Tag Archives: doing good

One Small, but Important Step for Released Prisoners

Reply

Earlier this month, with the Susquehanna Valley Leadership Program I’m taking we went to visit the Medium Security Unit at Allenwood PA. If you’ve never visited a prison, you should. It’s a visceral experience you won’t forget. Once the door clangs shut behind you, and you look around, you receive a lot of rapid fire visual information about who is tried and sentenced in this country.

As state and federal budgets are squeezed, there’s less and less money for helping classes in the prisons that will help inmates find legitimate jobs on the outside and fewer and fewer resources outside. (And of course, if our returning veterans and their spouses are having a hard time having jobs, people with felony records will not be in the running. Without legitimate jobs, they will return to former lifestyles. There was a recent sad, sad case in our area, a recently released prisoner, elderly with health issues and no work skills, was living in his car. When United Way folk stopped to talk to him about finding him housing, he just wanted to go “home to prison.” He didn’t know how to function in this world.)

Enter Center for Employment Operations (C.E.O.). They’re doing great work, helping former prisoners develop skills that will help them in the outside world. Sadly, it’s one program. But the more we read about these things, talk about them, support them, the better the odds for their continued existence and for copy-cats to spring up. In the coming times, I believe we’re the ones who will have to step up and provide solutions. It’s great to have good models. In addition to C.E.O, I suggest you follow The NY Times’ column Fixes. Every week on Friday, they report on things that are working in our world. That’s a column this Priestess can whole-heartedly endorse!

Philanthropy & Giving Circles

Reply

There is no question that times are hard for people and for charitable organizations. It is also a hard truth that services that might be provided by our government will not be funded due to lack of resources. We can argue across political lines who should pay for what. Or we can do as much as we can of what needs to be done. I look at our schools and social services and think, they need support now.

There are groups who have lists of effective charities, and it’s always good to support organizations with a track record of making a difference. I’ve written in another blog post about Fixes a weekly column in the New York Times. One of the things they keep tabs on is which organizations and what style of philanthropy is working.

I think one way that we can make a difference is through giving circles. If we gather our friends together and make decisions about where we’d like to have impact,

  1. It allows us to participate in a much larger way in the financial success of an organization.
  2. We can involve our kids in the notion and the reality of giving. Kids can make good choices about the kind of help that’s needed.
  3. It keeps us talking about what’s important to us as individuals, families and communities.

It’s a new year. Many of us feel we don’t have enough… but I would encourage us all to look at what enough is compared to the people in our community. It’s easy to get lulled into the need for more, when we might better be coaxed into generosity.

Well, It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Reply

This is a frightening year for a lot of people. Things that looked so steady: houses, careers, relationships have to frequently crumbled under the economic troubles. When the holidays roll around during such times, people can who might not normally spend much money during the season are feeling deprived. It makes it tough.

Stores are helping people (and, okay, themselves) by providing layaway options. Slowly, slowly people are working their way toward bringing home the bike, clothing, doll, toy that their loved one desired.

So imagine their surprise, when they went to pay things off, to find their bills marked paid in full. Angels have been going into stores and paying off people’s layaway. And when others hear about the angels’ actions, they’re doing it too. The angels feel great about themselves and what they were able to do. And the recipients are having a wonderful holiday made all the sweeter by someone’s generosity.

Is supporting shopping the way to change the world? Probably not. But will it make some people’s holidays merry and bright? You betcha. It’s a fairly simple gesture that warms hearts and unites strangers. Nice, eh?

Happy Day, folks!

 

 

Fixes: The Progress Being made

Reply

When I started this site and this blog, my intention was to write about things that are working, things both small and large.

A convert to the notion that when people see things being changed —people making a difference — they, we, can more easily envision making a difference ourselves. We can argue about whether this government agency or that should be taking care of a problem that exists in our community. We will probably find it difficult to make headway on large systemic problems on our own… but headway can much more easily be made on small problems by one or more committed people. And what is really wonderful is that progress is being made all over the world by such inspired people.

We like being inspired. We rise to the occasion in the face of inspiration. We do good works, to use an outmoded phrase and notion. It makes us feel good about ourselves. There is some conversation in the medical literature (at least the small amount that I’ve read) that it makes us live longer. It also seems to be true that small successes breed larger ones. And we’re in need of successes both large and small in our world.

When I look at the mess that is our current global fiscal situation, I feel overwhelmed. I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t even know how to have a good conversation about that It’s not that I don’t like the conversations. To know me is to know I like to talk. I work to understand more. But in the meantime, I choose to respond by both the doing and reporting of small on-the-ground things that work.

And so every week, I read the Fixes column in the New York Times. It inspires me. It encourages me. It gives me good suggestions about where I can send my money to do good. It makes me consider what I might do in my own community to make a difference. Today’s column by David Bornstein is no exception. Read it. Feel good. And then think of a way that you might put all your lovely knowledge to work in your community. I really believe you are just a person to make a big difference in the way the world works. And I’m very happy that you’re out there doing good things. (So, write and tell me about them, I’ll post!).