Oct
28
Volunteering at The Lab
Filed Under Mentor Blog
(posted by mentor, Glo)
There are several times throughout life where you will be forced to evaluate your priorities, reassess your beliefs and really think about what really matters and what doesn’t. My latest stop at that very crossroads came to me about 2 years ago while I was still living in California. I had a great job at the biggest record label in the world, living in a twenty-room mansion with a swimming pool, and as far as I was concerned, attended and was apart of the greatest church I have ever been to in my life. Everything was extremely well for me but….I felt something was still missing…
I was volunteering with my church going out on Saturdays to some of the worst parts of Los Angeles. I was on passing out clothes on Skid Row one week and the next I would be handing out food in a gang/violence/death on the daily housing project in Watts. I would see the faces of the children turn from hopelessness and negativity into a little light fused with optimism when the white bus pulled up to offer nothing but encouragement, companionship and enthusiasm to not only meet their immediate physical needs but to push them beyond the set of circumstances that they were born into.
As I set there, seeing them from young to old line up, I was told in my spirit that this was a good thing BUT these questions need to be answered: “What about your family?” “What about the people back home in Minnesota?” “If you can help complete strangers out here and try to get children to see another way, why couldn’t you do that where your from?” And last but not least, “What good would it do you if you changed all of Los Angeles but lost your nieces, nephews, little cousins, even some of the struggling adults at the very place where you grew up?”
Once I considered the weight of those questions and answered a couple the decision was made to come home after being gone almost eight years from my entire family!! I gave up everything I knew to be good in my present life for the futures of those who will shape the future for us all. I had no idea what I would do exactly. Where I would go. Where I would even fit in. I was lead to the Lab after performing for the Grand Opening and I have felt at home ever since. I have met so many kids with so much potential that just want someone to put their capacity for good to the front instead the constant barrage of negativity. I have seen some of the hardest kids to get through to sometimes smile, write down how they feel on a unbelievable level of honesty and for at least a brief moment be at peace with themselves and confident in a ability that they didn’t know they even had to begin with.
In essence this is what it’s all about for me. Seeing the look of hope and seeing other options filter through the very souls of our children in the inner city that so many have lost hope in and given up on that they have lost hope and given up on themselves. I will try my best to make a difference. And if I live to see just one of them change for the best, it is all worth it!!
