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At the close of last year,
the media was filled with
front-page stories trumpeting the fact that
charitable giving in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina had
surpassed giving following both the Asian
Tsunami
and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Yesterday,
Harwood Institute President Richard C. Harwood
shared his views on this news with law-makers
and
non-profit executives gathered for the Maryland
Association of Nonprofit Organizations
Legislative
Preview Session. “It confirms for me
again,” said
Harwood, “that Americans are a compassionate
and
generous people, and if they see a way to make
a
difference, they will act.”
But there is more to finding an
alternate path
than charity. Harwood continued, “Charity is
necessary, but not sufficient to meet the
challenges
we face in our communities and across the
nation.
We need change. We need change to ensure that
every child can get a good education, to ensure
that
every individual feels safe when he
walks the streets of his community, and to
fight
hatred, bigotry and prejudice in our
society.”
In nearly two
decades of working in communities around the
country, Harwood has seen first-hand what it
takes
to create change in communities from Flint,
Michigan,
to Las Vegas, Nevada. During his 15-city tour
promoting his book Hope Unraveled last
fall,
he
saw time and again that we need to focus on
change, not simply
charity.
Ironically, one such couragous example
was herself named Katrina, known to
those in her “Pittsburgh” neighborhood in
Atlanta as
Miss Trina. Miss Trina had originally been
driven from
her neighborhood by the noise and danger
emanating
from two crack houses on her block. She
re-settled
with her family in a middle class neighborhood
removed from Pittsburgh in both geography and
public conscious, but she could not shake the
feeling
that she had left others behind.
Not content to sit on the sidelines,
Miss Trina
moved back to a house near the old Pittsburgh
neighborhood to confront the crack houses and
hopelessness of the community head on. In her
role
with the Salvation Army, she is leading an
effort to
build a new neighborhood community center. Such
a
gathering space is a vital part of a community,
but it
will only be a force for change if people like
Miss
Trina devote themselves over the long run to
using
the community center as a catalyst for change.
If
such efforts are not undertaken, there would be
only
an empty shell of a building to show for the
charity
that went into its construction.
Unlike the ripples of hope generated
by the work
of Miss Trina, Hurricane Katrina left a path of
destruction across the gulf coast region that
will
take years to rebuild. The charity is there,
but the
question remains, will there be change? Change
will
not be easy, and it will not be seen overnight.
We
must be ruthlessly strategic in our efforts,
examining
our own sensibilities and practices, and
admitting
that we must often change ourselves before we
can
create change in a community. Some questions to
consider as we struggle to move forward:
- Will we be willing to confront the
issues of
poverty and race that caused so many people to
be left behind as a great American city filled
with
toxic water?
- Will we invest in the kinds of
individuals and
organizations that can cut across class, race,
and
geography and generate the small signs of
progress
that foster authentic hope?
- Will we be willing to openly and
honestly discuss
the values and tradeoffs inherent in the
difficult
choices that must be made in the months and
years
ahead?
For all the uncertainty that we face
as a nation,
this is certain: If we are ever to recover from
the
effects of the Katrina of the Gulf Coast, we
will need
to look beyond charity and find stories of hope
in the
work of people like Miss Trina of Atlanta to
create
change.
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