Looking Past the Urgent
Just about everyone has heard the adage, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Many have also heard the parable of the babies in the river. The story goes something like this: There was a village situated on a river and one day a villager saw a baby floating down the river. Being a good and kind person, he jumped into the river and swam out to save the baby from drowning. The next day, he saw two babies in the river. Calling for help, the babies were pulled from the river and saved from drowning. The following day, there were more babies in the river, so more people swam in to save babies. Every day there were more babies in the river, and a rescue team was organized to swim in and save them. As the number of babies increased, the villagers found that they couldn’t save all of them, but felt good that they were saving many of them. One day, someone said, “Wait a minute. Where are all these babies coming from? We should organize a team to go upstream to find out how all these babies are getting in the river in the first place. If we can prevent that from happening, we’ll be more effective in saving babies.”
One approach to problem solving is to respond to the immediate need. There are many needs in our community: poverty, crime, substance abuse, homelessness, and hunger, to name a few. We’re blessed with many organizations that are working every day to meet the needs of those affected by these conditions and I applaud the wonderful work that they’re doing. But we also need to ask the bigger questions of why these conditions are present and what systemic issues are creating these situations. If we can look past the urgent, if we can figuratively go upstream to work on preventing the conditions that are causing the problems in the first place, we’ve got a better chance of reducing or eliminating the problems downstream.
Metro United Way recognizes the importance of dealing with both the urgent and the important. At the same time that Metro United Way funds and supports a network of health and human service agencies, we’re also collaborating with others in the community who are taking a hard look at systemic issues. The better we can understand the root causes, the better we can affect the outcomes. If you’d like to join in this work, please contact Metro United Way – we’d love to have your input!
