When I was a little girl, my mother would plead with me to eat my liver and bacon with the predicable words: “Think of the starving children in India.”
I was unmoved by her entreaties. The plight of children in some faraway country paled by comparison with the taste and texture of liver in my mouth at that moment.
My first job after graduation was in a rural area of the Fraser Valley, where I visited the homes of people on social assistance to ensure they were still eligible for support. At the doorstep of a deserted-looking shack far from anywhere, I met a young woman about my age. She had a fist-sized bruise on her face and was reluctant to let me in.
I really didn’t want to go in, but the porch looked ready to give way, so I entered. Inside was no better. It smelled of abject poverty: mould, poor plumbing and not enough soap. The living room held only a dirty couch where two preschool children were merrily engaged in a cereal-throwing contest, and a surly-looking dog eyed me as if I were fresh prey.
We talked. Her story was one of deprivation, sadness, betrayal and loss of hope. I had no idea that people lived like this in any place in Canada, let alone in my new community.
What did I know about coping with such circumstances and how to get out of them? I was bubble-wrapped. It was the beginning of a lifelong education.
Next week, the Victoria International Development Education Association, an organization dedicated to inspiring thought and action on global issues, is offering us a challenge: Stand in solidarity with others who have less than we do.
To stand with others involves more than listening to their stories and learning about their lives, however helpful these activities may be. It means giving up some of our privileges for one week, or even a day, so that we can feel, if only fleetingly and partially, how others live all the time.
Some who have risen to the challenge are giving up the use of computers, cellphones or cars. One suggestion involves forgoing hot water, something that means short showers and no coffee or tea.
Another approach is shifting how we think about consumption, buying only local goods or living on a few dollars a day for food, the amount available to families in many countries, including our own. We hope friends will support our small sacrifices and design some of their own, including donating to VIDEA’s challenge fund.
When others have done something like this, such as living on the amount welfare recipients receive for a month, I have felt ambivalent. What can we really learn when we choose to deprive ourselves for a limited amount of time? Do we simply draw attention to ourselves as “good” people and assuage our own guilt about our privileged lives? Perhaps.
But on the other hand, there are possibilities for making significant changes, even through a brief sacrifice. It can build empathy. We may find that we are preoccupied the whole day with just getting by, rather than getting ahead. It can change our own behaviour over time.
Sometimes, what it takes to learn new habits is to break our old patterns and find that, surprisingly, we can do without or do differently.
We may be inspired to learn more about the damning effects of poverty in other countries, as well as in our own neighbourhoods, and how our own behaviour may contribute to it.
If we join our individual efforts with those of others, as this project does, we can make a stronger statement. We can raise money, a not-insignificant contribution to non-profit organizations and the people they serve. And we may come away with a renewed sense of our own privileges.
Check out the VIDEA website (solidarity.videa.ca), talk to family and friends and come up with your own ideas. Instead of recounting tales of deprivation to our children, we might make more impact by encouraging them to experience with us what it can be like.
Marilyn Callahan is a professor emeritus of the University of Victoria’s school of social work.
