In my December blog I presented some alarming statistics about how our nation fails
to attend to the well-being of its children - and where that will lead us if it is allowed to continue. The bracing news is that we don’t have to keep neglecting our children; we can change, and individual citizens can help bring about that change. Here are a few things (some substantial, some slight) that we as individuals can do to help fashion a better future for children and our nation.
Educate ourselves. The conditions I described in my last blog result from decisions that our leaders, political and business, have made or failed to make. We have supported these decisions either tacitly or explicitly. Many of us have been led to believe that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed in America, and if someone doesn't succeed, it’s his own fault. Read Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality or Malcolm Gladwell’s
Outliers, or visit the Who Rules America website
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/ to see how unequal opportunity in America really is and what we can do to ensure it becomes more equal.
Fight Unemployment. Many believe that children stranded in poverty are in that situation because their parents don’t have the motivation to find a job or to keep it when they do find it. While some adults would prefer to remain on welfare, the reality is that most want to find a good job and keep it. Most unemployment and underemployment
results from companies’ decisions to mechanize jobs, shift them overseas, computerize tasks, and downsize jobs from full to part time. Business leaders call this “saving labor costs,” at the same time that they are enhancing their own salaries. (Read David Noble’s Forces of Production or Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano).
Small actions by individuals united in a common course of action can encourage companies to change their ways and bring jobs back:
· Avoid self-checkout lines in stores and self-check in lines at airports. You get no economic rewards for using them and they are devices for eliminating jobs. Tell the manager at these establishments you want to deal with people rather than machines. When you call a bank or business and get a voicemail, take the option of talking to a real person.
· Write your Senators, Representatives and President Obama and tell them to close corporate tax loopholes. Tell them the money that comes in from closing these loopholes should then be used to provide more adequate social nets for children living in poverty. Follow this link to see a list of corporate freeloaders:
http://front.moveon.org/d-which-corporations-are-the-biggest-freeloaders/
· Connect with on-line social action communities to keep up to date on current or changing political and corporate policies. Sign petitions these communities send to political and business leaders endorsing or disavowing their actions. You can even create your own petition on some of these sites: http://pol.moveon.org/;
http://www.npa-us.org/ ; www.sumofus.org
· Ask local and national media to do a better job of reporting on the scope of childhood poverty in America and how it hurts not just children but our nation as well. Write an Op-Ed piece for a newspaper yourself.
Volunteer your time and talent
· Get involved with community action groups that advance the well-being of children: PTAs, church groups and other civic groups. Offer to tutor a child. Organize crafts or sports activities for kids who don’t have these things in their community.
· Volunteer at a food kitchen or food pantry and get to know the face of poverty and what you can do to help address it.
Help your own children develop empathy by getting them involved in volunteer work.
You’ll be surprised at what can happen when children see other children’s misfortune. Here are two examples: http://hunger2help.com/
http://cjonline.com/news/local/2010-10-16/little_girls_big_heart_says_ill_help
· Join a group (i.e. Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) that advocates for clean, affordable housing where it doesn’t exist. The Boston Globe (January1, 2013) reported on a Boston Public Housing Authority’s initiative of cleaning rodents and roaches out of public housing that resulted in a significant decrease in reported cases of asthma.
· Volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters—Find a BB/BS organization in your area and
volunteer. You can make a big difference in the life of a child.
Help Somebody Out Financially
· Charitable organizations like Modest Needs use your donation to help someone temporarily in financial distress and encourage the recipient to pay your kindness forward. https://www.modestneeds.org/index.asp
Don’t Get Discouraged, Take Action
There is a lot of criticism these days about how dysfunctional our leaders in Washington are and how they are failing to address the needs of poor and middle class Americans. Much of that criticism is deserved. But, as Robert Kennedy reminds us, we don’t have to wait for government to act. Small acts by individuals like us can have a ripple effect that improves the fate of the forgotten children in our country. And who knows, the current we create might even sweep our national leaders into action.
My hope in posting this blog is to move individuals like us to action on behalf of our nation’s disadvantaged and neglected children. This post outlines a few suggestions for things we might do to encourage a sea of change on their behalf. I invite you to post additional suggestions below. But most of all I encourage you to begin to act on behalf of the nation’s children. They are its future—and ours.
Next month's posting will deal with what individuals can do to discourage gun violence.