How Can I Help?

In response to the recent immigration crisis, thousands of people contacted Bethany Christian Services interested in serving as foster parents for children separated at the border from their parents.  The agency witnessed a 3,846.9% increase in inquires about foster parenting.  The generosity of the American spirit was in full display.

I get it.  Every time I hear about a tragedy in the foster care system, my instinct is to want to serve as a foster parent, or adopt a child – to comfort kids who need help.  On several occasions, my wife and I have attended orientation sessions to become foster parents.  And every time I present about the foster care system – when asked about how individuals can help – I rattle off trite predictable responses.   Become a foster parent.  Serve as a Court Appointed Special Advocate.  Volunteer as a mentor for an older youth in foster care.  Adopt a child.  These are all noble, selfless acts that will certainly help children in need.

But I’m left unsatisfied by my responses.  I’m unsatisfied because these efforts are too reactive, happening well after we’ve let a problem turn into a crisis. What kids really need is a community-based effort to support them while they are with their families, so that they don’t need to be removed and placed in foster care.  Kids need volunteers to provide child care while their parents work.  Or to watch them over the weekend to give their single parents a break.  Or to take families to appointments, church, or sporting events.  Essentially, what many families need are good friends, people who will unconditionally support them in times of need.    

What if we could harness our collective generosity to do this?  What would our society look like if we focused on supporting families, rather than rescuing children after tragedy strikes?

Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote an op-ed describing the work of an organization called The Thread (www.thread.org), which matches volunteers with underperforming high school students.  Each student and his/her family is paired with five volunteers, “an extended family that does whatever it takes to provide their student and family with completely customized support. This might include packing lunches, providing rides to school, tutoring, connecting students and their families to existing community resources, and coordinating clothing, furniture, or appliance donations.”  Nearly 90% of children in the program graduate from high school; over 80% go to college.  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this approach since I first read about it.

At the core of its model is a revolutionary concept.  Brooks writes, “The program rejects any distinction between haves and have-nots. The volunteers are not there to do social change. They are there to be changed. The word “mentor” is banned because everybody is leaning on everybody else.”  In other words, deep, mutual, relationships, ones in which everyone is giving and receiving, is the key to the organization’s approach.

So this is my dream – that we create opportunities for true social cohesion between disparate communities so that we can lean on each other, serve each other and support each other.  For as author and teacher Pema Chodron writes, “Compassion lies not in our service of those on the margins but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.”

For those of us who don’t live in Baltimore and can’t work with The Thread, how can we make this happen?  Here’s a modest suggestion.  Find a local community center or a Boys/Girls club serving at-risk children.  Spend some time with the children and families there.  Enter with the mindset that the experience is as much about changing you as it is about helping others.  Be patient.  Learn more about the program from those who run it.  Talk about it with your friends and neighbors.  Invite them to join you.  And then see what happens.

Maybe, must maybe, we will inch closer to a world in which true kinship can exist – a world in which this kinship can help prevent kids from being separated from their families.

        

 

   

    

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