What do Admins’ Day and Earth Day have in Common?
I found a certain amount of irony this week when we celebrated both Administrative Professionals’ Day and Earth Day on consecutive days. I know what you are thinking - that I’m going to say that I think both of these are “Hallmark holidays” created by greeting card companies to encourage sales. If that’s what you thought, you really are a cynic. That’s not it, but I do think that these days are just reminding us of what we should be doing year-round. In fact, I think it’s a little sad that we need a day to remember how important the people who help us through our work days are and the amazingly complicated planet we live on it. Maybe because they are so familiar, we just take them for granted.
For those of you who are interested, here’s a little history. Although when you search “administrative professionals day” on the internet, the first result is for a florist, it was in fact created to encourage more people to consider becoming secretaries. In 1952, a publicist for the International Association of Administrative Professionals came up with the idea of “secretaries day” to draw attention to the enormous potential offered by an adminstrative career. Today, the IAAP stresses that it is the sole sponsor of the day, which it believes serves to highlight the “increasing value and contributions of administrative professionals in today’s workplace.”
Earth Day, on the other hand, was the idea of a politician, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. According to his telling, Nelson first thought of bringing environmental conservation to the political fore in 1962 and he soon asked then-President Kennedy to conduct a national conservation tour. Kennedy led the tour through 11 states in 5 days, but it did little to catalyze public or political concern for the environment. Nelson had to wait 8 years until the spring of 1970 to celebrate the first Earth Day, which was an overwhelming success with 20 million people participating in local activities focused on the environment. Who can imagine how many school children, corporate workers and families are participating in today’s fortieth anniversary activities around the globe?
So you see, there’s a huge appetite among us to pause to think about what we enjoy every day, whether it’s the blessings of a beautiful spring day after a long cold winter or the fact that you got your project done and out by the deadline because of the help of an administrative assistant. It’s just that we forget sometimes in the bustle of the day to give thanks for the good things we have. This week, while I’m recognizing the contributions of the assistants in our office and the many wonders of nature, I also want to thank the IAAP and Senator Nelson for reminding us to appreciate what we’ve got - while we’ve still got them.
Paying Volunteers say “Thank You New Orleans!”
Be glad that you aren’t sitting next to me – I’m tired, sweaty and smelly… and I feel great. I just got back from a Habitat for Humanity site where we worked on 5 different houses. All told, dozens of people who work with The Home Depot’s marketing, advertising and online teams essentially built a house – albeit not all in one piece. We did different work at different houses: at the first, laying the cement block foundation; second, building the floor system; third, framing a three-bedroom, one-bath home; fourth, siding an entire home and starting to paint it; and finally, nailing shingles on the roof and completing some framing inside. WHEW!
While these days of working in a community - beside colleagues, neighbors and in this case, the future owner of the homes we were building - are always meaningful, I think all of us were particularly inspired because we are in New Orleans as the fifth anniversary of Katrina approaches. Even as we sweated to bring these new homes out of the sandy ground, across the street decrepit and abandoned homes seemed to be staring at us through glassless windows. No one having stepped foot in them since the storm blew through over four and a half years ago.
The point I want to underscore though is not where we are, or what we did, but who was there. The Habitat staff was organized, professional and easy to work with, and the future homeowners were quietly excited, but perhaps a little overwhelmed. There were quite a few people who work for The Home Depot, but the vast majority of the volunteers are employed by the companies The Home Depot has hired to help its marketing and advertising efforts. These are men and women to whom “building a deck” doesn’t involve hammering nails, but instead means creating a powerpoint presentation. And not only did they travel and give their day to help someone they didn’t know, they even made a financial donation to do it.
Now, I’ve worked for large corporations for my entire adult life (How long is that? Long enough!), and I understand that sometimes it’s hard to see that real, breathing human beings with emotions and compassion make the decisions for these organizations. But I wish you could have seen the companies working through these people today. From early this morning, my goal for the day was to make sure these paying volunteers had a good experience and knew that we appreciated the time and money they were giving. Instead, I spent the day being thanked by others for giving them an opportunity to help this community where they don’t live and to help families they will probably never see again. The statements were gratifying: they told me that they would remember this day for a very long time, that it was the best corporate event they had ever attended and that when they get home they were going to take their families to do something in their community. In fact the only “complaint” I heard was that they didn’t get the chance to work hard enough.
As the media stories start to gear up this summer about the five years that have passed since Katrina struck and the progress, or lack of progress, that has been made, I know I’ll remember what I experienced today: a neighborhood with amazingly strong people trying to reclaim their homes and a gracious community allowing scores of strangers the opportunity to help others and to give of themselves.
Hiring the “Disabled”- Who’s Really being Helped?
I’m very glad to have returned to sunny Atlanta after spending a couple of days in rain-drenched New York this week. Don’t get me wrong, I always enjoy time in Manhattan - for the people watching if nothing else - but fighting for a cab in a NY downpour is not a skill I’ve mastered as a native-born Georgian. Despite the dreary weather, I had a series of productive meetings about a variety of aspects of the Foundation’s work, but what I keep thinking about is some time I spent in a Home Depot store with several intellectually disabled associates. They were hired through a program called Ken’s Krew (a/k/a Ken’s Kid’s), named after Ken Langone, one of the co-founders of The Home Depot and the person who originally funded the organization. Through Ken’s Krew, The Home Depot employs associates who have a variety of intellectual and developmental disabilities in about 55 of our stores. The Foundation is proud to be able to provide significant grant support to the organization to help fund the job coaches who train the employees when they are hired and then provide support as needed after they get settled into their jobs.
As I type the word “disabilities,” I can’t help but hesitate a bit. The three men I met yesterday obviously had very different skill sets, but they were also very clearly employees who are valued by their managers and are making significant contributions to the teams in their stores. “Andy,” was a tall young Asian man, who had just received a platinum award for providing outstanding service to his customers, having moved through the silver and gold levels of recognition. If I had come across him while shopping as a customer, I doubt I would have realized he had been hired through any kind of “special” program. “Michael” in the garden department, however, has more difficulty communicating and wouldn’t look me in the eye while we talked. He did tell me, however, that he has won several gold medals in swimming at the Special Olympics. He knew, though, how to help customers find what they wanted in his department and was very proud (as he should be) of the way his aisle and the plants looked. Michael told me his supervisor liked him because he was always there when he is supposed to be and would always do whatever needed to be done. What more could any employer ask of someone who works for them? My conversation with Michael was brief because he was anxious to get back to helping customers. Finally, “Jim,” a six-year associate who helps customers out of the store with their purchases. He came across as a real New Yorker - a little gruff, a little cocky - picture Danny Devito with an orange apron. He recently visited the Home Depot store where he was originally hired before he transferred to this store, and they asked him to come back to work there. He said he liked his current store because everyone was nice, and it was an easy train ride for him. He lives with his parents, but was very proud that he got to his job independently.
The Home Depot is certainly not alone in hiring intellectually and developly disabled people. Whenever we talk about these employers, though, the discussion is often about the service the companies are providing to individuals who wouldn’t otherwise be able to find employment or have a structured and productive way to spend their days. I’m pretty sure, though, that The Home Depot and any other such employer is getting much more than it is paying for. Not only is this a great community outreach program that shows that the company has a heart, it is also a way to build morale by showing the associates that they work for a company that they can be proud of.
More importantly, though, the company is recognizing the skills of someone who is defined by their lack of skills. This may sound trite, but that may be because it is true. Each of the associates I met had different strengths, ranging from having an engaging personality and enjoying helping customers to being dependable and keeping the racks of seed packets in order to having the physical muscle to help customers out with heavy products. Because of that willingness to define people by what they can offer rather than what they can’t, we create a place where our associates and our neighbors can feel good about coming. By any measure, I think that’s quite a return on the investment.
Preventing Green from Going Brown
I am very excited today to have a guest post on Triple Pundit, one of my favorite web sites. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Triple Pundit provides really great editorial coverage and group discussions on sustainable business in the 21st century. Their goal is to cultivate awareness and understanding of the triple bottom line - how people, profit and the planet interact. I firmly believe that if we don’t take into account the impact of our actions on all three of these dimensions, we won’t be successful and this site is one of my daily must-reads.
My guest post focuses on how easily green buildings can go brown if we aren’t vigilant about what happens after the construction process. This is a subject that may not seem very important or glamorous, but about which I am passionate - just ask anyone who’s discussed it with me (whether they wanted to or not!). The Home Depot Foundation made a long-term commitment in 2007 to invest $400 million to build and rehabilitate 100,000 affordable homes, plant three million trees across the country and help cities incorporate sustainability into their policies and operations. In just three short years, the Foundation has made a great deal of progress, having built over 50,000 homes and planted over 600,000 trees in our communities. While it won’t have been wasted, we certainly won’t accomplish our long-term objectives if what we created green isn’t maintained to stay green.
The point of our investment in affordable housing is to provide working families of modest incomes with the true benefits of living in a green home - significant savings on monthly utility bills and long-term operational and maintenance expenses as well as better health. These benefits won’t be realized or will be diluted if the homes and buildings aren’t maintained properly. This also can have a dramatic impact on the overall data collection as businesses and governments attempt to track the long-term benefits of green building. If the data being collected isn’t really from a green building…then the information we derive from that data won’t be accurate.
This is an issue that The Home Depot Foundation will continue to emphasize and work with other organizations to develop solutions and suggestions. To see some great examples of sustainable community develop that we’ve supported, please visit our web site.
If you have made any changes to your own home in hopes of reaping the financial and health benefits of green building, I encourage you to double-check your maintenance and usage of the product. For instance, if you install a high-efficiency HVAC system, but either don’t change the filters regularly or don’t use the right ones, the system won’t perform as promised and you won’t see the savings you had hoped when you open your power bills this summer. Homeowners can visit The Home Depot Eco Options web site for specific tips on how to make their homes more energy efficient.
I hope you’ll read my Triple Pundit guest post and let me know what you think. Any and all ideas you have about how we can maintain the value of green investments are welcome.
Practical Priorities - for Families and Cities
I’m at the National League of Cities annual meeting in Washington. The President, Mayor Ron Loveridge from Riverside, CA, just announced our new partnership with NLC around sustainability. Together, we will be helping local leaders think about making their cities run more efficiently, and more economically, for the long term. (To see more of the resources we’re providing cities, see our Sustainable Cities Institute website.)
Attending the conference are about 1,000 city leaders – mayors, aldermen, council members and staff – who have gathered to talk about the issues they are facing. Unfortunately, the list of issues is long and seems to grow every day. And finding solutions is particularly difficult given the budget situations cities are facing now and will continue to face for at least several more years.
Because they have so many problems that need to be addressed, it’s interesting to see what these leaders have picked to be on their focused agenda. Their four primary issues are 1) job creation, 2) strengthening and stabilizing the housing market, 3) investing in transportation infrastructure, and 4) energy efficiency and conservation. Now I know that list covers a lot of complicated ground, but those are the ones the local leaders are talking about. I found this list of particular interest because it aligns so closely with the Foundation’s focus on creating healthy affordable homes as the cornerstone of sustainable communities. In fact, our stated vision is for all families:
- to have healthy, efficient homes they can afford over the long-term;
- to have access to safe, vibrant parks and greenspaces; and
- to receive the economic, social and environmental benefits of living in a sustainable community.
I guess the similarities could be by coincidence or from lack of creativity or imagination on the part of each of our organizations. I think, and hope, that instead it’s because we each understand that these are long-term issues facing families, neighborhoods and governments across the country that need to be addressed now. And while we urgently need to find solutions, we must also think about whether these solutions will continue to work over time and whether they will cause more or different problems in the future. That is, the solutions need to be sustainable – in the broadest sense of the word. Here’s what I mean:
First and foremost, the issues are economic. We have to return our families to financial stability, which will allow our communities and governments to become stable again as well. Employment (or more accurately, unemployment) and the housing market are inextricably linked: if you don’t have a job, you can’t pay the rent or mortgage; if you don’t have a stable place to live, you aren’t going to be able to hold down a job. If you lose your job or your home, there’s a pretty good chance it’s just a matter of time before you lose the other. And we’ve sadly seen what happens to cities when their property tax and sales tax collections start decreasing as families struggle.
Second, a home has to be affordable not just to move into, but to live in as well. Once you pay the rent or mortgage, you have to have enough money left to pay the utilities as well. At this point, energy efficiency should be a given for all new homes, and everyone should be doing the best he or she can to save energy no matter how efficient or inefficient their home may be – even if that just means turning out the lights when you leave a room. The same is true for cities: they should be making their buildings operate as efficiently as possible. Otherwise, you’re just throwing money out the window or flushing it down the toilet or leaving money on the table or whatever metaphor you want to use.
Finally, place matters: the location of your home and the options you have for getting there determines where you can work and what you can do outside of work. Transportation costs have to be a factor in calculating whether a family is going to be able to live in a home. Putting environmental considerations aside, commutes that eat up a family’s budget and time aren’t smart, and they aren’t sustainable. That’s why we encourage the development of homes that are within walking distance of places where people want to be or close to mass transit and are in areas with safe, green places to relax and play.
I hope that if you look at it like that, the National League of Cities and The Home Depot Foundation don’t share the same priorities because sustainability is the hot topic of the moment or because we just happened upon them. Instead, I hope you agree that we’ve made these issues our priority because they are important and practical and they make sense for today and for the long haul.
If you’d like to learn more about The Home Depot Foundation and our initiatives to support healthy, affordable housing in sustainable communities, please visit our website.)
Confessions of a Focused Philanthropist
I have a confession to make: being a focused grantmaking organization can be no fun at all. This thought became strikingly clear to me last week when the Foundation hosted a reception for about 60 leaders of some of the most successful Atlanta-area nonprofits. We gather this group several times a year to provide them a peer-to-peer opportunity to discuss the issues they are facing, the shared challenges, and (perhaps) find new and creative ways to partner and collaborate.
These leaders represent a broad cross-section of charitable organizations: some work in housing (the Foundation’s focus), others in youth development, the arts, and education, and still others work to end domestic violence, preserve historic sites and provide legal assistance to people who couldn’t otherwise afford it. While we don’t talk about it much,we know that each one of these organizations provides an essential piece to the puzzle that can become a livable, thriving community. And now more than ever, each one of them is looking for - and truly needs - additional financial resources. In the past, they were seeking donors to build new buildings or expand their services. Today, some of them are asking for donations to keep their doors open.
These leaders represent organizations that we respect. In this relatively small community, they are our friends. And when your friends are in trouble, you naturally want to help. (I believe that’s part of what defines human nature.) Unfortunately, in the real world of limited dollars and cents, we can’t help everyone, and we certainly can’t help everyone to the extent they need. I believe that these nonprofit organizations know it is a stretch, but it’s their jobs and they ask for additional support. I see the disappointment when it doesn’t come.
I think that’s where the words “focused” and “disciplined” start rearing their ugly heads. We have to decide the area in which we are going to support our communities’ organizations so we can have a real impact. If we are “scatter shot” about our grants, we won’t be able to create a measurable difference; we won’t really help much at all.
This explanation absolutely makes sense from a rational, thoughtful point of view. I fully understand the importance of thinking strategically and ensure that we are leveraging our investments and catalyzing change. I just can’t help thinking, though, that it would be much more emotionally satisfying - and a lot easier - if we could stop keeping track of the budget for a while and just tell everyone “yes.”
When Being Too Nice is a Sin
I read a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times today about Ursula Burns, the new CEO of Xerox. It’s a little bit of a puff piece about the first African American woman to run a major American company. It tells about her early life in a poor New York neighborhood and the influence of her tough, single mother.
The article also talks about the culture in Xerox - and that’s what really struck me. According to Burns, one of the issues that the company needs to overcome is being too nice. That’s right. She doesn’t talk about the cut- throat culture of this corporate icon; no criticisms of the dog-eat-dog world. Instead, she talks about what she calls “terminal niceness” and how she wants the employees to “take more initiative, become more fearless and be more frank and impatient with one another to ratchet up performance.”
This article might have caught my eye because Ms. Burns sounds like a kindred spirit. I have been accused of being direct and impatient. I have no doubt that those are “nice” ways to say … something else.
Be that as it may, I do feel a sense of urgency to help families address issues related to affordable housing and stable communities. I believe that it is essential that each of us is challenging ourselves, our employees, our partners, our grant recipients and our leaders to take some risks, rethink our strategies and ensure that we are working as efficiently as we can to address the real issues we face.
We recently completed half-day review meetings with each of the Foundation’s national partners to discuss what we have accomplished together, where we want to go and how we can work more strategically to get there. Essentially we were asking “How can we be smarter about what we are doing?” The dollar amounts we were discussing are probably not going to go up anytime soon, which is all the more reason we need to be sure we are investing wisely and deriving the best possible returns in our communities.
In 2010, my refrain has become looking out for lost opportunities. I have absolutely no doubt that the work of The Home Depot Foundation benefits thousands of families and communities every year. None. But what more could we do? Are we challenging ourselves and others to be our best? To achieve the most we can?
During this fortnight of the Olympics, I can’t help but think of how Apolo Ohno thinks about what he is putting into his training. He said every night he asks himself if he truly did everything he could that day to make himself the best he can be. He said that on most days it’s hard to honestly say yes to that question, which I’m sure is why he’s one of the best athletes in the world.
Each night, he’s asking himself if he missed an opportunity to improve, to do better. Perhaps we should ask each other that same question and avoid being too nice to answer honestly.
Charity Begins at Home - at The Home Depot
There’s quite a lot going on around the world - now and every day - that makes me pause and remember how fortunate I am to have a healthy family, live in a warm house and have a good job. If you do a quick scan of the newspaper, and really think about what the reports are telling us about the lives other people are living - think about them in not in terms of numbers, but in terms of individuals with families, friends and emotions - it can get overwhelming fairly quickly. All of this sounds cliche, I realize, but if you come at it rationally, you might come to the conclusion that whatever you do is never going to be enough.
Another way to come at it, as many have done for centuries, is to take care of your own first. Often that means your family. I think in many ways that makes good sense - a family takes care of itself and then doesn’t need to look outside for help. You also know your family, so perhaps you are better able to see what will be most helpful to them. At The Home Depot, that’s exactly what we do. And we have a lot of people in our family, about 300,000 in fact.
Because we are so big, we had to create a structure for our home-grown charity, and we call it The Homer Fund after the company’s mascot, Homer (you may remember him - overalls and baseball cap with a big nose). The Fund is an amazing demonstration of how a company’s values, such as providing outstanding customer service and giving back to our communities, can remain core to its culture, even as it grows at an astounding rate. Our core values include taking care of our associates, which means taking care of our family.
The Homer Fund provides emergency assistance to our associates when they need it - when they can’t pay their basic living expenses because of an unforeseen situation, like an illness or accident or a natural disaster. Grants from the Fund provide a bridge for our associates to help them get over the rough spots they encounter. To help illustrate what we do, imagine an associate’s husband or child becomes sick, she misses work, meaning she misses her paycheck, and has to pay for the doctor and prescriptions. Maybe she also has to pay to eat and park at the hospital for a few days. It can all snowball very quickly, and it’s not unusual for her to find that her rent money has been eaten up by these unexpected bills when the first of the month comes round. That’s where the Fund can step in and help her get caught up on her bills and relieve the financial stress so she can focus on her family. On top of that, if her co-workers pass the hat to help her out, the Fund will even match the amount raised $2 for $1. It’s an amazing program - one that helped more than 7,300 associates and their families in 2009, with grants of $11.1 million. Each one of the 35,000 associates who has been helped by the Fund since 1999 has a story - a very personal, often heartbreaking story - and because of the Fund, many of those stories had a far happier ending than they otherwise would have.
But that’s not the really cool thing. The really cool - almost unbelievable fact - is that the Fund is a charity supported exclusively by associates of The Home Depot (The Home Depot Foundation contributes to the Fund by matching donations made by associates). Fully 64% - that’s 180,000 individuals - contribute to The Homer Fund. They support it because they can see the difference it has made in the lives of their co-workers - their friends. They understand the situations their friends are facing and know that a little help at the right moment will go a very long way. The power of the Fund isn’t in large contributions or huge grants amounts, but in everyone coming together to give what they can to take care of each other. Most are giving a dollar or two out of their paycheck every two weeks. Some of them can’t afford more than that, but that’s what you do to help family.
Words You Don’t Hear Often: Thank you HUD!
I’m just back in the office from a two-day meeting the Foundation hosted with about 60 representatives from federal agencies and the leading sustainability organizations from across the country. We were discussing how to implement two federal programs: the tri-party Sustainable Communities Initiative of HUD, DOT and EPA and the Recover through Retrofit program being led by the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. (CEQ is an administration office that I didn’t know about until our good friend Michelle Moore joined them from the USGBC. Check them out when you have a minute and you’ll be proud of where these tax dollars are going.)
The goals of the programs can be described fairly simply: align the resources available through programs administered by HUD, DOT and EPA to create safe, livable, healthy communities; and help middle class Americans reduce their energy costs by improving their homes and expand job opportunities by training people to do the work. At first blush, the programs themselves may even sound pretty straight forward. But if you’ve ever dealt with any issues related to affordable housing, transportation, the environment or health you know better though.
With all of these exceptionally smart and knowledgeable people in the room, we worked to address several questions that get to the heart of these programs. I can’t discuss them all, but here are the kinds of things we discussed:
How do you define housing affordability?
Most people know the rule of thumb that you aren’t supposed to spend more than about 30% of your income on your rent or mortgage. But how do you factor in the cost of getting to and from all the places you need to be? For a working family, housing typically takes 30% and transportation takes 28% or their income - and if they fell victim to the “drive til you qualify” syndrome, transportation costs can exceed those for their home. Think about that - if almost 60% of your paycheck is gone before you’ve cooked one meal, taken one shower or bought one jacket for your growing child, there’s not much “disposable income” left. Putting aside monthly bills for energy and water, how should we calculate maintenance costs -was the house built with durable materials or are things going to need fixing sooner rather than later? Even more complicated, we know that if you live in a well ventilated house that was build using non-toxic materials (no- or low-VOC paints and adhesives, for example), you’ll be healthier. How do we factor in the reduction in asthma attacks, fewer trips to the emergency room and fewer days missed at school and work? Then, if you are talking about retrofitting an existing home, it gets even more complicated in terms of getting a true cost/benefit analysis of the proposed work and an accurate idea of the payback period.
How can we quantify and establish the benefits of sustainable communities?
Granted, this question may not seem so simple, but before you can really even begin to think about answering it, you have to agree on a definition of what is required for a community to be “sustainable.” That, my friend, is no easy task. While the federal agencies have agreed on the principles that will guide their work, they have not created the minimum criteria that a community must meet to qualify as sustainable. I fear it is a little like pornography, we all think we know it when we see it, but we may not all be looking for the same things. This kind of baseline definition is essential. If we are trying to assess and value the benefits of a “better” community, it has to be compared to a “regular” community. Once we get beyond that high hurdle, we can direct our efforts to developing metrics, determining the necessary data, collecting the data in a consistent way and with enough participants to have statistical significance and analyzing it to calculate the benefits.
How do we pay for it?
It should all pay for itself - eventually. The problem, unfortunately, is now. Without the historical data to prove the long-term economic value of sustainable development, it’s hard to get the upfront funding. This is a true anytime, but it’s particularly difficult given our current economic realities. We all know the condition of our federal, state and local government budgets - and they don’t see any real light at the end of this fiscal tunnel (or if they do, it probably is a train). Homeowners who might have used the equity in their homes to fund improvements may be unsure of their homes’ value or upside down in their mortgages, and banks don’t have any appetite for unquantified risk these days. That’s why the Foundation is funding projects that demonstrate the benefits of sustainability and why we partner with our nonprofit partners to monitor what actually happens when people move into them. It’s also why HUD, EPA and DOT - and hopefully other agencies - are working to align their resources to create these places and collect this data more quickly so that we can prove it out and everyone will agree on the economic benefit, as well as the environmental and social benefits.
All of this is a long-winded way of thanking the government for helping move the effort to create communities where families can live healthy, successful lives. We appreciate that they are thinking about how to do this and willing to talk about how we can collaborate in the effort. It wasn’t always the case that the agencies were focused in this way on addressing the issues that impact the everyday lives of the people they are supposed to be working for. It is also a new idea that they are not only finally talking to each other, but talking to the people who use their programs as well. To see this is refreshing, and even inspiring. You probably haven’t heard it to often, but from all of us who participated in the conversation this week, “Thank you EPA! Thank you CEQ! Thank you DOT! Thank you HUD!”
Helping in an Emergency
I planned to write a post about joining the Board of Trustees of LISC, the Local Initiative Support Corporation, but my thoughts have been overwhelmed by the situation in Haiti. As everyone has said - and as they said when the tsunami hit Asia and when Katrina devastated New Orleans - the damage and death is overwhelming. I don’t think we are really able to comprehend the enormity of the loss, so I won’t even try to comment on it.
Two thoughts do continue to come to mind, though. First, the willingness of people to respond to others with great compassion and generosity is truly amazing. I believe that there is something in each of us, for no reason other than that we are human, that makes us rise to help others who are in need. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know them, that we will never know them or that we aren’t completely sure what to do. Our reaction is to do something, whether it’s stopping when we see a stranger with a flat tire on the side of the road or sending what we can to thousands impacted by a mass tragedy, as in Haiti. (So as not to be too Pollyanna-ish, I do need to point out, that just as we need to be cautious about the stranger who offers to change our flat, we also need to be sure we aren’t being taken in by evil people who set up scams to fraudulently take our donations for their own profit. Donor beware!)
I’m trying to understand how to balance this wonderful generosity of spirit that exists within us against how apathetic we can be about how other people live day in and day out. Last week, 80% of Haitians lived under the poverty line and 54% lived in abject poverty, and we didn’t really care. (Just as a reminder, living in poverty means that you don’t have enough money for the basic necessities of life: food and water, shelter, clothes and health care.) In 2008, the World Bank estimated that 1.4 billion people live at or below the poverty line. I’d bet that few of us knew that number, but I am positive that we all know that there are many people throughout the United States and the world who are in need every day. I’m not quite sure, though, why we have so little enthusiasm for helping them.
I understand the difference between pictures of the emergencies that arise after a natural disaster and the image of chronically homeless people. By definition, an emergency comes on quickly and will pass. It’s a fire we can put out with quick action and a hefty splash of water. It’s something that could happen to anyone.
Chronic problems, of course, are long-term. They are hard. They didn’t appear overnight, and we can’t fix them in a day. We need time, patience and perseverance. And sometimes, it seems that the ones suffering have done something wrong - maybe it’s their own fault that they are where they are.
And, of course, we move on - the news cycle turns, the pictures fade and another emergency comes.
Like so many, we are responding as a Foundation and a Company to the horror that exists in Haiti, and my family is giving personally. But, this week has also made me re-commit myself to doing more every day.
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