As a parent, I sometimes wonder what good one little girl living in a faraway village that has no running water or electricity and only a nod to sanitation can do in the face of great poverty and the spread of AIDS. Here at home, we are still arguing "stimulus," and with no end in sight to our economic problems, a lot of people are deciding to use their skills to help each other. Change and better times may not come next week or next month or even in six months, when my daughter will be back from Africa. The efforts of our neighbors to make things better in Mercer County may not cancel the problems of poverty and hunger. The truth is, it is difficult to put a value or weight on caring, on helpfulness, on acts of kindness.Compassionate action can make you a witness to suffering. That experience can change you, because you have seen the need with your own eyes. That awareness is the drop of oil that keeps hope burning long after your service is over and it is carried out into the world. It is a positive influence on everybody. It is the kind of love that always wins in the end.
Liz Pasko writes: My daughter is serving in the Peace Corps in a country in West Africa called Togo
Hope and love, one small step at a time My daughter is serving in the Peace Corps in a country in West Africa called Togo. Occasionally, I send her clippings from The Times. Recently, The Times ran an article on good Samaritans ("Good Samaritans kelp ease the pain," March 9), which included statistics on local volunteerism and reported an increase in applicants for the Peace Corps and Teach for America.
As a parent, I sometimes wonder what good one little girl living in a faraway village that has no running water or electricity and only a nod to sanitation can do in the face of great poverty and the spread of AIDS.
Here at home, we are still arguing "stimulus," and with no end in sight to our economic problems, a lot of people are deciding to use their skills to help each other.
Change and better times may not come next week or next month or even in six months, when my daughter will be back from Africa. The efforts of our neighbors to make things better in Mercer County may not cancel the problems of poverty
and hunger.
The truth is, it is difficult to put a value or weight on caring, on helpfulness, on acts of kindness.Compassionate action can make you a witness to suffering. That experience can change you, because you have seen the need with your own eyes. That awareness is the drop of oil that keeps hope burning long after your service is over and it is carried out into the world. It is a positive influence on everybody. It is the kind of love that always wins in the end.
-- LIZ PASKO, Pennington
