The Welfare of the Poor - Case Study Example

HELPING THE POOR: A VALUABLE GROUP ENDEAVOUR Have you ever had that unexplainable feeling of joy and lightness like you have never felt before? It’s the kind of feeling you get when you start to reach out a little bit and go out of your way to help people who are not as materially lucky as you are. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a famous missionary for the welfare of the poor once said ‘love one another; help one another; be kind to one another’ (Spink 1997: 83). Some people may ask what they could get in return for helping the poor. Definitely not clothes, vehicles or cash. But as you interact with them you will receive in your heart bliss that you can keep forever. However, programs for the poor are not that widespread and accessible. Yazbeck and Gwatkin (2005) espouses that in developing countries, empirical evidence has shown that health and nutrition services are more availed by those who are affluent. Furthermore, institutions for the poor are not allowed to be easily established. In specific, congregations less than 10 years in Calcutta were forbidden to extend their services beyond the diocese by the Archbishop himself (Spink 1997:77). It is fortunate that the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa has already reached 10 years when this policy was expressed through the Canon Law. If there are structured plans for the poor, they represent dole-out systems that only encourage dependency. Thus, to be able to really help entails more than just giving them what they need for the moment but looking into how they can acquire a means to generate income and provide for their families. This desire then should stem from a deeper understanding of their situation - how they acquired such an economic standing and how the society is responding to their predicament. It is in this context that I organized an outreach program for a poor community. This particular community lives in a land area which they do not own. They are too poor too rent their own place or buy their own house that they have opted to build shanties there. Their lives were made more complicated when the real land owner demanded of his land to make it into a commercial subdivision. Fortunately, some of them were given the chance to stay in a small area outside the partition. Still, the area was too cramped and most of the families also do not have a stable means of acquiring their basic necessities such as food and clothing. To make the outreach activity more meaningful, I coordinated with a school with rich and privileged students. The Grade 5 elementary children were assigned to participate in the program. There are 40 kids in this level and they are composed of girls and boys aged 10 to 11 years old. They never had an exposure trip to a poor community. The main goal was to let the children experience a lifestyle that is unlike theirs and give them the opportunity to extend help to less privileged people in their own little way. In this fashion, they will learn to appreciate what their parents provide for them and to develop a sense of compassion for the poor at an early age. The program will further allow them regular visits to the same community until they are able to establish an intimate helping relationship with them. The first step was to set up an initial interaction activity between the students and the people in the community. What I did was I gave them an orientation some weeks before the said activity. Together with the students and their teachers, we brainstormed about necessary preparations that should be done. What was significant during that time was that some students sneered at the idea of helping other people. They did not really see any point in helping the poor and felt uncomfortable about interacting with dirty and smelly people. After some explanations and encouragements they confirmed that they want to give it a try. It was agreed that the Grade 5 children will play the main role for this activity which is to get to know a person in the community through various activities and to share tangible and intangible things with them. After some deliberation, it was identified that the children’s task will involve preparing a pack of things they want to like old clothes, toys, and school supplies; facilitating a talent program during the interaction day; and bringing food that they can eat together with their new-found friends. The interaction day came and most of the students were excited to go. The group of children was prepared with their gift packs, talent program, and food to be shared. When they got to the community, they had to pass through a steep and narrow alley but they all reached the activity area. Some of them complained about the heat of the sun while others kept on wiping their perspiration. For a moment, they had a chance to stay in the community homes and they saw how they lived in very poor conditions. Afterwards, the community leader addressed the whole group and expressed her gratitude for the visit. That was the first time that children from the school has visited their place that women and their children attended the activity. This was despite the fact that only children who were the same age as the students were actually invited. The children responded by starting the talent show that they have prepared. Each one had a role to play. One jolly male student was the master of ceremonies, others were in charge of the games, and the rest gave the prizes away. Some girls gave a song number and one boy presented a dance exhibition. Although there was only one master of ceremonies, some boys joined in talking to the group through the microphone. It showed a lot of enthusiasm but it quite disturbed the whole flow of the program. On the other hand, during the games, the students and the children from the community had a chance to play together and they had tons of fun. When it was time to share the food, the students discovered that what they brought was not enough. As such, they consulted me and their teachers about the situation and it was decided that they will have to give only one variety of food to each child so everybody can have a share. The same thing happened with the gift pack they prepared. The students felt frustrated that they had to open the gift so that they can divide the contents to a lot of children. There was one unexpected incident in which the students asked me if they could give money to the children. I discouraged them but some went on giving them. That was not a good move because children from the community started swarming in and pushing at each other to get the money. They were not anymore lined up and organized when the food and gift packs were given out. The students immediately realized that they should not do the same thing again if they had good intentions about sharing what they have. When the activity ended, everybody was tired but happy. A few days after the students got back to their usual classroom schedule, the teachers and I talked to them about their experience. Most of the students liked the activity as a whole. The part that they didn’t like though was when they had to alight from their comfortable cars. They learned that indeed there are children out there who are suffering because they do not have the same rich parents that they have. Because of this, they feel so much gratitude to their parents for working hard to give them the best life other people could not enjoy. They really feel blessed having to savor a prosperous life. As such, the activity made them feel a sense of responsibility in helping these people and they would want another chance to have the same exposure activity to find out how they can be of a greater help. Reflection Indeed, no man is an island. We all may live in the comfort of our homes but it doesn’t mean that we couldn’t care about people in the streets or those in the poor areas of the community. Even if we are not that rich, we have more extra resources that can already be a big help to deprived communities that they should be valued and not put to waste. Additionally, this impoverished situation can be changed if people work together towards this goal. The Reaching the Poor Program (Yazbeck & Gwatkin 2005) largely relies on vigilance, hope, and hard work to combat poverty. During one of their conferences, different triumphant programs and studies for the poor from all over the globe were highlighted. What was evident was that there is no single formula for success but is largely dependent on how persistent people are in approaching the situation to see it through. Through the outreach program for the school and in dealing with the students from that well-off school, I learned a lot of things about poverty and handling a group. Certainly, groups share a common description and assessment of themselves (Neill 2007). Some of the students for instance felt in the beginning that they cannot interact with people who are not their kind. They hailed themselves as better off than most people. Neill (2007) calls this a basic pattern of behaviour in human beings. A group tends to retain a sense of exclusivity and seem to enjoy the power that group identification gives. According to Tuckman’s (Neill 2007) stages of group development, this intial phase is usually called the Forming stage. After everything that they have learned however from the activity, they still identify themselves with each other but this time it was in the context of people who care for other people. The group as a whole now affirms that indeed helping others is not only beneficial to those in need but also to those who develop the value of compassion. However, even if they belong to a common group, how they carry out their goals and objectives differ as unique individuals. Evidently, the students were successful in carrying out each of their tasks but during the activity period they argued about how to carry them out exactly. At first, I felt a bit frustrated that they had to do that in front of the audience. This was because it may show that they were not that prepared for the activity. I had to butt in quietly and help them sort things out. But I later realized that this is quite a natural tendency that happens when a group gets together to carry out a certain task. Tuckman (Neill 2007) calls it the Storming stage in group development. He proposes that the Storming stage is ‘a chaotic vying for leadership and testing of group processes’ (Neill 2007). It was apparent that the boy who volunteered as the master of ceremonies wanted the highest form of leadership in the group as he tried to direct things even outside his role as program director. What was positive about it was that his commitment showed in how he helped in leading everybody from the beginning until the end of the activity. When he was not hosting the program, he was busy interacting with kids from the community. A lot of them became friends with him. Meanwhile, some of his classmates smirked at him for seemingly dominating the whole show that the storming stage seemed like a struggle for power as well. Fortunately, by the end of the day, everybody was just appreciative of the great help he has done. When asked how he felt about some classmates’ resentment towards him, he said that he doesn’t really mind and that what’s important for him is the help that he can extend to the children in the community. As with the poor community, their seemed accustomed to people coming over to their place to share some things and they showed united behavior. But when money was involved, they seemed to have forgotten about their group goal of maintaining their composure and started pushing at each other just to get what they want. I believe that that particular community has yet to develop in more mature terms and their group leader could have discouraged the students from giving away money because they knew fighting at each other is likely to take place. But individual agenda took over and they forgot that the aim was to get help for the whole group. Thus, I believe that the storming stage is a make or break phase for the group and how they can get past their differences is an important process. This is because, as they continue to interact with each other, they will continue to be in conflict even if they already become intimate with each other. Through the years however, they themselves will come to realize that conflict is just part of the ordinary business of the day but it doesn’t mean that they will grow apart from each other in the group. However, this will largely depend upon how the leaders in the group intervene at the right moment and mediate between clashing parties. Leaders should be able to show objectivity in this stage or else the group members will come to distrust them. They should also remember that there a different ways of resolving group conflict and they should choose the less aggressive ones. As such, the community leader should emphasize make the members recollect the group goal of uplifting their life as a whole village Furthermore, the group will come to realize that the process of conflict resolution is actually a necessary ingredient for each one of them to listen to each other’s ideas in order to arrive at the best possible solution or the most creative approach to poverty in this regard. This then will lead to the next stage of Tuckman’s (Neill 2007) process of group development called Norming. Norming is described as the gradual union and harmony in the way that the group operates. In this phase, there will be lesser conflicts and criticisms thrown at each other will be ones that are productive and well-accepted by the receiver. With the students, this stage was apparent during the evaluation period when the group seemed to agree altogether now that indeed helping other people is a worthwhile activity. Certainly, it was difficult at first and the people they met were not as physically beautiful as they want them to be but they definitely learned a lot from them. They have also realized that in preparing the talent program, what has been decided earlier should be carried out so that confusion will not take place. The last stage of group development called the Performing stage is what will put these students’ strength as a group to the test as they implement the more concrete plans in their strive to help the poorest of the poor. REFERENCE LIST Spink, Kathryn (1997) Mother Teresa: An Authorized Biography. Glasgow: Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd. Yazbeck, Abdo and Gwatkin, Davidson (2005) Health Services and the Poor: Vigilance, Hope, and Hard Work [online]. Available: http://www1.worldbank.org/devoutreach/may05/article.asp?id=294 [Accessed 11 January 2009]. Neill, James (2007) Group Dynamics, Processes & Development [online]. Available: http://www.wilderdom.com/Group.html [Accessed 11 January 2009]. Read More