Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and were able to enjoy time with family, friends, and loved ones. It was definitely one of the more unique Thanksgiving days I have ever had, in that it felt much more like a regular day than a holiday. In the morning, I went with a friend to lower Manhattan to hand out bags of non-perishable food to people in need, along with serving coffee and bagels. After a few hours of that, we went back to my apartment for a lazy afternoon before going to a church up in Queens to serve dinner to approximately 200 people from that community. Even though it was different for me to not be with my family, or even my second family, the Foster's in California, it was such a blessing to be involved in both of these opportunities. I met some wonderful people with incredibly generous and loving hearts. Both the people who organized and carried out these events, and the people who were there in need showed me what the true holiday spirit really looks like. It was so great to see a big church putting on events like this and showing people Christ's love, not simply telling them about it.


Aside from that, everything else is a bit chaotic right now for me. Wednesday was my last day at the community service office, and working with CFL altogether, for that matter. I was so touched by the parties that each office I was involved with threw in honor of my time with them. The leaders and kids in the Wave group put together a fun little celebration with cake and other goodies, and games that we played as a group. They made me a bracelet with one bead to represent each of them, which I will wear as I make my way around the rest of the world, and made me a card that they all signed. At the CSP office on Wednesday they gave me a couple cards with some small goodies, and we played games and just hung out together after all the clients had been taken care of. After closing up the office, I was taken out for my first experience with Puerto Rican cuisine. Wow, do they know how to eat or what? On Monday, I plan to have a final debriefing session with the directors of each office and the director of CFL as a whole, where we will discuss my experiences and my reactions to those experiences.


Also, next week I plan to take a bus down to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. I want to see these places and use the few days away from the city to process and organize the last 10 weeks. I hope to spend some time with a good friend of mine in D.C., and outside of that I will just spend time by myself, journaling and praying. I am very much looking forward to this because it will give me a much needed opportunity to take a deep breath and take a tough, honest look at this situation from the outside. Being in the midst of the chaotic whirlwind that was the last 10 weeks has made it really difficult to do anything but simply react. I will have a final write-up analyzing the types of issues and programs I have just experienced, as well a specific write-up for CFL that I hope they can use as they continue to grow and improve. Being a part of not only helping them first hand, but also giving them my thoughts and ideas that can potentially help them perform better is so exciting.


That is all I have for now. I will share whatever thoughts and analyses I come up with over the next week, and until then, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and have no trouble getting back to work and the rest of normal life next week. The photo at the top is of me with two of the turkeys we had donated to us, that we then delivered to local families. We were able to order 40 more turkeys, thanks to the generosity of a few people, but they were not delivered to us in time for the holiday, so we will pass those out for Christmas. The next photo is of the dinner that we helped serve. You can see how packed it was and what a great environment it was for everyone. Then you can take a look at all the kids and the other leaders of the Wave group. In an effort to quickly explain my facial expression, we decided we were going to do a goofy one, but I think they set me up because I was about the only one to do so. Finally, there is a shot of the table that we were using to pass out the bags of food and hang out with people in the community. Have a great week!

Winding Down

It has been about a week since I last wrote of my feelings about the world not being such a great place. I know that the world hasn't changed a great deal since then, but my outlook is quite a bit more positive now, which tells me that I simply let the circumstances get to me and affect me at a level perhaps deeper than it should have. On Sunday I had a conversation with a good friend of mine, who is a manager at his office, and he gave me some very good advice, which I have been trying to apply daily. He told me that as a manager he has to be able to feel for the people he is in charge of, but not allow that to get in the way of him doing his work or, consequently, them doing their work. It is not about becoming numb to the issues or problems of people, as I have been hearing so often since I got here. I am not willing to accept that becoming numb is an effective way to do your job as someone who is in the business of helping people. It is about feeling their pain, and then because you do feel their pain, being able to rise above your own emotional reactions to do your job and help them to continue to do theirs. Someone who has become numb is not hard to spot, and they are the ones who are not doing their job well. It is those who feel, and feel very much, the pain of the person sitting in front of them that do a good job day in and day out. They simply have trained their emotions to drive them to do their job better, rather than to debilitate them. As a somewhat empathetic person, this has been a challenge for me, but that is what I am striving towards, and it is where I must get if I am to have any success long term in helping the people our mission is built around.


In the last week, we have received two shipments of food at the office and our shelves and the reserves are completely stocked. This will only last us a few days, but it certainly changed my attitude, and the energy of the entire office, to much more positive and motivated. I wish I had photos of the pantry when it is fully stocked, I will get some, but I did post a photo of what it looks like when it is empty and causing us to turn away hungry people. We have had a good response from people in the community, as well as people from across the country who are involved in this project, to the holiday donation appeal. Normally, the office puts together 75 baskets for families on Thanksgiving, but this year it has been lowered to 50. That is still far better than not having any baskets at all to give out to families, as it looked may be the case about a week ago. Thank you so much to those who have gotten involved and responded with donations of either goods or finances, you know who you are and we are so thankful that you have a heart enough to give to lift the spirits of families you may never meet. I will hopefully be able to go help deliver the baskets and get some photos of the families who are receiving them. It will be such a blessing to see the sincere smiles on their faces, and I hope to be able to share those smiles with you.


I am going to Oregon this evening for the weekend to meet my niece, Lilli, and become her Godfather at her baptism on Sunday. I am so excited to meet her and hold her, I cannot put it into words. Spending time with my family and friends will be so good for me, as well. I have accepted that I will not be with them for the holidays this year, so this weekend will be as close as I get to that, and I plan to soak up every minute of it. A friend of mine said he would like to join me in volunteering at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving next week, so I spent a couple hours this morning calling around to area soup kitchens to register us for that. To my surprise, most places were not doing a Thanksgiving dinner, and the ones that were are already full for volunteers. This is really disappointing on one side because I really want to serve, but really encouraging on the other because that means that the call for volunteers has been answered by New Yorkers. Perhaps people are doing more to help than I though, huh? I will continue to look for a place we can serve, and if anyone out there knows of any place in Brooklyn or Manhattan that serves Thanksgiving dinner to the needy and has room for volunteers, please let me know.


My time in New York is quickly winding down, which is both exciting and saddening. I have really enjoyed it here so far and I look forward to spending another two weeks with the people and places I have developed relationships with before I go onto Belize to do the same. Please enjoy the photos I have posted. One is of a some dinosaur fossils at the Museum of Natural History, which I went to on Sunday and really enjoyed. Another is of St. Patrick's Cathedral, a beautiful Catholic church near Times Square that I have called my church here in the city. There is also a photo of myself with some friends from college that were out visiting this week, and the last one is of the skating rink is Rockefeller Plaza, where the Christmas tree will soon stand decorated. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Not So Happy Holidays

Recently I have come to experience that the holiday season means very different things to different people. Everyday of this journey has made me realize how fortunate I have been to be born into a family that loves me endlessly and has the resources to give me the opportunity to dream to do essentially anything on this side of eternity. Holidays, to me, mean time with family and other loved ones, time to relax and reflect on the year, and time to recharge in preparation for the upcoming new year. In contrast, holidays, to a lot of people with situations nearly opposite of mine, mean feeling even more lonely, hungry, and just overall aware of their circumstances than normal.

This is not a new concept to me. Everyone always hears during the holiday season that there are people who are less fortunate than they are, and we are almost all involved in some sort of food or toy drive, or giving to the "bell ringers" as we walk into stores. Recently at the office where I am interning, there has been a lot of talk about this year's Thanksgiving food drive and Holiday gift drive. Each year they appeal to community business owners and families for non-perishable food and frozen turkeys for Thanksgiving baskets that will be delivered to families who truly would not have a family dinner otherwise. Also, they take toy donations to be handed out to children who come in with their parents, children who may have never known what it is like to receive a gift for Christmas, Hanukkah, Three Kings Day, or any other holiday during this season.

The reason I have come to experience the difference from my own holiday protocols is that the budget for CFL has been cut due to the economic situation. You see, CFL is a non-profit organization relying heavily on private foundations and donors for their financial well-being. When the economy affects these people and foundations, it eventually trickles down to affect all of their investments. For this reason, I was honored to write CFL's first ever holiday appeal letter, and I am excited to walk through the community on Friday to deliver it to local families and business owners and humbly ask for their assistance. I remain optimistic, though maybe only through ignorance, that we can get enough food and gifts to still reach the most desperate of families in our community.

The combination of the above situation with the fact that we have had to close the doors of our food pantry a couple days due to lack of available food, hearing more heartbreaking personal stories everyday about homelessness, joblessness, and hopelessness, and reading about the situation of civil unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo was enough to bring me to tears a couple days ago. On Monday I just felt overwhelmed by it all, as recognized by everyone at the office who told me that my whole demeanor and spirit seemed off. I was not able to identify it until I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone that night and I just lost it. The tears came pouring down my face and I just started venting about everything that was wrong with the world. I felt personally responsible for it all because I was using a cell phone and a laptop that contained materials which were part of the battle over resources that led to the situation in the D.R. of Congo. I felt personally responsible because I have always lived so comfortably and have missed so many opportunities to help those all around me in desperate situations. I hate that multinational corporations with no apparent moral compass have essentially tied my hands, along with so many others, and made me unknowingly participate in encouraging rebel armies to form and try to take control of national resources, just so those companies can make money on both of us. I hate that there are thousands of organizations doing great work to help, and it still doesn't seem to be enough. Basically, I just hate that human beings, including myself, can somehow continually ignore the pain and suffering of others just like us. Pain and suffering that, if we were to have to endure it, would be unbearable and drive us to despair while others simply walked by or turned their eyes. I know for certain that if I were in any such situations, I would be so upset at people like me, and so hurt that people like myself seemingly do not care.

I am asking for your thoughts and prayers to help me gather all of these feelings and put them to use as fuel for action. It is so easy to feel like my hands are tied and then just get angry, but that is the beautiful part of ERACE. We are giving everyone who feels the same as I do an opportunity to be part of large scale change, with, really, very little personal effort. That is why all of our hard work, time and energy is worth it, and I pray that I never forget this. We must be aware of the situation in the world and we have even come to expect it, but we mustn't ever accept it. That is a very important distinction to make, between expecting and accepting. I apologize for the negativity of this entry, but I feel that it is important for me to deliver raw feelings along with real happenings, and I am so thankful for your prayers in regard to this. Have a pleasant weekend everyone, and please leave me your thoughts on this entry. I hope there are many thoughts, positive or negative.

WOW

The last ten days have been very much up and down. There have been extremely positive and uplifting experiences coupled with very negative and depressing ones. Last Friday night my computer just plain stopped working, much to my dismay and confusion. Now, understand that the extent of my knowledge of tricky computer commands is holding control, alt, and delete. Once that doesn't produce results and a simple restart fails to fix the whole situation, I am at a complete loss. I called Dell technical support on Saturday morning and, after an hour of running tests, was told that my hard drive had crashed. I calmly freaked out because all of the files for ERACE Poverty were saved on my hard drive, and it sounded to me like all were lost, leaving us with another year's worth of work to do to get back to our current position. To make a long story short, I was able to boot the computer up in safe mode and pull all the files off to be loaded onto the new hard drive that Dell sent me under the warranty. All files are safe, not to mention double backed up, and life goes on, at least in that respect.Last week was positive and very educational, as I spent more time at the community service office with the clients and employees. Magda, the advocacy specialist who has been there over 20 years, was nice enough to impart on me her knowledge and experience of the world of benefits. She told me about all the complications she faces with people who come in trying to gain access to their benefits, but who do not have the appropriate documentation to do so. Starting from scratch with no legal documents and eventually get to the point where they have federal photo documentation to prove they are who they say they are is a long, arduous process. This is something that I have never considered because I have never had to, but it is heartbreaking to hear her stories of people who have been in the system their entire adult lives, and then are not allowed access to the benefits they have earned due to unfortunate circumstances. These circumstances may be a fire, theft, name change upon immigration into the country that was not properly documented, etc. Magda is able to get most of these type of situations resolved, but not without a great deal of time, energy, and stress on her part.I'll tell you about two extremely positive experiences before I get to one more negative. First, the NYC Marathon was on Sunday, so naturally I made plans to be there the whole day and enjoy the festivities. Unfortunately I totally spaced it when I was going to sign up to get into the lottery to get a number for the race, but just being there was an experience in itself. A friend and I stood at 90th St. and 5th Ave, where the runners entered Central Park at about mile 24, for easily an hour. We saw the leaders of the Men, Women, and Wheelchair divisions pass, and then walked the rest of the course to enjoy the atmosphere. I have been to a few races, some of them pretty large, and never have I been so lifted up by a race atmosphere. Over 100 countries were represented in the field, which exceeded 38,000 runners. With that many people from different backgrounds you would expect to see some negative interactions, but all I saw was Americans cheering on Germans, Canadians encouraging Italians, and Australians rooting for Brazilians, just to name a few of the combinations. Being a part of something that made everyone put aside their differing views and stereotypes, even for just a few hours, was so touching and truly impacting.
Speaking of impacting, Tuesday night's election is something that I will never forget as long as I live. Whatever your political beliefs, you have to admit that this election was encouraging and obviously historical. I was at a cafe with some friends to watch the results come in, and as soon as Barack Obama was declared the winner we raced to Times Square. This is the point where I felt as if I was taken to another world. There were over a million people in a couple square block area, all alternating between complete silence and awe, boisterous cheers, and heartfelt chants as we watched his acceptance speech on the big screen. I have never received more hugs and high fives in a two hour period in my entire life, and all from perfect strangers. Exhilarating is the closest I can come to being able to describe the situation, though that word still doesn't fully describe it. Our country came together on that night in a way that I have not seen since September 11, 2001, but with much more positive energy, as it arose from a positive situation.
This morning, as I sat in the welfare office waiting room, the main circulating conversation was one of excitement over Obama's election. This of course was constantly being interrupted by angry comments about the system for which we were all waiting initial or continued enrollment. At the recommendation of Valentina, an employee at the CFL office, I went in to go through the public assistance application process. I thought this was a great idea, although I knew it was going to be painful. From what I had been told it made the DMV experience seem like the most enjoyable carnival you have ever been to. That may be a bad analogy I just came up with, but it proved to be true. After waiting in three different lines and waiting rooms for about 4 hours, my name was finally called. Unfortunately for me, the lady who called my name came out of the door on the opposite end of the room, which was filled with well over 100 people at that time. Once I realized that my name had been called, it was too late. She had already made her way back into the back office, and the security guard told me to have a seat and I would hear my name again. At this point, I was very surprised to have a couple of people, both clearly veterans of the system, come to my aid and essentially yell at the guard until I was allowed into the offices to go find Ms. Drake, as they called her. The interview lasted about 20 minutes and I was told at the end that I needed to bring in much more identification before I could become enrolled. This was intentional on my part since I was there just for the experience, not the actual benefits. To sum it all up, I have never been in such a relentless and overpowering negative environment. I found it nearly impossible for myself to smile or engage in a positive conversation with anyone there, and actually found myself feeling physically ill after a few hours. It is really too bad that it is such a negative experience because I feel like these people could use a little bit of positivity when they have already humbled themselves to the point of entering the building. I will continue to process this experience and take it to Magda to get her feedback.

So much action to cover in this post, I hope you are still with me and not too bored. There are a couple photos from the marathon, one showing American Paula Radcliffe taking home the title for the second year in a row. Also there is a photo of John, my very good friend from Seattle, and me standing in front of the city at the promenade, and a photo of me sitting in an exhibit at PS 1, a really great modern art gallery in Queens that we went to on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!