A friend of mine from college recently returned to the United States from an extended trip to Uganda where she was executing a microfinance project on behalf of a non-profit organization called Givology. The name of the project was “What would you do with $50?” and its premise was simple. She travelled to rural villages in Uganda and met with groups of children. Some were educated and others were not. Each child was asked to draw a picture of what they would buy if they had $50. After collecting hundreds of drawings, she returned to New York with her co-workers to organize a fundraiser in Tribeca. The illustrations that she collected were being sold for 50 dollars each, and the proceeds of the fundraiser went primarily towards providing education to children who otherwise could not afford one. This might be neither here nor there, but is it a little odd that the money goes towards paying for the things that the children didn't ask for? If the child said that they would want 50 dollars for X, why do we decide to spend the 50 dollars on their education instead? Do we not trust poor people to know what is in their best interest?

[Well, first of all, that would cause many logistical complications. Most of the things that the children drew were not things you could buy for $50. (Laptops, houses, banana trees..) Second, the point of the drawings was probably to give a more human dimension to kids who are really far away who the donors will never meet. I don't think we mistrust poor people, but I do think the microfinance specialist can make a more informed decision about where to put the money than the kids, who were as young as 5-6 years old.]

I also think it heightened peoples' desires to give. It definitely did this for me. I owned almost every single thing that there was a picture of. I felt that by providing education to the kids, I would enable them to possibly one day buy these things for themselves, as opposed to just giving them a one time gift. I think this has much more value. This is why I like microfinance projects as opposed to just giving...I think with the same amount of money, you can give more. Even just by lending money you can often help people out more than by donating.

I looked forward to attending this event for many reasons which I won’t detail here, but I left the event with feelings of sadness, fear, and disgust. Seeing hundreds of photos of children alongside drawing of all the things they did not have brought me face to face with poverty in a way that I have not experienced before. Why the crayon drawings of things like ipods and banana trees seemed more serious to me than the hundreds of homeless people I see on the streets of New York everyday is still a mystery to me. I have two possible explanations. Perhaps it's because they are children rather than adults, and we, as humans, are hardwired to be more sympathetic to children (or even animals which resemble children; see this article for a short explanation). The second reason might be that the way we are presented with homeless people. We often encounter them unkempt and sleeping outside. Perhaps this leads us to subconsciously dehumanize them. With the children, you were exposed to their artwork. Art has long been percieved as a distinct feature of humanity. In the Aeneid, when Aeneas arrives in Carthage, he compares the Carthaginians to bees until he finds that they have artwork, after which he views them as fellow humans. I'm not sure this is it, but there is an easy way to test this out. Broadway Community, Inc. is a non-profit group located 114th and Broadway. In addition to having a men's shelter, they have an art program for homeless men. They have the paintings on display. It's a short walk, maybe you should check it out and see if that leads to a similar reaction. However, I found myself unable to stop thinking about these children and their drawings long after the event was over.

I know that if I really wanted to, I could archive this event as my token act of goodwill for the semester and forget about the poor kids and move on. But Eben has urged us not to follow “the script” merely because it assuages our anxiety for a short amount of time, because if we follow the script, we end up cheating ourselves. So instead of forgetting about these children until the next fundraising event, I find myself waiting around for the next event with a great deal of anxiety, desperately trying to remain wary of the dangers I face as I follow my own script, letting the anger that I felt when I attended the fundraiser fade behind me. I'm not sure what exactly the "script" is. Is it simply not thinking about the children or the career choices you feel pressured into?

While the aftermath of attending this fundraiser has mostly been confusion, I have since been able to accept two difficult truths, both of which have been discussed in this class, and both of which have the power to guide me towards a career that will make me feel personally fulfilled.

First, my anxiety fuels me. Eben has correctly stated that many of us will choose career paths that are not right for us because we are motivated by fear. This is true; however, I sense that there are two breeds of anxiety that I feel, and that each type pushes me towards a dramatically different career path. The first type of anxiety is fueled by financial pressure, fear of social and familial rejection, and fear of the unknown. It drives me to stick to the script that society has written for me without asking any questions.%red% I think you are not giving yourself enough credit. You are asking questions. But maybe the problem is that it takes more than simply asking questions. %endcolor% I can attend the fundraisers, but my time is too important to be spent running them.

The second type of anxiety, which has been largely incited through the lectures in this course, is fueled by the fear that I will realize one day that I’ve chosen the career and lifestyle that aren’t right for me. This is the anxiety that I felt after attending this fundraiser. Now that I know there is a social issue that matters to me, I know that I have found at least one career path that will allow me to remain more true to myself than spending my time working for a law firm. I also feel this anxiety because the thought of extreme poverty makes me feel uncomfortable and I don’t understand what role I am able to play in helping to fix it. This feeling is exacerbated by that fact that I don’t know where to draw the invisible line which dictates the point at which I stop doing for myself and begin doing for others.

Although both types of anxiety are prevalent, the latter type mimics the degree of force that Eben’s lectures have in the midst of our law-school-culture dominated week. It barely stands a chance against the gargantuan anxiety that I feel when I think about departing from my script and exiting the paradigm that I thought I knew in pursuit of an entirely new one.

The second truth, which is simpler though equally important, is that my legal degree will give me more power to enact change than I previously had. I will have a bigger weapon than I had before entering law school, and I will be responsible for the ways that I use it. I am the only person who will be accountable for the decisions that I make and the effects that my decisions have on society.

I wish I could end this essay with a neatly drawn conclusion, but any neatly drawn conclusion that I could come up with at this point in time would be a lie. Since this is the only class where honesty seems to be the prevailing value, I have chosen to remain honest at the expense of producing a more ideally crafted essay. So, there is no conclusion because I have no conclusion; I can only say that I feel confused about what career I want to pursue and how I will move forward now that I’ve finally admitted to myself that there are in fact groups of deserving people in the world whose lives can only be bettered through acts of selflessness and philanthropy.

-- JessicaGuzik - 17 Apr 2010