On Caring for Others

When I moved to New York, a friend of mine, an Australian special needs teacher recommended that I contact New York Cares. She said it was a large organization that coordinated hundreds of volunteer projects across the city. I would be able to use my free time doing something useful, seeing different neighborhoods and getting to meet new people, often locals who devote their free time to helping others.

I always pictured New York as a city that didn't care. Communist ideology would have you believe that Americans would rather let people die on the street than to take the time to extend a helping hand.

‘New York is a very caring city.’ This was the first thing I heard from Linda, a mother of two who moved to New York from Chicago. I am only now beginning to understand what she meant by this.

I went to an orientation meeting at New York Cares and immediately felt connected. The registration process for each project is very simple and basically consists of a single click on the mouse. De-registering is equally simple, with very few restrictions (like, for example, the need to de-register from a project two days before at the latest). There are no requirements concerning the number of projects you register for, or how many hours you work. For two no-shows, however, you need to attend the orientation again. But this is not such a big deal anyhow. (So far, I have one no-show, since the Inwood Library turned out to be on a totally different address than I thought.)

Thanks to New York Cares, I went to a public school in Chinatown where I assisted teaching ten-year olds about financial literacy.

Together with a girl from Curacao (which, I learned, was a town in the Netherlands Antilles off the shore of Venezuela), we sorted donated children clothes at Baby Buggy, an organization that caters to single mothers and women living in shelters.

Another time, Jeung from South Korea and I formed a perfect team in Materials for the Arts, which collects and re-distributes arts and crafts supplies.

In Times Square Hotel, a shelter home for former homeless and people living with HIV, I met Cathleen, an Irish banker who moved to New York to follow her husband who had been offered a job here. We helped to coordinate a tag sale for the residents who could buy donated items for symbolic prices, such as a TV set for 3 dollars.

At Kateri Residence, together with Melissa, a Columbia student, we socialized with seniors at an afternoon cocktail party. I was lucky to get a ‘dancing table’, since all the residents around me swayed in their wheelchairs to the rhythm of live music performed by Michal, an employee who took on an extra role of a musician.

Then I met Marlene, a team leader from New York Cares during a volunteer project at Yorkville Common Pantry. I talked to her while we prepared grocery packages for local disadvantaged community. She would put a few potatoes in a smiley-faced bag and pass it to me, so that I could add some bagels and bananas. Then I would pass the bag over to Joyce who was in charge of tomatoes.

I asked Marlene my usual question,

‘What made you join New York Cares?’

‘I volunteer because I don’t have a job now. I used to work as a facility manager for Red Cross but was laid off,’ said Marlene.

‘Why?’

‘Well, they are a big financial trouble in New York. Had to close quite a few sites. I was no longer needed.’

‘Really?’ I asked surprised, holding a pack of bananas in mid-air, unaware of the intricacies of New York’s non-profit sector. ‘I thought the American Red Cross was big enough to avoid this kind of problems.'

‘Well, what was the last big disaster in town?’

How would I know. Maybe back in 2001, when the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of hatred towards American capitalism.

‘What about Katrina?’ I suggested.

‘All the money donated for Katrina went directly for the project. Nothing stayed in New York.’

‘Well, it sounds logical to me. Help should go where it’s needed.’

‘But you know what,’ said Marlene, pointing a spiky potato at me. ‘Every day, tens of small disasters happen in New York that the Red Cross has to solve. But who would send money to something happening every day? Burnt-out apartments, collapsed roofs, shootings, people jumping under subway trains.’

We finished a hundredth package, starting to fill a new box. For a while, we worked in silence, thinking about our own situations, our own little disasters, Katrinas, our twin towers collapsing, and our own internal aid agencies coming to rescue. Many researchers have showed a positive effect of non-profit work on the self-esteem and confidence of individuals. However, while aid is clearly beneficial to the one providing it, it is less obviously beneficial to its recipients.

As the clients lined up to collect their weekly grocery bags, I wondered who was on the winning side in my case. Was I helping others because I genuinely wanted to help others? Or was I using them to help myself feel better, more useful and valuable in the society that I have just joined as a newcomer?