Tuesdays on Broad Street: Week 2

A few weeks ago, I began a Community Service Learning course for college, which requires me 1) to attain 80 volunteer hours at two local NGOs or charities and 2) reflect on, record and share my experiences.

For my minor project, I am serving 20 hours at Augusta Care Pregnancy Center. Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about my experience and the not-always-academic things I'm learning. These are my honest, immediate observations and reactions after each day I serve. I hope you read with a compassionate heart and are stirred to action in your own community!

Week Two: Missing the Signs

I arrive a few minutes after ten a.m. on my second morning at the CPC. The volunteers and staff (about six women) and director Susan are gathered in a counseling room for prayer before the day begins. They chat about current clients, a youth group coming tomorrow to organize the clothing closets, and a human trafficking conference Susan recently attended. I can tell Susan is still fired up about what she learned there. She gives me a book written by the speaker, a woman who survived and escaped sex-trafficking. "It'll change the way you see things," Susan says emphatically. We pray briefly and everyone disperses.

The morning is quiet. The parenting class upstairs goes on behind a closed door. Natalie sleeps on a sofa in a counseling room, her short red hair spiking out like sea coral. No one walks in the door for a couple of hours. Restless, I pace the building and ask for odd jobs to do. I reorganize the baby clothes, hang up some adorable Christmas outfits, date and store jars of baby food. Still, I can’t help feeling a little useless and anxious to be doing “real” work.

The boy's section in the clothing closet at the CPC

But the stillness gives me an opportunity for conversation with two longtime volunteers and counselors at the CPC. My first conversation is with Shirley. She has tan skin and short dark hair. Her voice is low and her words clipped with an Asian accent. We sit in her office, waiting on an abortion-minded client to come in for her counseling session. Shirley mentions the sex-trafficking conference Susan attended.

“I started reading the book she brought back,” Shirley tells me, “but I had to stop after a couple chapters. I just got so angry. You know, this stuff happens all the time, right here and we just don’t see it.” She looks at me. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

She nods. “One day, Jamie [former client, now employee at the CPC] and I were driving down Davis Road, near where Pleasant Home Road comes in. There was a girl, younger than you, maybe sixteen, standing on the corner. And she was nicely dressed, like you! She had a backpack, a nice ponytail,” Shirley smooths her hands across her head, as if mimicking the girl’s hair.
“I thought maybe she was a student or something. When we stopped at the red light, a car pulled up to her and a man held out two fingers like this.” She jabs two fingers near my face. “He held out two fingers and said something like ‘Two douche? Two douche?’ Then he drove away. Immediately, Jamie turned to me and said, ‘She’s being trafficked.’ I didn't believe it! I thought, no it must be something else. I must have heard the man wrong.

“We went back to talk to her,” Shirley continues. “Jamie was right. The girl was being trafficked. We gave the number for here, but she was so afraid. She didn’t want them to hurt her family.”
"And there was nothing else you could do?" I ask in disbelief.
Shirley shrugs. "Not if she's too afraid to tell the truth. You see, Jamie knew the signs, because she has lived that life, she was trafficked. But I didn’t. I missed the signs. That's the problem. We don't know what to look for.”

One of the CPC's clothing closets for mothers and babies

My second conversation that morning is with Ms. Peggy. She used to be a high school teacher and knows a lot about government and the welfare system. During another quiet period, after organizing and reorganizing onesies, I spin aimlessly on a swivel chair in the clothing closet and listen to Ms. Peggy talk about welfare.

“Our current system was set up by Lyndon Johnson,” she says. “So you saw this big swing in young pregnancies in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Not so much in the ‘80s because Newt Gingrich brought a lot of reform. Unmarried mothers weren’t rewarded so much for having a child. But now we’re seeing a surge again.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“A woman on welfare is given about $700 for having a child, more if they are born with a disability like fetal drug addiction or low birth weight. But a woman who takes care of herself and her baby,” Ms. Peggy shakes her head, “she gets nothing."

“The welfare system sets up a permanent underclass,” Ms. Peggy continues. “It’s similar to plantation owners. Think about it. You take care of their food, housing and medical care… but make it impossible to break out and make a better life for themselves."
My eyes widen. "I've never thought about it like that before."
Ms. Peggy nods. "I have women come in here all the time who grew up in the projects, their mothers grew up in the projects, and now they are having kids. We’re talking 40 years, generations spent languishing in a place that...”

“Was only supposed to be a temporary situation,” I finish.

“I had a client come in once,” Ms. Peggy said. “She told me, 'It's a good living, this much money for housing, this much for food stamps, this much for healthcare and having a child. But it's not really living. Ms. Peggy, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to break out. Even if I wanted to.’”

Just a few of the boxes of donated clothes

Week 1 showed me to issues of the heart. Week 2 has shown me the issues of the system. I'm seeing that no matter the equal opportunity we profess to have, there is still an unimaginable, unseen divide in our city between those who have economic opportunity and those who don’t. Our government tries to provide solutions, but often in reality, their "stepping stones" act more like quicksand.

I wonder, I question that surely there must be a better way of addressing socioeconomic issues. A more effective tool to crack repeating cycles of poverty and family breakdown. But the more I talk and listen, the more I realize this bridge won't built by policies, laws or surprisingly, even money.

Instead, people are what will break these cycles. Individual hands and hearts who are willing to see the lines they haven’t crossed, to learn hard facts about hard issues like institutionalized racism and political greed, and to truly imagine what the life and experiences of another person are like.

For me this week, crossing that divide meant being willing to not do "work", but just to sit, listen and humbly realize how much I've simply missed.



For more info on Augusta Care Pregnancy Center, their mission, services, and opportunities, visit: www.augustacpc.org

If you're interested in the book I mentioned, check out Hello Navi by Sandy Storm.