Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Carlynn Gasser
Today, I helped collect and organize donations for the poor and the homeless. At my
church, there are several bins in the front lobby for people to donate non-perishable food items,
clothing, books, and toiletries. I was assigned to do a variety of jobs, from greeting those who
were donating, to helping bring donations in, as well as sorting donations into their correct bins
One of the things that shocked me was that there were not a lot of people donating today.
Admittedly, we collected a fair number of items, but it was not anything that I was expecting. I
had expected that dozens of community members would be dropping off dozens of grocery bags
full of non-perishables and that we would collect several garbage bags full of clothing, but there
was not any of this. We had three women bring in a few bags of cereal boxes, canned soups, and
granola bars, two people bring in one garbage bag each of clothing, and one young catechism
student bring in a handful of books. A few others brought in a couple single items of toiletries
and food, but that was it. I can only wonder why more people didnt show up. Maybe it was
because they didnt know about the donation drive for the poor. Every part of me would like to
believe that it was a lack of organizing and planning that caused the donation drive to be less
than successful, but the other part is more cynical. I come from the Belleville area, where the
community is not overwhelmingly poor, and I think that because poverty and homelessness are
not things that people in Belleville see every day on the streets that they dont have any
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motivation to donate to a drive that is trying to support the surrounding communities like the city
of Detroit. This says something about people in general: if it does not directly affect you, then
Personally, this way of thinking disgusts me. I was raised in a family were giving was a
daily thing. My parents constantly reached out to neighbors, friends, and often times strangers to
help them survive by donating old shoes, clothes and by cooking meals. That is why it is hard for
me to sit at a donation drive for three hours and see only a small collection of itemsits foreign.
One of the donators that I spoke to, a middle-aged woman, made me consider the
importance of the smallest items. She brought in a bag of mouth wash, deodorant, and some
dental flossall items that I wasnt surprised to see. What surprised me was that she had rolls of
toilet paper as well, and that made me think. It is such a small item that everyone takes for
granted. Most people do not even consider donating toilet paper because they believe it to be an
item that everyone has access to. Someone who has always had a home has probably always had
toilet paper (except for those brief moments when you run out, and go to the store to get morea
privilege that the poor or homeless may not have). I certainly have never sat down to use the
restroom and been upset when I realized that we couldnt afford toilet paper. The truly poor
people, though, may have to make the decision between more toilet paper or groceries. And the
homeless may often go wherever they can whenever they can, using whatever is available for
wiping. Working at the church today made me more aware of the small things that I take for
granted every day, and made me appreciate the life I have because I never remember a time that I
Another potential reason why more people did not show up could be that they follow
the functionalist perspective, where form follows function. These people believe that
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society inherently tends towards health and stability and will therefore correct the issues
plaguing it. They also believe that if an issue persists overtime that it is part of the living
system and has its place. Homelessness and poverty are clearly two things that have remained
in society, albeit oscillating up and down over the past century. I can speculate that, in contrast to
the people who think that these societal traits do not affect them, some people believe that having
a poor and homeless class of people does affect them by the fact that it allows them to do well in
their lives.
This mentality is based on the fact that there are not enough jobs in the country to support
every capable worker, and that having an unemployed/homeless class ensures that there will be
jobs available for those with more security. In addition, there is a stigma where many people
believe the poor and homeless to be lazy individuals who sealed their own fate by not working
hard enough to sustain their own lives or by abusing drugs and alcohol. People who believe the
poor to be lazy and bringers of their own bad fortune tend to think that donations and helping the
poor and homeless is a waste of time and that handouts will do nothing to alleviate their woes.
I am not someone who uses this type of reasoning. Like I mentioned before, my parents
raised me to extend a hand to those in need, and I personally believe that helping each other is
the right thing to do. I do not think that all homelessness should be or ever will be completely
eradicated, but I see no good reason why we should not give to those in need.
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Today, I volunteered in the first-grade catechism class. I helped the students with their
Love and Jesus Christ drawings and helped to explain to them the importance of loving thy
neighbor. Most of the students understood what love meant and they all had several examples,
including loving your family, pets, and friends, and knowing that loving someone or something
meant taking care of them/it and being nice to them/it. When the catechist asked, though, if they
loved a man sitting on the sidewalk in raggedy clothes, they all responded, nomost of them in
disgust and horror. She explained that homelessness was something that existed everywhere and
that even though we dont know that person sitting on the sidewalk wearing raggedy clothes, we
should still love him by taking care of him and being nice to him. There were several religious
reasons, including that God loves all his children, but the lesson to be learned was that we should
When some of the kids protested that they were taught to avoid strangers, I tried to
imagine how I would have responded to this scenario. I was raised Catholic and attended the
same catechism class that I had volunteered in, and my parents taught on both sides of the
spectrum. I was raised with a password policy in place, and I was told to avoid strangers and that
if one ever approached me to ask for the password and to run away screaming if they didnt have
it. On the other hand, though, my parents raised me to be kind to those around me and to treat
everyone the way that I wanted to be treated. This was fair enough to the six-year-old me: avoid
strangers, but be nice to people I knew. I believe that I would have had trouble accepting a love
the homeless stranger on the street mentality because of how I was raised. But as I got older,
probably around the age of twelve or thirteen, I began to show a deep compassion for the
homeless and poor people that stood on the side of the road with cardboard signs, despite the fact
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that they were total strangers. My parents would keep driving without a second glance at them,
and I would be nearly sick to my stomach with sadness, wanting nothing but to help. I would
read the cardboard signs: Diabetic; need insulin; Starving; no money, no food; please help;
I have four kids to feed; please help; and these signs would make me want to help because I
believed that they needed help and partially because I loved them.
The more people that I saw with these signs, the more I thought that homelessness and
poverty were a societal issue and less a personal trouble. My parents looked at the beggars on
the side of the off-ramp and saw drug addicts and con-artists, believing their situation to be
nothing more than a personal trouble, a result of their own misfortunes. But I looked at these
people and began to see that something was really wrong with society, that something I wasnt
100% sure of, but I understood on some level that these people standing on the side of the road
were all puzzle pieces in a larger societal issue. Now as college student, I better understand the
issue that I had obsessed over seven years ago. Homelessness has personal elements to it. Yes,
some of the homeless may be living on the streets or with a friend or relative because they lost
their job, car, money due to the abuse of drugs or alcohol. However, the majority of people are
homeless because of a chain of societal failings. Most people become homeless because they
cannot afford to pay their bills, and they cannot afford to pay their bills because they lost their
job, resulting in a long streak of unemployment. The societal issue, then, is not homelessness,
but the means by which the homeless become homeless. Our economy is based almost entirely
on the principle that there must be a class of the unemployed because there are not enough jobs
to support the entire population. Because an unemployed class must exist, by simple logic, there
is going to exist a class of homeless that resulted from losing ones job and not being able to pay
ones bill.
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From the functionalist perspective, homelessness and poverty are two things that have a
place in society because of their persistence over time. While relief programs exist, it is
inevitable that these two societal components will never be completely eradicated. That is why I
think that loving thy neighbor is a good mentality to have. It is a mentality that supports helping
those in need, as well as teaches young kids that it is an important thing to do.
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Today, I helped to clean up the church by dusting the fake plants that are used to decorate
it and cleaning the glass doors and the windows of the quiet room. Admittedly, this was not the
most influential form of community service, but it was the job that the church needed me to do
so I did it. What I would like to focus on, though is what I observed while I was cleaning up the
church.
About half way through my cleaning, people began to enter the church. They did not
mind that I was cleaning but simply went along with their business. I could tell that they were
frequent parishioners because they were familiar with the customs of the church. As each of the
group members entered, they dipped their fingers in the baptismal fountain and performed the
sign of the cross. They then kneeled before the crucifix and headed towards the pews to take
their places. Being raised Catholic, I am accustomed to these behaviors and they seemed very
natural, and I hardly paid any attention as these people came in. The whole group consisted of
about ten people all gathered in the front 4 rows of the pews. I wasnt entirely sure, but I think
that they were a prayer group meeting to say the rosary. The leader read out the prayer as the rest
Firstly, I would like to clarify that while I was raised Catholic and am a confirmed
member of the Saint Anthony Catholic Church, it has been a long time since I attended a full
mass, saying of the rosary, or catechism class or Bible study, and the unfamiliarity of the prayer
group made me think about culture. In class, we defined culture as the shared ways of a human
social group, including the ways of thinking, understanding, and feeling that have been
gained through common experiences. Being a member of the Catholic church is like being a
member of a subculture, where these people share values, attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles.
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Dedicated members of the Catholic church know the norms of entering and exiting the church
(dipping your fingers into holy water and doing the sign of the cross), know how to perform the
rosary, and know the correct responses to prayers (i.e. Prayer: may the Lord be with you;
Response: and also with your spirit). Another aspect of the subculture is the language.
While the language mass is conducted in is English, the Catholic religion often uses Latin words
and phrases and it is expected that you know their meaning. Additionally, there are several
symbols that are associated with this religion. When waiting in line to receive the Holy
Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ), hands waiting in front is a symbol for having
performed your first Holy Eucharist and that you are able to receive the Communion, while
hands behind the back mean that you are unable to receive the Communion. Another symbol is
the importance of colors. The church is decorated according to which religious season it is on the
religious calendar. For example, purple is the color used on Easter, and green is a color used
The first point I would like to make is that culture is a thing that comes with practice in
certain situations. Yes, it is true that culture is all around us and is like water to a fish, but on the
other hand, a subculture like the Catholic religion is something that needs to be practiced often.
For example, as I observed the prayer group while I volunteered at the church, I felt lost for some
of the prayer and some of the responses because it had been so long since I had practiced those
prayers. Also, it had been a long time since I had said the rosary and I could not really remember
the pattern to the rotation between the Our Father and the Hail Mary, nor could I
immediately recall the meaning of the stations of the cross that are displayed along the church.
Based on these observations and reflection of my religion I noticed that religion is a subculture
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that needs to be practiced in order to stay abreast with the norms, behaviors, language, and
symbols.
The second point I would like to make is that sometimes cultures can change. For
instance, a few years ago the proper response to May the Lord be with you was And also with
you; however, when there was a change in the Pope, the Catholic Church underwent a
reformation where some beliefs were modernized and prayers were altered slightly. An example
of a modernization of the Catholic church was the acceptance of the use of birth control and the
acceptance of same-sex marriage and divorce. These changes occurred because it was time that
the Catholic church recognize that some of its beliefs were outdated and needed renewal. The
fact that the church was able to change aspects of its culture only supports my earlier notion that
like water to a fish, we would scarcely notice a change in our culture unless we were
They are a non-profit organization that offers free medical services as well as a food pantry that
provides three meals a day and a childrens unit that has diapers, baby food, formula, and baby
wipes for mothers and fathers with children. For my volunteer work, I organized shelves in the
food storage unit and helped to pass food out to those who came for lunch meal.
Organizing the shelves was actually more labor intensive than I had anticipated it to be.
They process was very thorough. I had to mark each item with an expiration date and then
organize the shelves based on expiration date, brand, and type of food. It was sort of an
enlightening experience because I never thought that there would have been so much thought put
into how the food is stored. It certainly made perfect sense to me, but it was never something that
I had given much thought to. The organization was very adamant that only non-expired food be
put on the shelves and packaged, which is reassuring because even though the organization may
seem desperate to have enough food to feed and help every patron, its first priority was making
sure that the food being handed out was quality. Another aspect of helping to organize the
shelves in the food storage room was that it was a pleasant surprise when we ran out of shelf
space for the food. That means that the organization is receiving enough donations to need more
Something I noticed about the workers of the organization that I noticed was that
everyone took some enjoyment in their work. Everyone was happy to be stocking shelves and the
conversation was very positive. I overheard two male workers talking about how they aspire to
travel to third world countries to help end world hunger and how working for the Hope Clinic
food pantry was a step towards his goal. It was very liberating to hear this type of conversation.
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In high school, I noticed that volunteers in the National Honors Society grumbled about their
work because they were there simply because they had to be there. These people that I worked
with however, they were there by choice and because they truly wanted to see a change in a
problem that they cared about. Working in this type of environment kind of inspired me to love
what I do and do what I love, and this experience has influenced me to evaluate the
public/societal issues that mean the most to me and to work on pursuing these issues and
helping to better understand their causes and to explore opportunities for me to help solve the
problem.
The other half of the volunteering that I did today was passing out food to the patrons
who came to the Clinic. This occurred in two forms. First, passing out meals to those who came
for lunch. The lunch offered was simple: a ham, lettuce, and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips, a
fruit of their choosing, and a drink that they were free to choose. The second half was packaging
brown paper grocery bags with food items like bread, sticks of butter, cartons of eggs, and some
fruits and vegetables and handing them out to people who needed them. What really stuck out to
me was the type of people that came to pick up food. Some of them looked rough, wearing
raggedy clothes and looking tired and worn out, but most of them looked just like people who I
would expect to see at the grocery store: normal looking people. They didnt look poor, but is
there really such a thing as looking poor? As a child, I always imagined that poor people looked
small, lost, and dirty, wearing old clothes with holes in them that were either too big or too small;
but the reality is that it is difficult, almost impossible, to tell if someone is poor or wealthy
simply by looking at their appearance. And who is to say that all of these people could truly be
considered poor? Maybe it was just a tough week and they needed a little bit of help. Maybe they
could afford some groceries from Meijer or Kroger, but just not enough. I commend the people
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that reached out for help. It cannot be an easy thing to approach a stranger, like me, and
demonstrate that they are struggling on some level and that they need help. Certainly, if I were in
that type of situation, my pride would be wounded to some effect if I were to need assistance
from an organization like Hope Clinic. But I truthfully and wholeheartedly believe that these
people are strong. They are setting aside their pride to do the right thing, maybe for just
themselves, or their children, or their parents. Not only do I think they are strong, but good
people. It is a small sacrifice, I think, to give up your pride or stubbornness to care for those you
At some point during the passing out of food, a cynical thought crossed my mind. What if
these people didnt need help? What if they were taking the food and didnt need it? I know that
it is not right to doubt someones motivations for taking help when it is presented for them,
especially after I just pointed out how only a strong person could wound their pride to ask for
help, but I could not help but wonder. I am not nave, and I understand that the world is just as
much made up of good people as it is bad people, therefore I do not think it is far off the beaten
path to assume that some of those people who visited the Clinic today for help were all there for
the right reasons. As each person passed, I wondered Do you really need this, or are you just
taking advantage? Then I reminded myself that this type of thinking would spoil the good
feeling that is generated from volunteering, at least in my case, and I chose to avoid this
As I helped to pass out meals and grocery bags to the patrons, I noticed that most of them
were females. This struck me as odd, because I know that women were not the only ones affected
by poverty and rough times. Recalling our class discussions on the institution of gender, I soon
speculated as to why I saw mostly women. First, our society emphasizes women as the care
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providers for children, and has done so since the earliest of civilizations. Many impoverished or
struggling women that have children are single mothers because of this ancient mentality, where
the fathers do not see a real need to be in the childs life. I know that this is not true for every
father out there, but certainly it is seen more often in impoverished families. The reasoning that
supports single mothers solely caring for their children stems from the socialization of the
mother and father by their parents. Perhaps the womans mother cared for her and her
siblings while her father worked all day and did little to nurture the children. Seeing this
while growing up would teach the now single mother that it was normal for her to be
raising her children by herself and that she shouldnt question whether she should be doing
it or not because it is just simply a part of the institution of gender in our society. It is
expected that she raise and provide for her children because it is her role as a woman, as dictated
I personally do not agree with this way of thinking. I fully believe that if it takes two
people to make a baby, then it should take two people to raise a baby. This way of thinking is a
direct result of the way I was raised, a component of socialization. My parents taught me that
they were equal care providers by sharing the burden of bringing up four daughters. They always
told us that they were a team and that they couldnt raise us without each other.
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Yesterday morning at the Hope Clinic, I worked in the baby room helping to package
diapers into gallon bags and to create bags on baby food. In each gallon bag, I had to put twelve
diapers and in each grocery bag I put three cans each of a meat based, fruit based, and vegetable
based baby food. I talked to the coordinator about how many bags of diapers, bottles of formula,
and bags of baby food each person could take. She informed me that each person was allowed
one bag of diapers per visit and one grocery bag of food per visit. This made me think of how
these care providers cannot possibly rely solely on the Clinic to get supplies to take care of their
young children. As someone who has babysat kids from infancy to adolescence for the past seven
years, I am confident that twelve diapers could not possibly last for more than two or three days,
and it would be a stretch to conserve diapers until the third day. Additionally, if the baby eats
three times a day, the food could not last for more than three days at a time. Having seen the
limited supply of diapers and baby food that are available at the Clinic, I can safely assume that
the Clinic cannot provide enough support for babies without the care provider having other forms
of assistance. This fact is a little bit upsetting because I know that child care supplies are
expensive and that it must be difficult for those who are struggling to adequately take care of
their children as well as themselves. These people, though, as I have learned in class, are not
those that are truly below the poverty line. Those that truthfully need help are those who
are just slightly above the poverty threshold. This is because those above the poverty line
are not eligible for federal aid and thus struggle more than those below the poverty line
In my opinion, this line does more harm than it does help to those who are struggling in
our society. It is inevitable that poor people will remain a class in our society because there
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are not enough jobs to support every capable worker. It is also inevitable that at some point
during a persons life that they will fall below the poverty line. But what about those families
that are struggling just above the poverty line? How is it helping them? By denying them federal
aid? By causing them to sink lower and lower in the class system, exposing them to stress and
doing without, and becoming a part of the faceless class in America? The poverty line certainly
sets a point of comparison to determine who gets federal aid, but if they are getting federal aid
are they actually worse off than those who are living slightly above the poverty line? I do not
think so.
Another connect to the course that I would briefly like to address is that the experiential
children, but rather, I am working to anticipate what it might be like to raise my own children
someday but working with her peoples children and learning about their behaviors and needs.
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