As they learned about poverty in Ethiopia, members of the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers were pondering in a very real way what it means to live in poverty
As an American, Christy Leming said, it’s sometimes overwhelming to consider how much power she has living in the world’s wealthiest country.
Leming learned that lesson through a six-week visit to Bahir Dar, in northwestern Ethiopia, last summer, where she taught children English at Blessed Gebre Michael School, run by the Daughters of Charity, and trained native teachers. The program is sponsored by the Vincentian Lay Missionaries, an effort of the Daughters of Charity of the East Central Province and the Vincentians of the Eastern Province.
Local volunteers get taste of poverty
As they learned about poverty in Ethiopia, members of the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers were pondering in a very real way what it means to live in poverty.
Seve
n young adults, living in community with Vincentian priests and brothers as part of a yearlong service ministry, accepted a challenge last week to live in solidarity with the poor for four straight days.
The exercise centered on the fact that the poor have few choices, said Nichole Schneider, former volunteer and now an administrative assistant at Guardian Angel Settlement, a South St. Louis agency that provides outreach to the poor.
Schneider said she got the idea for the challenge after thinking more about what she sees through her work, particularly at the agency’s Hosea House, which provides emergency and direct assistance to families, seniors and individuals.
“Part of our goal at Hosea House is to give dignity to our clients,” she said. “And one of the ways we do that is through allowing our clients to shop for their own food in our pantry, to shop for their own Christmas gifts with our Christmas program. We give our clients all these choices that they don’t get at other places.”
She said she considered that the poor don’t get many choices in life because of a lack of money.
“I started on this whole train of thought of how money does equal power, and power equals choice,” she said, adding that the less money one has, the fewer choices that person gets. “It’s just kind of this vicious cycle.”
Schneider and several other former volunteers decided to prepare and deliver meals to the volunteers — without giving them any choice in the matter. Meals were simple, consisting of powdered milk and cereal for breakfast, bologna sandwiches on white bread with chips and a drink for lunch, and plain spaghetti sauce with noodles for dinner, for example.
When she delegated the meal preparation responsibilities, Schneider told her helpers, “No fresh fruits and no fresh vegetables. It’s sort of the exception to the rule and not the rule that that kind of thing is served” to the poor.
Jim Ryan, who directs the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers program with his wife, Geri, said he asked the group to consider with whom they were living in solidarity.
“Maybe it’s the homeless guys that are going to the sandwich windows,” he said. “Certainly it’s not in solidarity with the third-world poor, where thousands of people are dying every day because they don’t have enough food.”
