Important
Blog Entry: Reflection on the Service Project at the LSS Food Pantry
Due: 11/16/M, by noon
Between noon and class on
Tuesday, read everyone’s submissions here, and be prepared to discuss their
experiences and yours in class on 11/17.
By now, you should have completed your service hours at the LSS Food Pantry.
Read Adam Davis, “What We
Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service” (its on the wiki under "Readings").
Davis raises some serious questions about our motives for providing volunteer service to those less fortunate to ourselves. Did your
experience at the food bank reflect or contradict any of Davis’s comments. Respond to at least one of his assertions, either defending it or rejecting it in the light of your own experiences. Here is the one I intend to respond to, but you can respond to any passage you want to:
We become significantly more cynical when we turn to those who explain service by appealing to the reputation it wins for the server. Here the good of the server remains primary, but the good of the served is tertiary rather than secondary. I ladle food onto your plate because others who see me do so will think better of me. And, oh yeah, you won’t be quite so hungry.
In his essay, Davis questions our motives for serving. He implies that when we serve, we sometimes want to feel good about ourselves, and we don't necessarily care if the beneficiary of our service gains any benefit from it. We expect a "thank you" at the very least, and Davis seems to think that the "thank you" forces the person doing the thanking to elevate the server and demean her or himself.
ReplyDeleteI was reminded of that idea recently by a post on Facebook. The poster bemoaned the loss of courtesy and civility in daily life. He said that he regularly held doors open for women, and that they rarely acknowledged the courtesy. They selected instead to keep looking at their smartphones. In other words, they were oblivious to his help.
IMO, sometimes we should act simply because it is the right thing to do. I automatically hold doors open for people (gender is not an issue) if I arrive first. Random acts of simple civility are not even conscious acts. Once I developed the habit, I never break it. I expect no "thank you" and it seems odd to expect one. Sometimes, people at food pantries respond inappropriately to the "help" I am giving them. At the LSS FP, we lead them through in a paternalistic (or is it maternalistic) way force them to make "correct" food choices. Should we condemn them for resenting such "help"?
I remember opening a door for a friend who walked with hand crutches because of a childhood disability. She reacted angrily by saying, "Tom, if I want @#$% help, I'll ask for it." I replied. "@#$%, [name withheld], I open the door for everybody." In retrospect, I realized her sensitivity to the issue of help. She was NOT disabled, she wanted to say. The door was disabled. She was not.
I was taken aback at the time, but I shouldn't have been. Sometimes a simple act of service can be an insult to the beneficiary. Expect no thanks or reward for service. Sometimes the only reward is simply doing the right thing.
Davis claims that our motives in service are mostly selfish and less to help others. He basically, implies that we want to feel better about ourselves and that we do not actually care if our act will help society. As a person with little experience in service and no knowledge in psychology or sociology, I am not sure whether I should agree with Davis’s essay or not.
ReplyDeleteBefore the food pantry I had only had a kind of uncommon service experiences. As I had a few family members and a couple close friends that struggled with addiction I decided to go on my free time at OKANA which is a free government rehab center in the center of Athens. At first I simply hanged around in it, drinking free coffee and visiting people I knew. As I got to know the people that worked there, I asked if I could help in any way. As it is illegal for an under aged person to help in OKANA, I could not give service inside the building. A guy named Christos Panagiotopoulos told me that I could come with him and work outside of the building. Next thing I knew, I was in a minivan driving around Athens, giving clean syringes to drug addicts on the street. As the government does not have money to give methadone to all addicts, we “helped” them by giving syringes that will not cause infections and illness until the money is found and they are able to be treated. That being said, giving syringes was an excuse to help them in other ways. Talking to them, whenever they were able to communicate, about soccer, music, food or just joke around. I suppose that sometimes they were in the need of discussing with someone rather than getting their methadone dosage. The problem was that they knew that we were a government organization. They knew that we would basically feed them with the lie that the government actually cares about them. After we left police officers would take them away in order to hide them from tourist by dragging them down to the other side of Athens.
To be honest, I do not exactly know what my motives in getting on that minivan were. I suppose someone could call it service but the truth is that I did not actually help that much. I think I gained more than the people I “helped” just by listening to them talk, than they did by me giving them clean syringes.
After having said all of the above, I still cannot give an exact explanation to the motives of service.
Volunteering in the purest of forms is my favorite thing to do. I would try to explain exactly why I love volunteering so much but there is no way I could possibly put it in words. If I were able to find a way to sustain myself, I would append the rest of my life volunteering to help others. For lack of a better adjective, volunteering is just beautiful.
ReplyDeleteMy experience at the food pantry was absolutely incredible. I was able to meet so many fascinating people- both volunteers and customers. I heard so many stories and shared many myself. I met people from all different walks of life and backgrounds, it was quite the experience. I was able to help people as well which is always a good thing. It was such a rewarding an experience in so many ways. I am really happy I was able to give my time to those that needed assistance. One lady even hugged me after I helped her unload her groceries and put them in her car. Another guy even said he would try to make it to one of the women’s lacrosse games this year. Just the fact that you are able to connect with someone in such a short amount of time is really unique. I just really enjoyed my experience.
I thought Davis’ piece was rather interesting. I honestly didn’t like it though because it felt like no matter what he was condemning you and your reasons for being involved in community service and I find it really hurtful. It’ like no matter what I could not please him. It’s frustrating because I really enjoy community service and I do it solely for other people. It makes me really angry actually.
The section I am choosing to talk about is the last paragraph of the service section where he says
“Why serve? Here are five reductive answers: 1) we are God’s children; 2) we share the earth; 3) I find myself in you; 4) I win praise by serving you; 5) I suck.”
It starts out as seemingly good reasons for doing community service then progresses into really horrible reasons for doing community service. I don’t know it’s hard for me to think this way because I don’t do volunteer work for those kind of negative reasons. I don’t even necessarily do it to feel joy. I can’t explain why I do volunteer work but I can explain the reasons I don’t do it. This piece was really hard for me to write about because it actually kind of hurt my feelings. For once in my life I don’t know what quite to say.
My friend, you have said plenty. You got as much as you gave at the FP, and that, I think, demonstrates that motive is irrelevant. What matters is the good you do.
DeleteRemember, we all have convictions, and we hold them close to our hearts. But a conviction isn't truly held until it is challenged and them reaffirmed. Confront Davis. Refute him. Challenge his assumptions. Question HIS motives.
Since you can't be in class today, with your permission, I will read a passage or two out of your entry.
That is fine! Read as much o as little as you want! Bummed to be missing class today!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in another culture background, I have no concept of God. So “serving God” cannot be my answer to why I do service. I would like to talk more about what I learned from serving.
DeleteLearning from others should be my answer. I have been a volunteer teaching English in Guizhou Province, an impoverished province in China. In Guizhou Province, most of my students grew up with their grandparents in absence of parents. Because their parents needed to work in other city or province to earn higher salary in order to raise the whole family. Lack of parents’ care, their first impression for me was desire for somebody’s care. The characteristic of that province, for me, is poor, only in economy but not in people’s mind.
Every time I asked my Guizhou students about their ideas about life, they never complained about their life. Instead, they always shared me with their future plans and answered as “I want a friend” or “I want somebody to accompany with me.” Even though they answered with smiles, I could always catch the loneliness from their pause or eyes. They did not point out who was “somebody” or seldom talked about their parents but, I thought, it should be their parents.
Despite of their loneliness, they were much more enthusiastic than other kids from the same age living in the big cities. Carefree and pure, their characteristics moved me. Unlike them, I lived with family and friends, got better education, and still felt anxious or complained about life. By doing serving, I realized how lucky I was.
I did not have any clear purpose before my serving. For me, the experience could be an unknown, interesting trip to experience another kind of life. But by the moment my students asked me to make friends with me, I thought I had already found out my answer.
When Davis says we cherish inequality, I agree, to an extent. I don't think we necessarily "cherish" it, I think we exploit it. We take the fact that there is inequality in the world to make ourselves feel better about what we have. I'm poorer than most of my friends and one of my friends would invite me to go get Starbucks with him and he always insisted on paying, even when my grandma gave me money to cover both of our coffees and I had already said that I would pay because I needed to pay him back for buying the coffee the last time. One time out of pure annoyance I asked him why he always had to pay. His response: "it makes me feel good. Plus I have the money, why not use it?" You see, all of my friends knew my financial situation. I was living off of my grandma's social security and retirement pension. Some days I couldn't eat lunch because my grandma couldn't afford to give me money so one of them would buy me lunch. When I started getting my parents' death benefits my senior year, I made it my mission to pay them all back by buying them lunch or snacks or whatever I could. That was when my friend insisted on paying for our Starbucks coffees. He wanted to do it simply because it made him feel good that he was doing something for someone, even though it was his friend, who had less money than him. He even tried to get my prom date to pay for my prom ticket. If it hadn't been my grandma's graduation present to me, I'm sure he would've convinced my date to do so. And he's not my only friend that's done it. People in my school who aren't my friends would make comments about it. One day in 10th grade we were doing a secret santa in French class and I asked to be left out of it because I wouldn't be able to afford a present for someone and a fellow classmate overheard and offered very sarcastically to buy the present for me. Then she talked to my cousin, who she was friends with about it and he confronted me and told me that she was wrong and he had to explain my full financial situation to her. She apologized the next day. On the day of secret santa I found out that she had drawn my name and that she expected a present from me because that's how the secret santa activity worked. She ended up buying me something and also buying something for herself. She later bragged about it to her friends who then made fun of me for having a cousin who came from a richer family than me. Even my family exploited the fact that they were richer. On holiday times, they would give us 2 or 3 presents each and we could only afford 1 each and when we gave them the present, they would complain about us spending money and when we pointed out that they gave us 2 or 3 presents, they would say "well, we have to working adults so it's easier for us to buy presents". We began just bringing over food for my aunt, giving my uncle chocolate, and buying my cousins a box of cookies each because we knew they wouldn't complain about it.
ReplyDeleteIn Davis' essay, he grills everyone about the true intentions behind the reasons for doing "charity work". He believes that we, as the kind and nurturing people that we are, do it for the benefit of saying we did it. And of course for the "thank you" at the end of giving someone else another moment of life. Davis believes that "thank you" that we are looking for at the end of doing service, makes the ones who weve helped feel "less than".
ReplyDeleteVolunteering at the food pantry and my church have helped to understand that people will judge you because they dont understand or dont know the truth.
One year, around Christmas time, my church would ask for each household to provide a present for a child in need at a nearby Foster Care Center. This is when the rich families would compete and challenge each other to see who could buy the most presents. And at the time, my mother was just recently laid off, and could only afford to put one gift in the gift basket. The fact that we still contriubuted was good enough for the both of us, but the other households looked down on us because we couldnt give as much as we could last year, when in actuality, the entire purpose of the Toy Drive was to give back to those in need. The people who we thought were our friends, were missing the point of the original plan. So in this case, I agree with Davis, people are not always about helping others, the majority of the time they are looking for the "thank you", to make them feel like they are on a pedestal.
I have always enjoyed doing service. Especially the ones where I help a bigger cause. I have volunteered over hundreds of hours in the last 4 years. From helping kids and making pancakes for the senior citizens in my community.
ReplyDeleteThe food pantry was not an event I completely like. I do love helping those people who truly need it, but I believe some people who show up do not need it. Saying that, I am still happy for what I did because I know the people are in a better state now and can feed themselves and family.
Why do we serve? The reason I serve is because I love helping and seeing my fellow brothers and sisters in a good state. I don't do it on my behalf, I only do it the benefit the other party. I like seeing people happy and that is by itself a rewarding sight.
I truly believe that a lot of the motivation behind service is in order to better self image, or maybe even in an attempt to make one feel better about themselves. It is extremely cynical but when I see celebrities posting pictures about mission trip or working at a food bank all I am able to think about is publicity opportunity. Many people go to these places with little intent or thought about the real repercussions of their actions. Yes, they might be helping when they are there. But it is also a think-less task. Its a habitual action that requires no real connection the what is actually being done. I don't necessarily criticize people that go do community service for themselves, because they really are helping while they are there. But I truly think what is more important is going with an intent to help and not just look good.
ReplyDeleteFor me service has always been a thing that is forced and even though I have not enjoyed some of the different service projects I have done, I would that I really liked this. I did not have the chance to go to the food kitchen and instead I spent two days going around Delaware,Ohio going door to door trying to collect cans of nonperishable goods that could be donated to the pantry. The OWU mens lacrosse team did this together and even though it was forced, I really enjoyed it more because I did not feel like I was only doing it to be seen as a good person by others. I was happy to know that all the food we collected went right to people who needed it and I really liked that I didn't get t see who it went to. I feel that a lot of people only do service so that others can see them doing it but in this situation body saw what we did and even though it was 40+ kids who helped collect cans, only 3 people were recognized for it. I felt good about what I did and it is something that I hope I will get the chance to do again next year. I think that people should not do service to help themselves look better, but they should do it for the other people because that is the main goal.
ReplyDeleteCommunity service in my opinion should be something you enjoy. The incentive for doing community service shouldn't be to be recognized for it, but rather the connection and feeling they get when helping. People do community service out of habit. Like David said, we want to feel good about what we are doing and eventually expect to be recognized. We come disappointed when no one gives thanks. Sometimes the people being help don't want to acknowledge the situation they are in because it is not easy for them to ask for help. That can be the reason why they are thankful inside but don't say it.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the years of doing community service I have learned that the point is not to get requirements done, I learned to love being involved with the community. It became something I do automatic and not to make me feel better or to be recognized for it. You should't focus on the quantity but rather the quality. It doesn't matter if you do so many community hours if you don't learn anything and just do them to meet requirements.