By: Sarah Byers, BA 2016
Something that has been the grandest of struggles is to decipher what actions we collectively, as a team of college students, can do to best positively impact our surrounding Waco community. The base problem lies within the subjectivity of the words “best,” and “impact.” When everyone has different ideas of what things and people and ideas and art and subjects are best, how is this word able to be defined? And when everyone has different sets of life experiences, passions, and skills, how can “positively impact” be defined homogenously by our entire “Board of Directors”?
One experience stands out in particular as I think of times when I have had abrupt introductions to the “adult world” with all of its elephantine realities and heavy truths. In 2013, I was working in Washington D.C. and had the opportunity to sit in on a Department of Homeland Security meeting. Our nation’s foreign aid falls under the jurisdiction of this Committee, and accordingly its Committee members in the United States House of Representatives. These individuals are charged with the mammoth task deciding how to best appropriate the gargantuan budget that Homeland Security has, in the name of furthering the nation’s “homeland security.” Flash back to my original question: “How to best positively impact our surrounding community?” As I listened to the Members debate how to best positively impact their colossal surrounding community of the United States and its Homeland Security, my eyes were opened by what I heard.
Results were being heard of a study that was conducted investigating the effect of bags of food, like wheat, corn, flour etc. being distributed to a few impoverished African communities. These bags were financed by taxpayer money to be shipped across the Atlantic in the form of foreign aid, in little brown sacks that were emblazoned with the emblem of the American flag. These products were bought with taxpayer money from American agriculture industries, and in the name of Homeland Security, distributed to these impoverished communities, with the goal of ostensibly improving our nation’s security. The study had found suggestions of trends showing that our efforts of foreign aid were, in the specific case, harming the community long term. When the bags ceased coming or there were delays, the communities suffered because they had no systemic system set in place of supporting themselves through good agriculture/irrigation practices.
Furthermore, evidence was presented that it would be more beneficial to help those impoverished communities set up their own industries, because it would improve their economies and create jobs, revenue, income. America would save on extravagant shipping costs and detrimental environmental consequences of physically sailing large boats with bags of crop to these African communities. Some suggested it was costly to print our American flag symbols on all these bags. But one Congressman said something I can still hear clearly in my mind… “The aims of our foreign aid are not philanthropic in nature.” He went on to contest the main aims of our nation’s foreign aid is positive PR for the United States, and when the public sees the bags shipped over in action, it creates a good image and photo for the U.S.
“How to best positively impact our surrounding community?”
This scenario sticks in my mind as I sit in Philanthropy lab and ponder how we all have different ideas of how we can best positively impact our surrounding community. Will we create positive PR for ourselves? For our school? Can we do both?
Will we work to remove root problems within our community rather than offering barley bags with the American flag symbol emblazoned on the front? As we all in Philanthropy lab hold varying ideologies on how to best tackle the root causes in our community, I am deeply encouraged. I am encouraged that I feel a good deal of respect for everyone in Philanthropy lab. I am encouraged because as Andy Hogue says, “Thank goodness everyone is different.” It is a very thin pancake that does not have two sides. The systemic problems that promulgate cycles of poverty and similar issues are multi-faceted and complicated in nature. To pretend to fully understand the issues at 21 years of age would be, perhaps, foolish.
How to best positively impact our surrounding community?”
Everyone has his or her own response, and no one’s opinion is more or less valuable. “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided on Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt gives good insight to why everyone’s ideas about positively impacting their communities are different. For now, I am encouraged at the mutual respect and fluidity of our “Board” conversations, proposals, and interactions. Comprehensively, we are learning how to best positively impact our surrounding community, and learning what it means to be team players.