Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Volunteering at Bread and Roses with Americorps NCCC

By Ben McCready, Americorps Volunteer

 

Over the past nine and a half months I’ve been a member of a ten-month program called Americorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps). As a corps member, I became a member of a team of ten 18-24 year olds, who travel around what we NCCC folks know as the Pacific Region, performing a variety of community service projects.

          Most projects are two month long stints with a specific organization, although the duration of the project can vary depending on circumstances. My team has been placed in two-month projects with the parks system in San Diego County, a low-income elementary school in Sacramento, as well as with the Catalina Island Conservancy on Catalina Island. We’ve also served for a month with Habitat for Humanity in Portland, Oregon, and are now wrapping up with two weeks of work at Bread and Roses here in Olympia, Washington.

          I joined the program because I needed time to reflect on what my life would be after college, wanted to travel, and also because I really wanted to help people. Of course, there was also the added incentive to the fact that I’d just lost my job, Americorps pays for room and board, health insurance, a living allowance, and provides a $5,200 education award at the end of the program. But who’s keeping track of the little things?

          In all seriousness, being a part of the program has taught me a lot, truly has helped me grow as a person, and our team has been able to give back quite a bit to the communities we served.

 Which brings us to Bread and Roses, the organization that, thanks to the Volunteer Center, we’ve been working with for the past week and a half. The Volunteer Center applied to have an Americorps NCCC stay at St. Michael’s Church on 10^th and Boundary St., and I’m really glad they did.

Working at Bread and Roses has been a delightfully surprising adventure. After being briefed before our arrival I must admit that I was a little skeptical. We were told that we’d be landscaping a house at a women’s shelter, and from what we were told I’d imagined a rundown building inhabited by a cranky old couple with a list of laborious demands. Luckily this was not the case.

Phil and Meta, the two in charge of the operation, couldn’t be nicer or more accommodating. Their personalities have made what could be almost unbearably backbreaking work, a relaxed and fun experience.

The work we’ve done includes repainting the inside of the women’s shelter (which is really a house), pulling up carpet to reveal the more attractive hardwood floor beneath, and tearing out drywall in what will become a tool shed. Oddly enough, my favorite chore is the landscape work I’d been dreading.

The landscaping consists primarily of building rock walls all over the property, transforming it into what I like to call a mini Machu Picchu. Phil plans to cover nearly every square inch of the property with edible plants, the fruits of which will provide them and the food bank with fresh fruits and veggies in the years to come. While I do get a good warm feeling from knowing that the work I’m doing will help feed the hungry, I think I’m actually more motivated by the large amount of pride I get from constructing the best looking walls I can put together. It’s important to carefully select the proper stone to fit into place as seamlessly as possible. This involves a lot of guesswork and trial and error. It’s kind of like building a big puzzle with really heavy pieces.

On top of the work we’ve done we also received an education on homelessness. My previous viewpoints were challenged. For instance, the average homeless person is only actually homeless for less than two years. This and some other reality changing info have seriously altered my perception of the issue, and I’m grateful for it.

In sum, I’d like to thank all of you who support the Volunteer Center, because without it I’d never have learned the nuances of building rock walls, gotten to smash holes in drywall with a sledgehammer or have gotten to drink cup after cup of some of the strongest coffee I’ve had in my life (Phil and Meta always have a pot going). Nor would I have learned of all the intricacies surrounding the homeless issue, and have been able to help the people here who can really use it.

Why Intergenerational Equity Matters

By Adam Fletcher

When I look at the place where I live, sometimes things seem worse off than ever. There are huge government deficits and growing unemployment; Social Security is running out and we’re drilling for oil in every pristine corner of the planet. Here in Olympia homelessness feels louder than ever, and my jobless friends can’t find work that fills their stomachs, let alone their pockets or their souls. These are challenging times.

Yet, somewhere between the blurry lines, socially-conscious media has seeped into my brain, leaving me with the lesson from my toilet paper package, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” For me, this adage is defines intergenerational equity. First used in economics, today when I work with adults and youth focused on civic engagement I use intergenerational equity to describe the reciprocal awareness each generation has about the people and events that have come before them and the people and events that are yet to come.

When we volunteer throughout our community, either as leaders or followers, planners or doers, I think it is important that we each see the responsibility we have to acknowledge the people who have come before us, see what impacts they have had, and figure out how we can build upon those actions. We also have a duty to name our goals and to look ahead at what we might be causing. Using the concept of intergenerational equity as a way to think about these things, we can really begin seeing why we do what we do, and how our actions affect the world around us long after we’re gone.

Several years ago I volunteered with a local nonprofit that replanted a patch of native vegetation along a local waterfront. While dozens of people were planting several of us found signs that the area had been planted before, including old tags from native plants identical to what we were planting. After a few days of trudging the job was done, and my volunteerism felt good. But 10 months later all the plants looked dead, not rising with the fall rains. A year later the area was grown back over with invasive species, and I was bummed. Talking with the project coordinator, she found old newspaper articles that talked about the toxic dirt in that area, and two years later she geared back up volunteer efforts; only this time they took steps to analyze the soil and mitigate the toxins. Now that patch has looked great for more than 5 years. That's intergenerational equity at work in volunteer work.

In that same way I am eager to volunteer in my daughter’s elementary classroom here in Olympia as often as I can. Every time I leave there I’m a little bit exhausted and a lot inspired by the energy and excitement of the students and their teacher. But I also rest assured knowing that the impact I’m having goes far beyond any individual student or day in class; instead, I know that seeing a familiar adult face week after week helps acclimate to supportive and sustained role models. Being a male, I also know that I’m influential that way, too. That's intergenerational equity, too. Both of these examples demonstrate awareness of what's come before, and what is yet to come.

Considering how intergenerational equity can drive our volunteerism and affect our communities can allow us to be more successful in all of our efforts. Ruth Bader Ginsburg once asked, “Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?” I want to expand that and ask, “Who will take responsibility for raising the past generations, raising the next generations, and nurturing the present generation?” Intergenerational equity demands nothing less.

Adam Fletcher is the President of Common Action Consulting and a close partner with the Volunteer Center on issues of youth engagement.