so a few years ago I was speaking to a
classmate about what she had done over
the weekend she told me that she had
spent an entire day with her community
service group and they were giving out
clothes and food to children and two of
the poorest neighborhoods in my area I
was really happy to hear about this
experience because it sounded really
nice but she told me that she actually
came away from the experience feeling
angry she said that as they were driving
through this neighborhood children were
throwing rocks of them that some of the
parents don't even say thank you and
very few people were welcoming she asked
me why are the people in these
neighborhoods so ungrateful I was very
taken aback by this story because the
truth is at that point I've been working
in both of those neighborhoods for just
a little under ten years doing community
service like children's classes and
different families in these communities
I was very familiar with the lives of
these families I knew that they were
hardworking that they were facing a lot
of social forces that are often rooted
in socio-economic and inequity like
alcoholism domestic violence and many
other challenges that come with poverty
and these places I knew that they were
friendly that they really cared about
their children's future and I really
related to their stories a lot so it was
very strange for me to try and reconcile
the story that my classmate was telling
me and what I knew about these
neighborhoods activities I did and those
places were word well these are two
neighborhoods one of them was called
mosquito town colloquially they were
right next to the river so you can
imagine why it was called that the other
one was only a few blocks away from my
house so I was extremely familiar with
it I went there every week and in these
places along with my friends and family
we carried out some activities that are
based on the baha'i framework for social
prosperity and this framework is based
on the principle that
every single human being regardless of
their gender their background their race
is capable of contributing to the
betterment of the world this sustainable
change can only happen when we're
working with a diverse group of people
from the grassroots and in this case the
grassroots means the neighbourhood so
what this meant for me on a daily basis
was that I would go out on a Saturday
morning I would just gather all the
little kids of the neighborhood and herd
them into a neighbor's yard and we would
be there for two hours singing and
telling stories and discussing concepts
like honesty friendship responsibilities
and how those concepts applied to their
lives whether they're three years old or
14 years old and then after that I would
drop them off in their houses so it was
it wasn't anything fancy but it was
extremely systematic because it happened
for over ten years every single Saturday
morning so for me trying to connect
these ideas of what my friend had told
me and what my experience had been was a
little bit challenging but I started to
understand it a little bit more when I
began to think about my own experience
and I remembered a time when my
relationship with these families
actually hadn't been quite as positive
in the beginning I would wake up on a
Saturday morning which is really hard to
wake up on a Saturday morning when
you're yes or probably when you're old -
I think this was hard so I would wake up
I would get a ride with my parents and
they would drop me off and pick up the
kids and then drop me off at the place
and then we would do the reverse of that
the way back and yet
the parents of the children didn't
really seem to be putting a lot of
effort into it so like I would reach I
would arrive at the house and the kids
would still be in bed because they
weren't waking up with their parents or
they had gone to visit a friend or
grandparent or maybe the parents didn't
even come to the door because they were
busy doing something in the backyard so
I was feeling a little bit a little bit
sad that there wasn't a lot of effort
but I realized that it wasn't
because the parents didn't like me or
they didn't think that what I was doing
was a good thing what it was was that
they just didn't see it as a priority
and the reason they didn't see it as a
priority was because they didn't think
that I was seeing it as a priority and
it was really hard to kind of decode
that but what I realized is that in
their eyes I'm this kid with a
comfortable life and my parents have a
car which most of them didn't and every
Saturday I just on a whim I'm like oh
let me go have fun and play some games
with kids and then I go play with these
kids and then I come back and go back to
my nice life it didn't really involve
the parents there was no kind of
discussion going on with the parents
about what they wanted to do and so
naturally they didn't they didn't see it
as anything more than a convenient hobby
for me so it was very difficult for me
to face this privilege that I had and
try to take steps to change things and
to really do something that actually
could create sustainable change so what
I started to do was I decided I wasn't
gonna go in a car anymore and this is
kind of crazy because it was 15 blocks
away and Paraguay to the summer walking
on for 15 more blocks just to get to the
first house on the summer day we meant
that I was like super sweaty and all
dusty by the time I got there but it
drastically changed the relationship
with the parents like from the first day
suddenly like they wanted to have
conversations with me the kids were
always ready
they were running up the street to meet
me already like move their shoes and
their clothes to go to the class and
sometimes they even brought snacks to
share and we started to have these
amazing conversations with the parents
about their lives
and I started to understand their lives
better they would tell me about health
issues and their family about what they
were currently struggling with about the
friendships that their children had that
they were worried about about their
difficulties in school and they actually
started to come to me to
involved me in their process of trying
to solve these issues so this is what a
typical class would look like I'm not
the teacher in this photo this isn't a
friend of mine so as you can see it's
very you know we've put together some
tears we sit down we sometimes even have
tears to draw on using the tables it
looks different in every neighborhood
but the same thing was happening in
different parts of the city with
different friends of mine so as the
parents and I started to have a better
relationship we started to have these
conversations about their children's
futures and they started to really
confide in me and in each other about
what they were struggling with at one
point as I was dropping off a
nine-year-old in her home the mother
came out and started a conversation with
me she told me that she was struggling
with multiple suicide attempts and that
her daughter had been there for a few of
them that she was very worried about her
daughter's and I gotten some hints of
this because her daughter had mentioned
taking pills out of Mom's purse so that
she doesn't drink too many so I was
having kind of an idea what was going on
and we had had a conversation about how
it can be their birth families and still
kind of protect ourselves emotionally so
the fact that you confided that and you
made me realize you know she doesn't
want me to be a therapist because I'm
not called Hyde for that but to be that
supportive friend for someone younger
than me and to create that safe space
within this class where children can
feel like they can explore these topics
and this happened in many smaller levels
across these many years that we have in
class the children grow up they became
older we started to our conversations
advanced you know we were talking about
things like honesty and truthfulness and
generosity in our structured classes and
Saturday mornings but that didn't mean
that it's up there what it really was is
that Saturday is a day for you to like
talk about the concepts and how you can
apply them in every single other day of
the week is a time where you're
practicing those things and because we
lived essentially in the same
neighborhood they would come to my house
after school and be like I had a
horrible day you don't know what my
teacher did to me and then we would have
this conversation what kind of works
through those emotions and we would help
with homework and just help any stories
and I would talk to them whenever they
had struggled with their family and it
became a relationship that we had with
the families with the kids and with the
entire community as we started to
identify some issues in the neighborhood
that we would like to see change we
started to carry out plans of action so
we would do community service and that
could range anywhere from gathering
clothes to sent to a nearby orphanage at
the start of the winter or to repaint
the games on the playground or to start
systematic classes for children with
those who used to be my children now
being the teachers so it was very
interesting because these children were
also from very diverse backgrounds we
had even just within the same few blocks
we had a girl who was a child of an
incarcerated parent we had a family of
kids who didn't have enough shoes to go
around we had some of the richest kids
in the neighborhood and they were all
together in the same class and talking
about the same concepts and sharing very
similar experiences that we all go
through in school and family and
friendships and then these kids would go
out in the street and see each other and
be like hey and have a conversation and
they're with their parents and now their
parents are suddenly having to interact
with the family that lived next door
this whole time but because they were in
such opposite spectrums of the
socio-economic spectrum they they had
never had the opportunity to interact in
this way so very slowly we were starting
to take these steps
to create a lasting change in the way
that people even perceive each other in
a community so I didn't tell this to my
friend when she was telling me about her
struggles because I don't know what the
particulars were of that situation but
really reflecting on these lessons that
I had learned throughout my service in
these places over the many years as you
can see the differences
I just got shorter and obviously and I
started to realize that we often have
this mentality when it comes to
community service that it's very us and
then it becomes we have this idea that
we are the benevolent givers of help and
others are the passive recipients of
health and then we go home at the end of
the day and we're like oh I feel so good
about myself I did such a good job and
lasting change never happens it's
becoming increasingly easy to do some
kind of community service to help people
there's all kinds of things set up all
kinds of fundraisers you can throw money
anywhere and feel like you did something
good but I think it's important to ask
ourselves to what degree are we really
committed to addressing the issues that
we are taking part in are we being
critical of the service that we're doing
are we really doing this because we
think it's a good idea or because the
community as a whole including the
recipients of what we're going to do
including them have they decided that
this is what they want to do and how
often are we doing it are we doing it
once a year once a month once a week I
think these are very important questions
and I think that as they're approaching
trying to create this sustainable change
in our communities we really have to
shed this idea of the awesome them we're
all a part of this community and as I go
back home now and visit
the kids used to be my kids there now
and a lot of your kids they are fresh
generation college students some of them
have their own classes now and are
continuing what we started in the
beginning they tease me because I've
gotten shorter and they've gotten taller
they we share experiences because this
is also I'm also doing this in Western
now and we have very similar experiences
on how these things go all around the
world so as we have these conversations
about how we can change the world
through what we're doing it's very
important to think about how we can shed
that idea that we are separate from the
community we have to be a part of it we
are a part of it it's it it's
inescapable we are a part of the
community that we live in but it's up to
us to see the degree of involvement that
we have even in our mentality to really
see ourselves as a part of it and to
stop seeing community service of this
journey with an end we're at the end of
it Oh everyone's gonna congratulate us
and we okay we did such a great job and
it's over now
because that's not what community
service is it's it's a very long process
that goes very slowly and involves
everybody and it's a collective learning
process and until we learn that we're
always gonna feel like we failed because
it happens over time and it happens when
you see each other as a community
[Applause]