Where Am I Giving: A Global Adventure Exploring How to Use Your Gifts and Talents to Make a Difference

4Confessions of a Volunteer Addict (Indiana, 2010): Benefits of volunteering / 100-hour rule / Make where you live interesting

I KNEW SOME OF THE STORIES OF THE WOMEN IN THE CIRCLE. There were stories of bad luck, deaths, diseases, and abuses that led them into poverty or kept them there. We sat in a church basement on cold folding chairs and listened to Steve Selvey, the building commissioner, talk about some of the conditions he had seen people living in.

“We have a lack of quality low-income housing,” Steve told us. “Two weeks into my job, I got called out to a house …” He paused and stared at the floor. It seemed as if he were setting up a long story that would include details like where the house was and what it looked like. But then he sat back and got right to it. “A mother was holding her child and she forgot to put the rubber glove on that her landlord gave her to safely flip the light switch. They were both electrocuted.”

The room went silent. A breath would have been as loud as a gunshot.

“Now, now,” he said, not in a consoling way but in a “I should have said shocked instead of electrocuted” way. “They were treated and released.”

We all breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think it's immoral to [as a landlord] take money and not provide simple services,” Steve said.

He told us more stories of similar circumstances, where people paid to live in places that weren't safe, and that didn't have water or electricity.

This wasn't Kenya or Nepal, or some developing nation I visited; ...