|
|
Animal Defenders of Westchester |
|
Home Page We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts. Animal Defenders of Westchester |
Articles PLANTING THE SEEDS For an 11-Year-Old, Learning by Doing Good Published in the NY TIMES, November 13, 2006 STUDIES have shown that volunteering is a learned behavior. So I figured
it was time for my 11-year-old son, Andrew, to put down his PlayStation and
start learning. Skip to next paragraph A new generation of billionaire business people, the "philanthropreneurs,"
are trying to harness marketplace forces to do good works. Go to Special Section � Good question. Helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast is not an option for
someone who has to be home by 6 and in bed by 9. We scoured possibilities among nonprofit groups in our part of New York
on Long Island. Most of the places we called wanted to meet us first. Fair
enough. But they had limited office hours, usually 8:30 to 4:30, weekdays.
Hardly conducive to children, like Andrew, who have school followed by
extracurricular activities. Others were flaky: one small charity we reached
was an animal shelter that a nice woman told us she was running. She said we
would be welcome to come and help. The next day, a not-so-nice woman from
the same shelter called. Who were we, and what did we want? We explained
that we had spoken to the first woman. �Well,� said the second caller,
huffily. �She and I are in court.� There�s that charitable spirit in action! Eventually, we found three organizations that wanted us. Luckily, they
represented a cross section of causes � the environment, animals and a soup
kitchen. All of them inspired us to want to come back and keep helping in
the future. Our first father-and-son volunteer experience was at the Garden City Bird
Sanctuary. Despite its pastoral name, the place is basically a sump � a
county storm-water basin that, 10 years ago, was strewn with trash and
served as a hangout for youngsters whose interests did not include
volunteering. Led by a local resident named Rob Alvey, who mobilized the
support of his neighbors and groups like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, it
has been transformed into a nine-acre nature preserve. On a crisp Sunday afternoon in October, Andrew and I joined Mr. Alvey and
about 40 other parents, children and young people, including students from
Adelphi University, for one of the sanctuary�s regularly scheduled cleanup
days. My son liked Mr. Alvey right away, partly because he wore a jacket
embroidered with his name and the title Bird Brain underneath his name. Mr.
Alvey, who really is a brain, works in a �day� job as a geologist with the
Environmental Protection Agency. He talked to my son like a good teacher,
explaining things as we went along. After Andrew helped the Adelphi students
with weeding, Mr. Alvey showed us a pristine patch of prairie grass on the
top of a hill. When told that this grass once covered much of Long Island,
Andrew � who tends toward the cartoon-dramatic � reacted by opening his
mouth in shocked astonishment, then pretended to faint and rolled down the
hill. Mr. Alvey laughed. A sense of humor, I learned, is important in
volunteering, especially with children. The next weekend found us at the Little Shelter in Huntington, where dogs
and cats abounded. After an orientation, Andrew and I were given an
important job: unwanted or stray kittens are constantly dropped off at the
shelter. After being checked by a veterinarian, they are put in rooms
together, where they learn to interact with humans, crucial if they�re going
to find an adoptive home. Under the supervision of a longtime volunteer, Bob Lobou, a retired
university librarian, Andrew and I went to work in the �kitten socialization
rooms.� This involved playing with kittens and trying to draw out the shy
ones in particular. Andrew demonstrated surprising patience. (He also bonded
with a shy black polydactyl kitten, and at this writing is still lobbying
for its adoption.) Our final volunteering opportunity was at the Mary Brennan soup kitchen
in Hempstead, part of the Interfaith Nutrition Network. Here, 350 people are
fed every day. I wondered how privileged Andrew would react to a place that
catered to poor people, and braced for grim surroundings. Instead, arriving
on a late Friday afternoon, we found a bright, clean facility and a warm
welcome from the manager, Jean Victor, who had the perfect job for us:
bagging toys that had been collected for the soup kitchen�s Christmas party.
Andrew rightfully assumed that between the two of us, he was the expert. I
was relegated to bag man, as he climbed over games, stuffed animals, dolls
and action figures, sorting them into piles, based on gender and type of
toy. We worked two hours and packed 15 large bags. Mr. Victor was impressed.
As we left, Stephan Robinson, the soup kitchen�s social worker, shook my
son�s hand. �Andrew, you�re welcome to come back here any time.� During the drive home, my son put his portable PlayStation on pause and
spoke thoughtfully. �It�s really nice that there are people like that,� he
said. �I want to go back and help them out again.� Maybe, I thought, Andrew is ready to help change the world. Now if we
could only get him to clean up his room. Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the
copyright owners. We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on
the Web constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for
in section 107 of the US Copyright Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted
material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner. |
Your comments and
inquiries are welcome
This site is hosted and maintained by:
The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation
Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org.
Since 