When a social service agency promises to serve the community and they serve themselves first, as administrators, people usually look the other way and say ‘people need to earn a living.’ But what if that living was 20+ times greater than those that they serve?
How about a pastor at a church? I know many pastors and all of their incomes vary greatly as do their membership or weekly attendance. There are some pastors that do not receive a salary from the church instead use the weekly offering as the 100% fund for the church and its needs. Then you have pastors that know how to shout and energize the crowd because they have an upcoming trip to the Bahamas and would like to upgrade their hotel accommodations. Then you have the few that don’t really push on weekly donations and runs the place as more of an obligation than anything else and the rest fall somewhere in between all of that.
In either case the principles of both establishments are profound and that is to serve those in need. In recent days here in Chicago we have seen news about Jane Addams Hull House Association closing its doors after a 123 year run due to lack of funding. Then today a report comes out of our local Public radio station WBEZ 91.5FM that a pastor has been paying people to go protest in favor of local school closings. There have been many debates about underperforming public schools in Chicago and the city is holding area hearings to give the community a chance to argue the closing of the schools.
The report shows that the pastor’s organization has received funding of $1.4 million in recent times for programing that is assumed being run out of his church. Somehow he must think that he will benefit from the closing of these schools, he’s been offered something from a politician, or he’s just a mule doing as he’s been told to do. I don’t mean to call him a name but it truly seems as though he is not functioning in any capacity of reason to why it is a good thing to close a school. Usually when you oppose an issue it’s because you have some solid ground to stand on to explain your position but the reporter was quickly told to move away from the area once they realized who she was.
Hull House has made moves in the past that have been questionable and the employees usually take the blows and keep on trying their best to give 100% to their clients even if you are getting paid for only 30 hours of work a week and your clients are expecting 40 hours of service and you give them that and more. Last week Hull House said that they would be closing their doors at the end of March and yesterday they delivered a surprise to the Head Start program at their Uptown Center at 4520 N. Beacon Chicago, IL the administration of Hull House cancelled the food service to the Head Start program and did not notify anyone at the center about it. The staff had to call the parents of the children and had them picked up because otherwise these children would have gone hungry for the day while in the care of Hull House. What did these children do to the administration of Hull House to receive such a back handed treatment in services?
Hull House will of course shift the blame to someone else and they might effectively get away with it and find themselves giving the same type of careless service to other clients at another social service agency. How do we stop these abuses?
The long term effect of these actions is what people fail to see, if a parent is unable to find appropriate child care this week they will have make some decisions quickly. Do I ask for time off to from work to find child care? If I do will I get in trouble? Many of the people served in this program are low income and in the case of Uptown mostly recent immigrants that have jobs that do not usually allow for time off. If you are running a multimillion dollar agency and you can’t add the numbers up to make sure you have enough money until the end of March then the immediate question that government agencies and foundations should have for Hull House is, what have you done with the money we gave you?!
That is where we are at right now; to all administrators at Hull House what have you done with those millions of dollars?
I hope that those of you that read this have the courage to ask that question to them directly via phone, fax, email, or even directly face to face.
Jane Addams Hull House Association Headquarters
1030 W. Van Buren
Chicago, IL 60607
Toll Free: 800-448-0083
Phone: 312-906-8600
Fax: 312-235-5287
Email: info@hullhouse.org
Peace/AMOR
Gerardo
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