Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
Yes, that is so nice of you, Tradd. I'm sure it was much appreciated.

When it comes to the inability for IL's do-gooder friends to find people to shop for, it clearly didn't fill a need for whatever reason. Maybe the older people had family members or friends that were already helping them. Maybe they belong to a church where they have close ties with the members, like Tradd. People underestimate the value in being part of church community. Maybe they enjoyed getting out of the house and went during early "senior hours." Maybe there was an element of distrust of the volunteers, but if they presented themselves as a bona fide community organization, I don't think they'd be afraid that someone would just take off with their money. But maybe they would be. Who knows?
You have hit on something here.

It is The New People in my neighborhood who seem to be anxiously quivering to “help” and I find that—jarring. It jars me out of my tidy world of boundaries where churchy people do churchy things like help the homeless and carry out poor people programs and provide Covid time shopping for those who need it. I secretly think The New People need to just go to church for god sake. Ha ha! In my neighborhood the church for all protestants is a Methodist church, and after a while those who are protestants regardless of what denomination end up going there because it’s quite open and relentlessly liberal. I love the Methodist Church and their peeps, but their point of view drives me crazy sometimes.

Anyway.

I admit that there is room for change and/or compromise here. Perhaps the new people will make a permanent arm of our neighborhood association to be a “social welfare helping arm. “It could evolve into that, I don’t know. Fortunately I am leaving in a couple years so I won’t have to see it. There’s nothing wrong with it inherently except that I am not convinced that division of focus will serve us well in the end. But maybe it will, who knows.