I was sitting at my desk in the office with a couple of staff members when a man from one of our distribution partners walked in. (Our distribution partners are the social service agencies that assess the need of the children they serve and order necessary essentials free of charge from our organization.) He was inquiring about a mass order of school supply donations for his organization that we take at this time of year.

Unfortunately, because of such a huge need for school supplies for families and children in Massachusetts, and our limited supply of donations, we had to tell many of the organizations that ordered them that we could not provide them this year. The organization that this man was representing was one of the organizations we had to turn down.

I guess we don’t usually get people who just walk into our office to ask questions like that. Usually they call or email and our designated staff member has to have the unfortunate discussion with them about why we cannot fill their order. So this morning’s incident was a brand new experience for all of us.

I’m also not the staff member that handles this so I’ve never heard both sides of this conversation before. It took all my will power not to watch them talk because the scene was heartbreaking for me, as I’m sure it was for everyone else in the room.

He came in to ask if his organization would receive the order of school supplies because was worried that we didn’t get his order because he put his order in late because he didn’t hear that we were accepting orders until late. The staff member was struggling to explain that she was sorry and that he should have received an email either yesterday or today explaining that they could not fulfill the order because of the increased demand and our inability to meet it.

The man was crushed.

He told her that now he would have to scramble to find another service that could provide them free of charge like we do because school is starting soon and the kids they work with don’t have anything. He repeated what they said to him to make sure it wasn’t a mistake that they were receiving none instead of the 100 or more that they need.

It wasn’t a mistake. We really don’t have enough donations. They really are not getting backpacks filled with school supplies this year.

He was persistent, but eventually he left, with us and him a little upset. It was silent in the room for a good half hour after he left. I couldn’t even look up from my computer screen towards the spot in the room where he had been standing.

I don’t know what is worse: the fact that we had such increased demand that we were forced to turn people down, or making the decision of who to turn down.

How do you make that kind of decision? Either you say no to the families whose adults work multiple jobs to pay rent and buy food but still need help with basic essentials, or you say no to the families that have just fled domestic violence situations and couldn’t take anything with them, or you say no to the school systems in low-income communities that are trying to have a successful school year despite their own lack of funding.

It seems like this is not the only tough decision organizations like Cradles to Crayons face on a day-to-day basis. I’m grateful that I’m not the one that has to make these choices now, but who knows what will happen this year.

I signed up to do a year of service because I thought that I would be doing good things. I am not yet prepared to face the downside that comes along with in-kind services: just because we want to do good, doesn’t mean that we can serve all.

One recurring theme throughout these stories is how eye-opening it is for a VISTA (that’s our official title) to go through the process of getting food stamps.

Their stories always involve sitting in line at the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) office for hours while they observe and take note of the other people waiting for assistance: families with children, pregnant young women, people who barely speak English, men who reek of alcohol–in other words, people in obvious desperate need and visibly frustrated by the less than enthusiastic treatment they receive from those who are supposed to help.

They are struck with intense guilt for being the only white person sitting in the DTA office, and for asking for food stamps when from our perspective our poverty is just a temporary circumstance. They are struck with intense sympathy for the others in the room and a want to do more to help.

Their emotional responses are strong and sometimes even physical (tears, shock, etc). They tell me that this emotion has driven their work as a VISTA and inspired them to do more for social justice.

I now think that they reacted this way because it was the first time most of them have come face-to-face with real poverty. And in that sense I’m glad this was their reaction because now they understand poverty better and will do more to end it.

My experience this morning at the DTA was very different, however. Before walking in I was a little scared because I thought the rest of the people in the room would stare me down and judge me for being there. Based on my friends’ experiences, I thought that I would feel and look out of place.

This is not at all what happened. I didn’t feel any different when I stepped into the office. The room was mostly quiet and it was filled with all sorts of different, everyday people. No one stared me down or even really gave notice that they saw me walk in. Other than frustration over waiting in line, I wasn’t really struck with any overwhelming emotion.

I had a bit of an advantage over the other VISTAs though: I was going to the DTA in my hometown. See, I come from what some would call “humble roots.” Of course my sisters and I would just say that we were kind of poor, although we would never have admitted it at the time. I don’t recall if my parents were ever on food stamps, but we didn’t have much more than the basics and we certainly didn’t live in a very fancy part of our city.

Honestly, I didn’t feel weird walking in to the office because it was a setting I was almost familiar with. I wasn’t the only white person or single woman in the room because there was a pretty even mix of all different races and all different family situations. This is what I am used to. I think the only reason I noticed these things at all is because the other stories made me conscious of them.

So it would seem that this experience didn’t affect me the same way because I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Actually, this experience had just as profound an impact on me as it did for my other VISTA friends. Realizing how different our experiences were just because of our own backgrounds and perspectives is very powerful.

Many new VISTAs, and even the pros they bring in to give us orientation and training, talk about people experiencing poverty as if they are some definable group of people that you can identify just by looking at them. Really, they are ordinary people just like the rest of us. For me, I could have been walking into any other place, like a doctor’s office, a Mcdonald’s, the RMV, and would have seen the same people. But I feel that other people who have never experienced or seen poverty before walk into a place like the DTA and see people that are different from them, maybe not even because they are different but because they want to think that they are different.

I want to make sure that this doesn’t happen anymore. People shouldn’t see others that are experiencing poverty as different from them because they are really the same: they are people with lives, with needs, with wants. The only difference really is that people experiencing poverty have to fight so much harder for their lives and the lives of their family members.

It is going to be my personal goal this year to show people who have never experienced poverty that those who do are regular people like the rest of us. As a volunteer outreach coordinator, I only hope that I can bring more people into the lifestyle of community service and show them that we can all work together to fight for everyone instead of leaving others out to dry.

We understood that poverty is more than just lack of money, but lack of opportunity and choice in most aspects of life. We also all understood that the causes of poverty are more than just the visible things like high costs of living, illness, economic downturn, and incarceration. We understood that the deeper causes of poverty are hidden in systems of oppression like discrimination, power relationships, lack of systems of support, myths of advancement (a.k.a. the “bootstraps” myth), and an educational system based on income and property taxes.

It is easy to use words to define other words, but I believe we don’t yet understand what this all really means. What does it really mean to experience poverty?

Our facilitators tried relating the experience to us with a series of questions. They asked things like, “explain how to survive winter nights without heat,” and, “explain what to do if you are being evicted and have no money to move.”

Some of the questions were a little more intimidating than others, but for the most part we thought we had all the answers. Insulate your windows with newspaper, use lots of layers, and if you have to sleep all in one room. Stay with a friend or family member or go to a shelter.

Of course, if you have never experienced poverty or homelessness before you do not know what it really means. It was easy for us to give these answers because we’ve never been too scared or proud to go to a shelter, or we’ve never had to unwillingly spend a New England winter night in our car or under a makeshift newspaper blanket.

I have never experienced poverty myself, but I have served and am now expected to serve those children in Massachusetts experiencing poverty. Again, it is easier for me to work towards a solution from standing on the sidelines. However, I think (and I fear) that my experience in service this year will be more like living in economic poverty than any other time in my life.

During orientation we talked about our monthly living allowances and it really scared me. They told us we should get food stamps because we’re not going to make enough money to buy food, but didn’t give us any information about it or about how to apply.

When we went back on our own to find information we found out that we had no idea how much or if we would even qualify for food stamps because we didn’t know what our monthly living allowance would be. Then we found out that we should have applied last week so that our living allowance wouldn’t count against us and we would get more food stamps. Then we found out that we could apply online, but that we still had to miss a day of work in a couple weeks to go in to the office for an interview.

This is just a textbook example of how the government institutions built to support us when our own society fails us are a failure themselves. Even this community service program that is urging us to take a stand to change the status quo is actually hindering us by forcing us to participate in the status quo (the failing institutions) without any guidance or assistance.

People experiencing poverty face these types of challenges every day. Some times they are even more serious, like choosing between heating your home or feeding your family. I was terrified this week trying to figure out what I would have to cut back on this year so I wouldn’t go in to debt and would be able to afford my basic living expenses, but in reality I haven’t even hit the tip of the iceberg when it comes to facing tough decisions.

I fear that I will experience poverty during my year of service because I will have limited economic means and will probably need assistance in supporting myself in that sense. I also understand that it will be emotionally trying. However, I will have many opportunities to make a difference during my year of service, and I can use those opportunities to provide opportunities for others, even if it just means giving advice from my own experiences on how to navigate our society’s limited public support institutions.

So while I will try to stay optimistic and keep my outlook positive I am also trying to stay realistic. I will do my best to serve this year and I look forward to learning (although preferably not first-hand) what it is like to experience poverty.

On Tuesday, I will embark on four days of training and learning before the real sink-or-swim learning begins: next Monday I start my year of service through an organization in North Quincy, MA called Cradles to Crayons.

Why did I chose Cradles to Crayons for my year of service?

For several years, I focused on equal educational opportunity as my cause to champion. While in college, I served with an organization called Jumpstart, which taught me that giving everyone the opportunity to be educated equally is the key to social justice: ending poverty, hunger, discrimination, and inequality. Jumpstart approaches the education crisis in America by providing one-on-one caring adult mentors to high-risk and low-income preschool children.

I have seen first-hand how successful this approach is and how much both the tutors and the children gain from this experience.

I have also learned how futile these efforts can be in this economy.

Children cannot learn at home or at school without the basic essentials like food, a sense of safety, and clean, weather-appropriate clothing–even if they have a weekly personal tutor. Recently, more and more children in Massachusetts and their families are falling into poverty or homelessness and therefore lack some or all of these basic essentials. Also, an increasing number of the children who had little to begin with now have less and less. This means that programs like Jumpstart are actually less effective at helping these children to learn because they are not physically ready to learn.

Cradles to Crayons is an organization that strives to provide low-income and homeless children with these basic essentials free-of-charge. However, they are also struggling in this economy because of the increased need for their services.

I chose to serve this year at Cradles to Crayons because I want to contribute my efforts to helping them build their capacity for serving the children of Massachusetts. If I can be successful at getting more donations and volunteers for this organization, then I can help more of these children be prepared to learn, and in turn contribute to long-term social change.

But do not misunderstand me. I do not think that education should take a back burner while we all spend all our efforts on donation drives. Tutoring programs like Jumpstart should continue their work so that these children do not fall even further behind. By serving with Cradles to Crayons this year, I am actually enabling these educational programs to continue their success despite the economy around them.

With the decision made, I am ready to start my training at my pre-service orientation. I am excited and scared for what I am about to learn, what I am about to experience, who I am going to meet, and what I am trying to accomplish.

I am looking forward to orientation because I will have the opportunity to meet other individuals who are also commiting themselves to a year of service and will have the opportunity to discuss these fears and hopes with them.