You will never believe who has become cynical. It seems cynicism is running rampant, scoffing in the face of the ‘good things’ people are trying to accomplish. However, a simple explanation goes a long way in revealing the real source of what may only seem to be cynicism.
People in Africa, Haiti, Mexico and all over the world who benefit from the good deeds of volunteers feel that the efforts to “get close and personal” disappear with the exodus of the do-gooders themselves. The ripple effect of this short term good-will can create an unintended hurt in the hearts and minds of the recipients. Here one moment, gone the next–a theme not unknown to the effectively parent-less children who increasingly populate our cities and suburbs.
Our orphans.
Our latch key kids.
Our abandoned ones.
The House, a Midtown Sacramento Church, started a program called Breakaway, for at-risk neighborhoods in the heart of it’s own city, not to sell an agenda, but to seek out and alleviate hurt–hurt rooted in abandonment. After a few years of sending members to other states and other countries to run short-term programs and events for kids, the staff at The House had a change of heart.
I got together with my supervisor and we started chatting and said, why don’t we do this in our own backyard and reach the kids in our own neighborhood?
-Ashlei Baker, The House
This perspective shift might address the issue of inadvertent do-gooders, swooping in and leaving just as quickly, sometimes having done more harm than good. After hearing from a little girl in an at-risk low-income housing project when they returned after camp was over, they knew they were on to something: “YOU CAME BACK! …huh…They never come back.”
The group of Breakaway volunteers started a camp for kids that summer–a camp that would give them a break from their life situation…and it was completely free. Ashlei and Bob Balian knew after starting the camp that to have lasting impact, to see real change, the vision of Breakaway would need to extend beyond a once-per-year blow-out event. This would require year-round attention, energy and care: after-school programs, counseling support, and relationship building with the kids and their families. Ashlei calls it “walking life” with the kids.
What a lot of people who get involved with something like Breakaway may not realize is that the biggest benefit to these kids may not be what you say, or what you brought, or even how much fun we had or how good the snacks were. The biggest benefit may be simply that you came back.
I think the most incredible long term impact for kids who are blessed to be a part of something like Breakaway is that it begins to make for them some stable thing that they can always count on…For a lot of kids, that’s the missing piece of the puzzle.
-Dr. Ronn Elmore, Psy.d
The cynicism that may bubble up in a recipient of someone’s ‘good will’ is not an ungrateful response to someone giving, it is simply an outgrowth of abandonment. People have been let down too many times, starting from the youngest time they can remember. These children continue, increasingly, to grow up in single-parent or absent-parent households, affecting their lives forever. Many fall into patterns of addiction, anger, and abuse as a way to act out these feelings of abandonment. Abandonment is a much bigger disease than we know!
Children fending for themselves can end up blindly wandering through life, pushed to the fringes and left to their own devices. We all bump and crash into life circumstances, but for those without any kind of guiding compass, the bumps can easily turn into roadblocks or worse. The guiding factors in how we handle our challenges in everyday life are largely formed from outside sources. For those in a stable two parent household, it can be generally assumed that the compass is firmly instilled, informing one’s reasoning, ethics, compassion, and more.
When we look into the face of what might be seen as ungratefulness it is often not a hardened cynic we’re seeing, it’s a wounded child. This is abandonment, and it runs rampant in these kids. Along with organizations like The House, we can all take a hand to be part of the greater community–a community that needs someone to care and someone to come back.
See a Mini-documentary about Breakaway from Bongo Films!
