Community
15 December 2023
The Most Effective Antidote to Dangerous Bubbles
Susana Fernández Cifuentes participates in the Endesa Foundation's corporate volunteering programme. Through this initiative, employees are encouraged to participate in social and environmental development programmes. The goal: To make them the first ambassadors of their social commitment. She tells us about her firsthand experience.
By Susana Fernández Cifuentes
Susana Fernández Cifuentes with the team of Endesa volunteers who collaborate in the parish of San Juan de Dios in Madrid.
"Just for today, I'll do a good deed, and I won't tell anyone." This phrase is part of the Serenity prayer. People in Alcoholics Anonymous programmes follow it every day as part of their recovery. And if someone finds out about that good deed, it doesn't "count", and another one has to be done. Just for today.
Why this willingness to do something for someone and "not letting anyone know about it"? I admit that I have my own theory, although I have never asked an expert about it. For people of perhaps a certain age, with an education in religious schools or simply a traditional family, acts of kindness, affection, voluntary giving or donation have always had an intimate, personal character, in which if others know about it, it ceases, in some way, to have any value. It sounds like "I do it because I want to look good." So, writing about volunteering in the first person is somewhat contradictory to this idea. Not to mention the idea of putting it on a resume or on LinkedIn. So, with this previous confession about my doubts about the appropriateness of talking about oneself as a volunteer, I feel more relieved to tell you why volunteering and encouraging others to volunteer is in itself a good deed. Even if others find out.
Twice, I have had to correct the expression "people at risk of social exclusion" if, by this, we are referring to those people and families who, at a certain point in their lives, become part of a programme in which they are offered help of any kind, such as economic, employment or training. They have explained it to me with affection and with arguments that I have verified myself in my years as a volunteer. Of course, it's a correct expression that doesn't try to offend; however, it is profoundly wrong. We may be the ones at risk of social exclusion. It's usually us. And most especially our children. By "we" we mean people who have had the good fortune to be born into favourable circumstances, who have not suffered setbacks so severe that we have been left homeless or without resources to feed their families, or who have not had to leave everything behind and go to another country in search of a better future for their loved ones. Why? For two reasons. Firstly, because this well-being that "we" experience can generate the false idea that this situation is "normal", the right one in relation to how hard we have worked or, even worse, that it is unchangeable, and we will always remain in our bubble. That it exists for a reason. And two, because the people who are helped through these programmes do not normally suffer from social exclusion in their environments. They experience it in our environments. They are people integrated into a community, a family, an environment where they are loved, valued and respected; however, there is a lack of opportunities and resources, and there are often very hard problems and a lack of structure, but this also happens in our comfortable bubbles.
“We may be the ones who are at risk of social exclusion. (...) Exclusion from the real world. From connecting with another...”
I don't know the title, but there is a moving film in which an immigrant from the East, an old woman, suffers the rejection and hardships of her life in the West where she is seen as "an old woman begging in the street". The story then shows her life in her village when she returns for a short period of time. In her village, she is the most respected and revered person for her wisdom, nature, and ability to help and integrate. There, she holds great influence in her community based on her own merits. So much so that the previous images in which she is scorned by "us" due to her lack of resources, lack of knowledge of the language and simple "circumstances" are embarrassing. And so we must think of those who one day need us and we, here, can help. But we are not avoiding their risk of exclusion, remember, we are avoiding our risk of exclusion. Exclusion from the real world. Of life as it is. Of the connection with the other, whatever their condition may be at that moment. Our exclusion due to fear of things that are different. Fear of what we do not know. Fear of what makes us uncomfortable.
My experience as a volunteer has always been related to training. Well, by helping children and young people with their studies. Or so that they don't drop out or are not left behind when they arrive in Spain from another country. However, at the beginning of the school year, those of us who, thanks to the Endesa Foundation, lend a hand to Father Gonzalo from the San Juan de Dios parish received some very specific indications about this work. "It's not about doing homework with them, no. Make them discover their abilities to understand. They should be curious and confident that they are as ready as their peers to study and be whatever they want to be". And how do you do that, right? You are left wondering whether you can manage to achieve something like that. Well, my "trick" is to go back in memory and remember how and who made us feel that way at some point in the past. Some of us will think of our father, mother, or sibling; however, many of us will also think of a primary school teacher we have never seen again, a brilliant classmate from whom we learned a lot or a grandmother who had not been able to study but reminded you how much a pick and shovel weighed and how light a pen was.
“It's not about doing homework with them, no, but about making them discover their abilities to understand.”
They say that knowledge, intellectual capacity, is not a well to be filled with knowledge. It's a flame that needs to be lit. And so, it is because those who have seen that flame in the eyes of a child or a young person, when they work out something on their own or when they finally grasp a very complex concept or realise how well they have done something, don't want to stop looking for that light in others. And if you've contributed to that "ignition," as others did to you, you feel like things sometimes make a lot of sense. And that darkness ends up reigning in the bubbles. Break them, get out of them and, above all, get those you love the most, your loved ones, out of them. You just have to do it, they see it in your example. Even if you don't tell anyone. And even if it's just for today.
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