Day One in Richmond

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much;
It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

-       President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as inscribed on the FDR memorial in Washington, DC. 

Although today was our first official work day at the Peter Paul Development Center in Richmond, I feel like the spirit of our break really began yesterday on our daytrip to Washington, D.C., which is beautiful this time of year.  Several of the newer memorials that we saw had quotes etched on the wall that were very thought provoking in light of the mission that we all set out on when participating in Alternative Breaks.  The FDR memorial and the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial each had several quotes from their namesakes inscribed along the walls that we read as we wandered throughout, and a few of them really made me pause and think about why I decided to go on an Alternative Break and what I am hoping to see and do throughout the experience.  This quote, from FDR, drew my attention when I first saw it yesterday, and my experience on site today really drove it home already, one day into the trip. 

This afternoon, we began our first afternoon at the Peter Paul Development Center with several tours before we got to work.  First we toured the small center that serves 72 second through fifth graders and a handful of middle and high schoolers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Richmond.  As a part of our trip, the employees of the center also drove us around on a tour of the neighborhood that the Peter Paul Development center serves.  This neighborhood is filled with seemingly endless amounts of federal housing projects not meant for permanent habitation in which many, many people live.  The endless small, square housing units have no grass in their yards, no flowers in their gardens, and really offer no hope.  In a small one to two mile radius around the center, there are at least four different housing projects that are filled with families making less than $10,000 a year; thousands of people are crammed into these units, all of which are poverty stricken and crime ridden. 

One thing that struck me, having seen some of the kids arriving at Peter Paul before heading out on the tour, was the sheer number of children who live in these neighborhoods.  Peter Paul provides supplemental education and recreation to about 72 children each day, and yet just driving around on the main streets we saw hundreds more children sitting around on front porches or playing in the dirt on their front porches who still don’t have access to services like the one we volunteer with. 

It is one thing to hear and read about this sort of situation in which so many people live, but to see it is another thing entirely.  Seeing these neighborhoods that have been neglected filled with people who have too little that we clearly are not providing enough for was extremely sobering.  If Roosevelt were judging our progress on the thousands upon thousands of people who live in these projects and have far, far too little today, we would be put to shame.  The Peter Paul Development Center is one small organization that is doing exactly what most Americans are not, making this president’s legacy proud by attempting to bring this progress of providing a good education for those who have too little. It was inspiring and incredibly fun to work with the children there, but it was also difficult to think about the hundreds and hundreds of other kids just from this one small Richmond neighborhood alone. 

On this first day, most of our volunteering time was taken up by the tour, which I am very grateful we got to go on; even just the short bus ride showed me enough to make me value programs like alternative breaks and strive to do service even more by seeing firsthand a situation like this one that is simply everyday life to all these people.  After the tour, we did all get to spend about an hour working one on one or in small groups with second through fifth grade students.  I personally spent most of my time working on multiplication with two fifth grade girls.  Both were so enthusiastic about doing multiplication problems and being challenged on the white board.  My job was to write up multiplication problems on the board for one of the girls and supervise her work, checking her answers and helping her figure out when she went wrong.  She specifically wanted to do three and four digit multiplication, and was very excited and proud about doing such long math problems.  Having been told before we began that most of the children in this neighborhood are several grade levels behind, I was proud of her enthusiasm and her skill at math.  Although she struggled a few times, she was always very receptive to help figuring out where she went wrong and fixing her problems.  I was glad for the chance to practice multiplication, since that’s something that I don’t have to do without a calculator very often, so I found myself challenged along with her as we worked through the problems.  At one point, she gave me a multiplication problem to do and tested my skills as well, which was more challenging than I was expecting and gave me even more respect for her for working her way through all the difficult problems I gave her.  I was really inspired by her desire to learn and work so hard (even if she was trying to show off a little for the new volunteers), and hopefully I can take a little bit of that energy back to school with me when the week is over.