It Only Takes Five Minutes

Yes, that sounds like a cliché, but give me five minutes to explain. When I talk to people throughout our region today I sense a deep seated feeling of fatalism. People just don’t believe that our problems are solvable. The issues are just too big or too complicated.    What reinforces this sense of hopelessness is the identity of those most affected. In the past, those most impacted by recessions were the poor – the nameless and largely faceless poor. We weren’t blind to their suffering – in fact as a community we responded with charity and kindness. Yet, the fear and uncertainty was felt by someone else.

This time, things are different; this time it’s personal. You almost certainly know someone who has lost their job and you may know someone who has lost or is losing their home. What is more unnerving however, is that it’s just as likely that you see people every day that have been severely impactedby this crisis, yet show no outward sign of distress.

All of this makes us just want to bury our heads and pretend that everything is fine.  But we all know that it isn’t. People need our help. Yes, the problems are big, but they are not insurmountable and our world is filled with examples of great impact being achieved by taking small steps. Take the internet; we’ve grown accustomed to talking about it as if it were a place or a thing. But the astonishing power of the Internet is that it is not singular. It’s comprised of literally millions of individual sites and hundreds of millions of individual pages. In a very real sense a community of participants. Individually, none of these sites are of much value. It was only in widespread participation and access that the power of the Internet was revealed.

Philanthropy works the same way. No one individual can solve the challenges facing our communities today. But stringing together many little actions reveals the true power of charitable giving – the ability to make things better. It’s like building a new home. When we build a house, it doesn’t spring miraculously from the ground; it rises one brick at a time. Each brick placed by someone in our community. The result is a home - a home that can provide shelter to a family that needs it. That’s how small, individual acts added together can change someone’s life. But how does this kind of act change your own life?

Jacob Riis (an early affordable housing advocate in New York City circa 1900) once said that “among the saddest things must be to go one’s grave without having in some way eased the burdens of humanity.” His point was that having lived a life in which one made no effort to ease the suffering of others was no life at all. He understood that the power of giving is a two way street. The recipient’s life is improved by the gift, but the giver also benefits.

Donors often never know how their gift to an organization changed a life. They don’t get to meet the mother shopping at the food pantry to make ends meet, the family using the shelter, or the elderly individual who fears a utility shut-off if they don’t find help soon. But for those of us who do meet them and hear their stories, we are never the same again. Because inevitably we recognize that it could be us. Everyone’s story could be our own story if the circumstances were different. And when we give, we are making a better life for all. It humbles us and lifts us at the same time.

Right now you have an opportunity to give this great kindness in a new way. The United Way of Western Connecticut’s mission is to “Advance the Common Good” and there has never been a time in our history when our help was more needed. In recognition of the unique nature of this extraordinary economic crisis, The News-Times, The Advocate and United Way of Western Connecticut are launching an emergency basic needs campaign (the “Take Five to Give 5” campaign); something that we have never done in the organization’s 70 year history. By participating in Take Five to Give 5, you can join us in this response to crisis and have a chance to change the life of someone in great need. 

Take Five to Give 5 and tonight someone will get a hot meal and a bed who didn’t get either yesterday. Take Five to Give 5 and tomorrow a sick child without health care insurance will be able to visit a doctor. Take Five to Give 5 and a family will be able to take home a full bag of groceries that they couldn’t afford the day before. Take Five to Give 5 and today you can help someone move from despair to hope and perhaps onto a better more productive life in our community. 

Visit www.TakeFivetoGive5.org today to add a “brick” to the “house” we’re building to cover those in most need in our community and if you tell five friends to do the same, your simple act will change someone else’s life and may change yours.