CR #3 Walking a Mile in Someone else’s Shoes
Through the readings of Paul Farmer, Cheryl A. Hyde, Melanie Tervalon, and Jann Murray- Garcia they all believe that a better society can be built by actively engaging and learning with the community while creating life-long bonds in the process.
To engage in life long learning and creating relationships with various communities, Cheryl A. Hyde writes “ This is a critical aspect of ‘fighting the good fight’ and takes time, self-patience, and an openness to continued learning. In doing so, we forge better bonds with our partners and allies and ultimately, create better communities for us all” (435). Hyde believes that in order to acheive long life learning and build better bonds with people who differ from us, we must be patient when forming bonds with one another and be willing to learn from the community we are engaging ourselves with.
Paul Farmer’s reading talks about improving how society can provide aid or serve others. These days, many people think that helping someone could be as easy as donating money to a third world country, without having to be in contact with the ones in need. But in order to make an effective difference, Farmer states that “To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end” (1). Even though funding is an essential part of aiding a cause, just sending money does not help out as much as going to the third world country. This is a common issue in the public health field, a lot of money donations have been misused in situations such at the earthquake in Haiti. Asking the people about their stories and paths in lives, gathering information on what they need in the long run makes difference and is even more cost effective. Studies and successful interventions have shown that it takes community hands on effort to fix the current problem and making sure it doesn’t happen again.
In the health care field, the relationship between medical care provider and patient is changing. In order to provide adequate health care, Melaine Tervalon and Jann Murray- Garcia state that “Active engagement in a lifelong process that individuals enter into on an ongoing basis with patients, communities, colleagues, and with themselves” (118). Meaning that medical professionals must understand the life journey of patients and understand where they are coming from. To gain a better understanding, medical professionals need to build relationships with their patients and communities and continuously learn from them.
Hyde believes that everyone has a responsibility to understand our own cultural identities. According to Hyde, “In order to be an effective community organizer or other practitioner who can build the relationships necessary for increasing community capacity, that individual needs to understand how his or her cultural identity affects facilitating and sustaining relationships” (434). We need to realize that once we understand our own identities, we need to recognize how our identities affect our relationships with people from different backgrounds. If we can help someone else because of a certain dominant identity, it is our responsibility to keep the oppressed from being silenced. This prevents the concept of ethical loneliness from occurring. For example, as a heterosexual woman, I have the responsibility to stand with the LGBT community and help them fight for their rights. A change within the community cannot be done without accompaniment. Paul Farmer states that “Accompaniment is much more often about sticking with a task until it’s deemed completed by the person or people being accompanied, rather than by the accompagnateur” (1). Using the previous example, supporting the LGBT community isn’t over after the protests and laws passing, it is necessary to keep on supporting them by creating normalizing different sexual orientations and creating a safe space for the LGBT community.
In Stauffer’s novel Ethics of Loneliness The Injustice of Not Being Heard, she coins the term ethical loneliness as “ Ethical loneliness begins when a human being, because of abuse or neglect, has been refused the human relation necessary for self-formation and thus is unable to take on the present moment freely” (Stauffer, 26). One example that is used in the novel is the Holocaust. The whole world was watching the Nazi Regime trying to get rid of entire group of people but not much effort was made until a lot of damage was done. In Hyde’s written piece Challenging Ourselves, she says ,“But once once such privilege is revealed, these individuals have an obligation to question, challenge, and otherwise act in good faith to work toward the dismantling of a system that generates such disproportionate rewards based on group membership” (Hyde, 431). Events like the Holocaust, people around the world had the power and privilege to stop Hitler from executing is plans of wiping out a whole entire of population of people early on. People who aren’t oppressed and are not in danger have the responsibility to reach out and stand with the subordinates by giving them a voice and the opportunity to change their current situation.
Last week, I went to Kids Club for the first time. It was anxious to bond with the kids and work well with the other volunteers and employees there. I had no idea what to expect and felt unprepared. I was unfamiliar with the certain community and was afraid of feeling like an outsider. In Cheryl A. Hyde’s article, one certain passage captured my attention. Hyde wrote “Many practitioners want to move quickly to finding commonalities…. Time, patience, and humility are essential ingredients in this process” (435). I felt more at ease about doing service learning at Kids Club. I realized that it does take time to bond with the kids and the staff to make a difference.
