a bleached paper bag—and in several innovative combinations. “I’ll take the mint lavender,” you say.
“Would you like that sweet? We can add stevia leaves, a natural herbal sweetener with no calories.”
“Sure, I’ll try that.”
You fork over three bucks (you can’t help but notice the cafe still charges what the market will bear), and take your little tea pot and mug to your table.While drinking your tea, you read a little brochure about the cafe. On one side is a menu and upcoming events. The cafe offers a set menu, but looking around at what the other diners are having, the food looks quite healthy, tasty, and not served in obesity-promoting portions. The week’s menu offers simple, staple meals from around the world: dhal and brown basmati rice on Mondays, spelt pasta with tomatoes and basil on Tuesdays, green tofu curry and sticky brown rice on Wednesday, and so on. It looks totally vegetarian, possibly even vegan, and minimally processed. The upcoming events described are diverse, too—local organizations’ meetings, lectures, book groups,musical performances, even classes on how to vermicompost and grow food in containers and urban garden plots.
On the back of the menu is a broader description of the cafe, which turns out to be a project of the Living Earth Ethics Foundation (LEEF), a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to promote a code of ethics that will sustain life on a living Earth.”
All profits from this chain of cafes and LEEF’s other mission driven businesses support the foundation’s social service providers: urban gardens that offer skills training and access to healthy food for low-income urban residents; free clinics that are as focused on promoting a healthy lifestyle as treating the many chronic diseases that are side-effects of the consumer culture; homeless shelters that emphasize both empowerment and a new model of success (rather than success through increased material consumption); and several Living Earth Charter Schools where, unlike typical schools, the curriculum centers on building an awareness of the natural limits of a finite planet, developing a deep understanding of the close links between the consumer economy and current exploitation of people and the environment, and instilling a consciousness of our ethical responsibility to the Earth and all beings that are part of it, all while providing the highest level of academic training possible.
Finally, below the description is a box titled, “Love Living Earth Cafe? Become an investor.” It explains that “the capital to run this cafe comes directly from the customers, who receive interest on their investments in Living Earth Dollars redeemable for goods at the cafe. These investments are equivalent to one to five-year certificates of deposit and are currently providing a 5 to 7 percent annual return. For more details, chat with the manager or visit www.livingearthcafe.org.”
Sound too good to be true? So far it is, but much of the model described here has been implemented in one form or another, and creating a more comprehensive model is possible.
There are already restaurants in Thailand that educate customers about HIV, safe sex, and family planning while directing the profits to an NGO focused on addressing these issues in rural populations. There is a bakery in New York City helping to provide skills training to the chronically underemployed while using its profits to support several additional social enterprises and services, such as affordable housing. And these are just some of the smaller, more recently established social enterprises. There are several well-known social enterprises that have over a billion dollars in annual revenue and more than a hundred years of experience, namely, the Salvation Army and the YMCA. Of course, these organizations’ agendas are not environmental in nature, but nothing is stopping the environmental community from comprehensively utilizing the proven tool of social enterprise.
All that’s required is to build not-for-profit businesses and channel surplus earnings into broader efforts than just “harm reduction” advocacy. Currently most environmental advocacy is focused on reducing the worst effects of consumerism, rather than on providing an alternative socio-economic model. For example, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act both set maximum limits on the pollution that can be emitted into the air and water. Current climate change legislative efforts are focused on trying to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent overall—a lofty reduction but one that still won’t get us to where we need to be, especially in a world where population and desire for the consumer lifestyle continue to grow.
Of course, our political system, which is based on compromise and the interplay between competing interests, shapes this harm reduction agenda, but the question needs to be asked: why aren’t environmental organizations playing hardball like corporations do?
Corporations deploy lobbyists and “astroturf organizations” (grassroots organizations engineered by corporations that pretend to represent the public interest) to influence governments around the world, undermining those organizations that actually represent the public interest.Why aren’t environmental groups penetrating businesses’ realm—not just by pressuring them directly to change, as organizations like Rainforest Action Network do, but by setting up social enterprises that indirectly force corporations to redesign how they do business? NGOs could set up wind farms, cafes, ecologically designed funeral homes, eco-banks, or any number of sustainable business that directly threaten corporate chains.
For example, if designed right (i.e., made popular), an environmental franchise like the Living Earth Cafe would be able to pressure Starbucks and other cafes to redesign their model to accommodate the evolving taste of the green consumer. Consciousness would grow to the point where Starbucks could no longer get away with touting their eco-friendliness by serving coffee in a 10-percent-recycled paper cup, but might feel pressured into getting rid of to-go cups altogether.
As importantly, the funds generated by these non-profit environmentalist businesses could be channeled directly into the organizations’ advocacy and education work and into social service providers that, in the long term, could help to weaken consumerism’s hold on humanity and create new environmentalists. In other words, just as a Catholic school or a Catholic based homeless shelter helps to expose people to the Christian God and Jesus, environmentalist schools and shelters could do the same for the Earth. As well, these service providers could help prepare people for the real possibility of a widespread ecological and economic collapse. How many people living in consumer societies know how to grow food? Or make a simple solar cooker and use it to purify water? Or build a composting toilet? We assume that fresh water will flow into our homes (and sewage out of them) long into the future, but there are absolutely no guarantees of either.With the rapid degeneration of the global environment, the environmental community will need to expand its role beyond harm reduction advocacy if we expect human civilization to have even a small chance of thriving beyond the 21st century.
To launch this type of comprehensive environmental movement, we need a philosophy more complete than the average environmental organization currently provides. In the coming months I will describe a vision of the next evolution of environmentalism, including 10 ethical principles that could help orient this shift. Environmentalism does not need to die, as was recently argued, nor does it have to remain a marginalized special interest. Instead it can become a much broader movement, absorbing many of the related social-justice issues into a more unified system—one that, at its core, has a simple ethical code to guide both individual behavior and the movement. And that can mobilize an ever-expanding network of social services, social enterprises, and development efforts, systematically replacing the self-destructive, corporate-driven consumer economy with an ecological social-entrepreneurial system that can be sustained for millennia.
First printed in World Watch Magazine, Jul/Aug 2008 issue.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Loaves and Fishes
Yesterday, my wife and I helped to serve lunch to about 180 homeless individuals in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood in DC, through a program called Loaves and Fishes. While the program is trying to help--and it should be celebrated for that as food aid operations are struggling along with the rest of the economy--it doesn't seem to be helping effectively. Let me describe what I saw.
I arrived five minutes late to a swarm of activity and several volunteers leaving as there were not enough jobs for volunteers. That could be seen as a good sign but once I left the kitchen and went in to the dining room (the church basement) I witnessed a bit of class apartheid. All the volunteers either in the kitchen or at the side of the room waiting to serve lunch to all of the homeless people. That seemed strange for wouldn't it be useful, both for volunteers and the aid recipients to interact with each other? Why not assign some volunteers to simply sit at a table and chat with the 'other' (especially if there are too many to help prepare food)? These volunteers could get to know the diners' stories, moving them from objects of pity to subjects--individuals who could be actually empathized with. Instead, as a server of food--styrofoam plates of baked chicken, greens, potatoes, and two little processed cookies wedged between the potatoes and chicken and absorbing chicken grease--I handed the diners food after being specifically told not to serve to an empty seat even if someone tells me there's someone sitting there as they might be trying to sneakily get a second helping.
This brings me to a big issue. That of trust. There was a major lack of it present. Yes, of course, some would try to get an extra meal, but this lack of trust really creates the wrong environment. Including creating a lack of respect. Here's an example, while serving one of the diners, he asked me for a leg and not a breast. No problem I told him, and gave someone else the breast. For the next few minutes as I looked in vain for a leg (we were on seconds already so they had run low), a fellow volunteer chastised me saying "they get what they're served." I felt belittled and angry--not for myself but to see how little these individuals were valued. They get what they get and that's it--and be careful or they'll try to get even more. Those dirty little people.
Of course, these were all subtle, but here's a clearer example, or a question rather. Why do you need more than a few volunteers anyway? What is the logic of getting volunteers to cook and serve the food, do the dishes and the rest, while the homeless diners just sit and eat, and before dinner, talk, play cards or listen to their iPod (yes, really)? I joined not to play waiter, but to help in a way that empowers these individuals. Of course, that's not how charity works today. Volunteers come to feel better about themselves and the homeless are simply the chorus, support actors--in some sort of complex tragic play. Sophocles would be proud.
So how to improve this? Here's one small suggestion--not to address the whole system but at least food aid. What about reducing these dinners by 90 percent, feeding 18 instead of 180. And instead of letting them sit alone, for those that can work, get them helping. For those that are unable to work--say physically or mentally handicapped--let them chat in a small group, one that includes a volunteer. With a savvy volunteer, perhaps she could build trust and help connect one with another, getting an elderly woman teaching an illiterate immigrant how to read, for example. In a setting of 180 individuals, the best that can be hoped for is order, not advancement, so I certainly don't fault Loaves and Fishes for its effort, however I am frustrated with how little the operation lives up to its name.
For those of you not familiar, Loaves and Fishes refers to when Jesus and the apostles fed an impossible number of people with very little food. They succeeded because everyone shared the food they had (not because of a heavenly miracle, but by the human miracle of trust). If a setting where sharing--of labor, of time, of trust--could be created, where people could learn new skills, make new connections, and help others, that in the long-run would be much more useful, even if just a tenth of the people were served.
A practical question: who would be invited? Why not have an application process? Offer daily lunches (not just weekly) to the 20 that are willing to help cook or clean or prepare or or tend the urban garden (which could be a good source of healthy food) or teach English to someone else. A competitive process could glean the most rehabilitative individuals and immediately give them a bit of pride and investment into this experiment. And then by creating a routine and empowering them with a job well done, these might go much further than the current emergency relief style operations in helping to find them a stable place in society and thus solving the root problem instead of continuing to just treat the symptoms, like most food aid operations seem to do.
I arrived five minutes late to a swarm of activity and several volunteers leaving as there were not enough jobs for volunteers. That could be seen as a good sign but once I left the kitchen and went in to the dining room (the church basement) I witnessed a bit of class apartheid. All the volunteers either in the kitchen or at the side of the room waiting to serve lunch to all of the homeless people. That seemed strange for wouldn't it be useful, both for volunteers and the aid recipients to interact with each other? Why not assign some volunteers to simply sit at a table and chat with the 'other' (especially if there are too many to help prepare food)? These volunteers could get to know the diners' stories, moving them from objects of pity to subjects--individuals who could be actually empathized with. Instead, as a server of food--styrofoam plates of baked chicken, greens, potatoes, and two little processed cookies wedged between the potatoes and chicken and absorbing chicken grease--I handed the diners food after being specifically told not to serve to an empty seat even if someone tells me there's someone sitting there as they might be trying to sneakily get a second helping.
This brings me to a big issue. That of trust. There was a major lack of it present. Yes, of course, some would try to get an extra meal, but this lack of trust really creates the wrong environment. Including creating a lack of respect. Here's an example, while serving one of the diners, he asked me for a leg and not a breast. No problem I told him, and gave someone else the breast. For the next few minutes as I looked in vain for a leg (we were on seconds already so they had run low), a fellow volunteer chastised me saying "they get what they're served." I felt belittled and angry--not for myself but to see how little these individuals were valued. They get what they get and that's it--and be careful or they'll try to get even more. Those dirty little people.
Of course, these were all subtle, but here's a clearer example, or a question rather. Why do you need more than a few volunteers anyway? What is the logic of getting volunteers to cook and serve the food, do the dishes and the rest, while the homeless diners just sit and eat, and before dinner, talk, play cards or listen to their iPod (yes, really)? I joined not to play waiter, but to help in a way that empowers these individuals. Of course, that's not how charity works today. Volunteers come to feel better about themselves and the homeless are simply the chorus, support actors--in some sort of complex tragic play. Sophocles would be proud.
So how to improve this? Here's one small suggestion--not to address the whole system but at least food aid. What about reducing these dinners by 90 percent, feeding 18 instead of 180. And instead of letting them sit alone, for those that can work, get them helping. For those that are unable to work--say physically or mentally handicapped--let them chat in a small group, one that includes a volunteer. With a savvy volunteer, perhaps she could build trust and help connect one with another, getting an elderly woman teaching an illiterate immigrant how to read, for example. In a setting of 180 individuals, the best that can be hoped for is order, not advancement, so I certainly don't fault Loaves and Fishes for its effort, however I am frustrated with how little the operation lives up to its name.
For those of you not familiar, Loaves and Fishes refers to when Jesus and the apostles fed an impossible number of people with very little food. They succeeded because everyone shared the food they had (not because of a heavenly miracle, but by the human miracle of trust). If a setting where sharing--of labor, of time, of trust--could be created, where people could learn new skills, make new connections, and help others, that in the long-run would be much more useful, even if just a tenth of the people were served.
A practical question: who would be invited? Why not have an application process? Offer daily lunches (not just weekly) to the 20 that are willing to help cook or clean or prepare or or tend the urban garden (which could be a good source of healthy food) or teach English to someone else. A competitive process could glean the most rehabilitative individuals and immediately give them a bit of pride and investment into this experiment. And then by creating a routine and empowering them with a job well done, these might go much further than the current emergency relief style operations in helping to find them a stable place in society and thus solving the root problem instead of continuing to just treat the symptoms, like most food aid operations seem to do.
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