Gatekeeping

During antiracism training in orientation, we learned about the borderlands (people who are classified as different, unacceptable to society in some way) versus the center (dominant culture), how power is divided, where the resources lie, and where we as LVC volunteers fit in.  In some ways, we act as gatekeepers, dishing out resources and money from the center to those living in the borderlands.  Sometimes to people we serve, we as volunteers seem to have so much potential power to give, when in actuality we have to abide by a fair number of laws/regulations preventing us from giving as much as our hearts may want to.
Between the responsibility we have in caring for the resources in the center, the moral obligation to help people in need, and the limitations put on service by laws and dominant culture,
watching the gate can be a difficult job.

Today I worked in the food pantry at All Peoples.  Our food pantry is a thirty-day pantry, meaning people can only come in to "shop" once every thirty days.  They come for a lunch, large group bible study or informational session (as it was today, about gardening), and then go through the food pantry shelves with a volunteer to get groceries.
It was my first time, since it was only my second day at work, and Carolyn (our neighborhood minister) walked me through the process of checking people in.  In order to receive food from the pantry, you must provide ID, a piece of current mail to prove place of residence, and proof of custody of children (when applicable).  If they didn't have these things or had shopped within the last month, we had to limit the amount of food we were able to give either this time or next and sometimes flat out refuse them.  Everything went through pretty smoothly until almost the end.  A women came with insufficient proof of custody of three children in her care.  Being the servant-hearted person that I am, I wished I could just give her all of what she was requesting, but Carolyn and the other volunteers had to tell her that by our pantry's rules, we could not give her all the food that she probably would need to adequately provide for her family.  She was visibly upset and wasn't afraid to tell us that she was, enough that one of our volunteers couldn't hardly handle working with her. We told her that she could get more all-encompassing assistance if she talked to a social worker about other possible programs to get food, and she said she'd never heard of such a thing or such programs.

This situation today reminds me of the poverty simulations in which I participated in college.  When people are in a situation of need, it can be so hard to find the right places to turn to for help and navigate all the hoops that must be jumped through.  As a gatekeeper of resources, my dual existence of restricting and providing can be hard on the heart and mind.  Because the pantry serves a maximum of 25 people each week (some shopping for themselves alone, others for families) and we rely on local donations and Feeding America, we have to make sure that we give out what is reasonable and possible while still serving everyone.  It can be hard to sit on the fence, watching the gate, seeing both the possibility and prosperity that is available as well as the difficult life situations of those who reach out to our ministries for help.

Despite this internal struggle, we had the chance to serve 22 individuals in the pantry today and donate 622 bookbags from the ELCA National Youth Gathering to be packed with school supplies and given to kids at the church block party on Saturday.

And, I made it a point to smile and ask people how they were doing, in the hopes that maybe I could be one person today who cared about their well being.

No matter the situation, God is still good.