Maybe the most profound takeaway I was left with after all of these conversations was that whether an individual or organization was focused on youth, construction, music, or agriculture, the most important thing that they did was not just to put food on someone’s table, or teach someone to use a hammer, or play guitar, but to connect people with each other in a meaningful way.
Matthew Hinsely of Austin Classical Guitar put it to me this way:
“We reach kids that are incarcerated in a variety of ways. We spend time with them and the guitar becomes the organizing principle…when that child is able to go through the underground secure tunnel and pop into the courthouse and perform for the first time in their lives in a courthouse with a hundred people in it, one of whom is the judge that has adjudicated them, one of whom is their mom who could not have imagined their child doing this and have a room full of people stand for them, what you begin to see if you think about it are all the spectra of impact. We’re not teaching the judge to play guitar, we’re not teaching the mom to play the guitar but the impact is powerful and it’s specific to them.”
I was struck by how the impact of the organizations and individuals I met with seemed to be as profound on the volunteers, the families of the individuals served, and the community at large, as on the single moms, low income youths, or recent immigrants they served directly. I started to see the ripple effect of meaningful impact that benefited everyone in a community, regardless of socio-economic, political, sexual or cultural affiliation.
“Hopefully what we do here will benefit the community in the fact that we won’t have so much substance abuse which will in turn domino effect to less homeless and more productivity, less illness, which will cause people to be healthier to be more productive and to be citizens of our community.” -Sarah Wozniak, Clinic Manager of Mission City Community Network Clinic in Barstow, CA.