A shelter for my grandchildren: The limits of volunteerism

By Paul Rogat Loeb
author activist

April is National Volunteer Month and from April 23-25 we celebrate Global Youth Service Day where millions of young people will get involved in their communities, many through their congregations, possibly beginning lifetimes of commitment to social justice. But how can we help them tackle the roots of the issues they address? A Stanford student once explained to me how he'd learned more from volunteering than from all his courses, concluding "I hope one day my grandchildren will have the same experience working in the same homeless shelter that I did." Friends gently reminded him that in a country this wealthy, people shouldn't need to sleep in shelters. The student meant no harm. But his words raised an important question about the relationship between more personal volunteering and long-term change.

Millions of us serve in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, senior centers and literacy programs, often through our churches, mosques and synagogues. Our motivation is often the same as that of citizens involved in more political advocacy: We affirm a sense of human connection, of being woven together in a common garment of destiny, expressed when Rabbi Hillel asked, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?" Hillel's tradition views the obligation to love others as the essence of right living, of being truly human.

When we honor that connection by acting, we can also transform our faith. A San Antonio community activist once told me, "I've always read the Bible, but now I'm reading it in a new way." "I felt such a priceless taste of love coming back," said a Korean Seattle store owner whose Christian beliefs prompted him to hire a young man who tried to steal a pair of pants from him. "Once I've done something like that, I can't go back to what I was before." America would be a far meaner society without our volunteer efforts.

Given the frustrations of political involvement, it's tempting to reserve our energy and creativity just to try to help people one-by-one, through approaches that seem purer, more direct, and less spiritually compromised than trying to elect wiser leaders or pressure powerful institutions. But when we scale down our expectations, we risk ignoring the roots of the problems we address. When we shrink from larger issues, our souls shrink, too.

Social change and personal acts of compassion can feed each other. Volunteer efforts can help us regain our sense of connection, taking us beyond the gated community of the heart. They can offer lifelines to beleaguered individuals and communities and create new ways to address urgent problems, as does Habitat for Humanity's pioneering work. Those trapped in self-destructive cycles may particularly need personal relationships with those who can offer love, generosity, a willingness to listen, and the capacity to see God's grace in even their most desperate fellow humans.

Yet most of these personal approaches require institutional support. In his powerful memoir, "Always Running," Luis Rodriguez describes his journey into East Los Angeles gang life--and how he left, thanks largely to the influence of a former gang member turned community worker. Had political action not established the program that hired the community worker, Rodriguez might never have changed.

Critical social problems demand both individual and structural solutions. Yet I've seen too many compassionate individuals trying to stem rivers of need, as national, political and economic leaders open the floodgates to widen them. We build five houses with Habitat, while bank foreclosures or government cuts throw a hundred families into the street. We laboriously restore a single stream while global climate change turns once-fertile acres into desert. As the late Reverend William Sloane Coffin once said, "Charity must not be allowed to go bail for justice."

Think of people pulling an endless sequence of drowning children out of a river. Of course we must rescue the children. We also need to find out why they're falling in, because we can't individually save them all. The concept of witness lets us do both. We can listen to people at food banks and homeless shelters, recognize them as fellow children of God and find out how they got there. We can then take their stories to the village square, or its cyber equivalent, and share them with others. But to stop the vicious cycle of drownings, we must look upstream.

Ten Suggestions for Citizen Engagement

Taking a stand on issues we believe in may seem daunting, but it's the best thing we can do for our souls. Here are ten suggestions that can make engagement more fruitful.

#1: Start where you are. You don't need to know everything, and you certainly don't need to be perfect.

#2: Take things step by step. You set the pace of your engagement. Don't worry about being swallowed up, because you'll determine how much you get involved.

#3: Build supportive community. You can accomplish far more with even a small group of good people than you can alone.

#4: Be strategic. Ask what you're trying to accomplish, where you can find allies, and how to best communicate the urgencies you feel.

#5: Enlist the uninvolved. They have their own fears and doubts, so they won't participate automatically; you have to work actively to engage them. If you do, there's no telling what they'll go on to achieve.

#6: Seek out unlikely allies. The more you widen the circle, the more you'll have a chance of breaking through the entrenched barriers to change.

#7: Persevere. Change most often takes time. The longer you continue working, the more you'll accomplish.

#8: Savor the journey. Changing the world shouldn't be grim work. Take time to enjoy nature, good music, good conversation, and whatever else lifts your soul. Savor the company of good people working for change

#9: Think large. Don't be afraid to tackle the deepest-rooted injustices, and to tackle them on a national or global scale. Remember that many small actions can shift the course of history.

#10: Listen to your heart. It's why you're involved to begin with. It's what will keep you going.

Paul Rogat Loeb is author of "Soul of a Citizen" and an activist who has been writing on citizen activism and community engagement for close to forty years. This commentary is adapted from the wholly updated new edition of "Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times".

By Paul Rogat Loeb |  April 23, 2010; 11:52 AM ET Save & Share:                 
Previous: Teaching Capitol Hill to work with negative emotions | Next: Why we object to Franklin Graham's Islamophobia

Posted by: tossnokia | April 25, 2010 6:42 AM
Report Offensive Comment

The comments to this entry are closed.