Volunteering at food pantries and shelters, making food for the poor, donating clothes to clothing drives, and providing direct services to people who are struggling. Those are all examples of charity. All of those actions are responding to the effect of injustice, charity addresses the problems that already exist. To be blunt charity only provides short term relief. According to Merriam Webster charity is “generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering also: aid given to those in need.” Social Justice is social change like advocating for the poor and vulnerable, changing policies and laws to help the poor and vulnerable, and political action.
Social Justice provides long-term solutions because it addresses the underlying structural problems and their causes. According to the Oxford Dictionary Social Justice is “Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.” Saint John’s Hospice is my CPO and it is a shelter for men where they provide and serve homeless and vulnerable men. Saint John’s Hospice helps these men in many ways that are very important, but they are more charitable then an organization for social change. They do provide services that are very crucial to the community and to the men they serve but they meet most of the criteria of charity rather than justice because they aren’t doing anything to change the structure that causes poverty and food insecurity.
While working at Saint John’s Hospice my service partner and I worked in the kitchen where we served food to the residents. We were never really involved with any activities that directly addressed the root and structural problems of food insecurity and poverty. All the programs and activities Saint John’s provides fall under the category of charity. They fall under this category because they respond to the effects of injustice rather than prevent the injustice. For example, the Good Shepard program is a drug and alcohol-free residence for medically fragile, homeless men. It focuses on transitioning the men from homeless to independent living. This program focuses on the effects of injustice.
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We only participated in charity-based activities that addressed the effects of injustice and food insecurity. By serving food and making food bags for people who are struggling with issues like food insecurity and poverty Saint John’s Hospice is trying to end the cycle of these issues, but they aren’t focusing on the structural and root problems. What Saint John’s Hospice is doing is very important to their community and the men that they serve. They might not talk about the structural and root problems, but they do model social justice when they help the day guests and residents to move towards independent living.
Saint John’s Hospice provides so many services to the men that they serve that provide them with dignity and respect which are two very important things that people who are struggling desperately need. Saint John’s Hospice is able to provide them food and a place to forget their issues and just be able to eat and talk with other people. Saint John’s Hospice does provide case management for the men that are residents there and they case management for the day guests Monday through Friday from 12-2:30.
During these case management meetings they try to figure out solutions for the men so that they don’t have to return to Saint John’s Hospice. They also has a list of job openings for people and a special one for people who have criminal records. That is really helpful because they provide opportunities for people who have a really difficult time finding opportunities because they have a criminal record. I believe that Saint John’s has the funds and backing to involve themselves more in social justice. Saint John’s Hospice is managed by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia which has a lot of resources. They also depend heavily on donors because Saint John’s Hospice is a non-profit. They have 21 major donors that have a large contribution to the their total revenue.
The majority of these donors are a part of the Saint John’s Hospice Advisory Board and the Board of Directors of Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Since these two boards are integral parts of Saint John’s Hospice they are able to donate to Saint John’s. Many people who are apart of these boards are a part of large organizations and banks. Saint John’s also gets the majority of their funding from contributions and grants. In 2015 according to their 990 tax forms they received $5, 174,070 in contributions and grants and $669,864 in their program service revenue.
The funding supplies salaries, compensation, employee benefits, the programs Saint John’s runs, fundraising expenses, and investments. They receive a lot of contributions and grants besides paying expenses, benefits, and salaries and a lot of that money does not go to the programs. For example, the residential services for medically fragile men only use $398,697, I believe the money they aren’t using for programs or expenses should go to finding ways to help with policy change in Philadelphia, lobby for policy change, and helping other people that are looking to change the root and structural problems of poverty, hunger, and food insecurity.
As for how far Saint John’s Hospice speaks to hunger and food insecurity they don’t address the issue. It is not talked about, there aren’t any flyers or announcements that talk about it either. It’s like its taboo, like we aren’t allowed to speak about it. I think their reasoning behind it is because it is a sensitive subject they people might just want to talk about it in private. I believe that the way that Saint John’s Hospice addresses food insecurity and hunger really relates to their mission. “Saint John’s Hospice seeks to be a community grounded in faith and service where homeless persons find dignity, respect, nourishment, and opportunities for new beginnings.”
In their mission they emphasize the importance of dignity and respect and when they come to Saint John’s they should be treated as such. Talking about food insecurity and hunger make the people we serve uncomfortable because Saint John’s is supposed to be a place where they can forget all these issues and struggles. It is a place where they can finally relax and talk to friends about things other than them not being able to pay for food or going hungry. This reminds me of chapter 1 in Growing up Empty where we read about Ruth’s story. We learn that after Ruth’s husband left her, her 3 boys, and her father.
When he left he took everything with him leaving nothing for his family. Because of that they became poor and hungry, but she never told anyone because she didn’t want anyone to think less of her or look down at her. When you suffer from hunger and food insecurity one of the few things you have left is your dignity and respect. Because of that Saint John’s stresses, the importance of the two and is why hunger and poverty is not addressed at Saint John’s. In their mission they also talk about giving new opportunities and beginnings. They do this to a certain extent with the bulletin board inside Saint John’s with the lists of job opportunities and opportunities in general and with the case management where I assume they talk the same things on the board and specific opportunities that may be open to specific people.
We’ve learned from class and from our readings the only real way to end hunger and food insecurity is by getting to the root of the problem and trying to make a change in policy. Loretta Schwartz-Nobel addresses this in chapter 7 of her book Growing Up Empty. In this chapter she stresses the importance of social justice and how charity does work and is an integral part of helping people who are poor and food insecure but in order to make sure nobody suffers from that we have to change policy. She brings up the point of the Medford Declaration of 1990, which was said to end hunger in “a matter of months”.
The Declaration had 2 steps “to see that food was made available to the hungry on an adequate and consistent basis by expanding existing public food programs so that when they were combined with the heroic efforts of voluntary food providers, the food needs of hungry and starving Americans could finally be met in an adequate way (Schwartz-Nobel, 2002, 227). The second step was to attack the root causes of hunger by increasing the independence of American families struggling with poverty. The most important aspect of the Medford Declaration was that it was doable, and it still is.
Legislators not only ignored the Medford Declaration even though there was a lot of press behind it, but they also had huge cuts in 1996 to many federal aid programs. Because of those cuts 100 million children went hungry. Even though the Medford Declaration was never implemented that is an example for social justice. Though the Medford Declaration is a huge example of social justice Saint John’s can get involved with social justice in many different ways as listed previously. Though Saint John’s Hospice is a charitable organization rather than an organization for social justice it does not mean they need to stop what they are doing. It does not mean that all charities are useless.
I believe charities address the one problem that social justice often looks over. They focus on the people; social justice often looks over the people with real struggles and real stories. Charity organizations work directly with the people and give them dignity and respect which is a very important aspect to people who are struggling with poverty and food insecurity. With social justice we are looking to end the problem so that nobody has to worry about going hungry or sleeping on the streets, but we focus more on policy then the human. I believe in order to really make a change we need to focus on the people as much as we focus on the policy. In order to really enact change we need to hear the stories, so we can really have policies that directly affect the people who are suffering from poverty and hunger.
Saint John’s Hospice does a great job of helping the person and making sure they are okay. At Saint John’s Hospice dignity and respect is one of the most important things and we see that every time we go to service because we just talk to them like they are regular people. And that’s how you treat someone with dignity and respect. That’s how we should be treating people when we enact social change but in order to enact social change we need to move away from charity but not completely and come together to find the root structural problems and fix them.
