NeighborScapes

There was a point in time over last summer in which 60-75% of the staff in the NeighborScapes office at any given time was Jewish. Purim was a big deal, and most of the staff were gone for the High Holidays; I think I spent Purim alternating reading about it so I’d be more prepared next year and trying to do billable work. The nuances of Hanukkah and Passover remain a mystery to me (what the heck, what is an orange doing on a passover seder plate? I GUARANTEE the Jews did not have oranges when they were fleeing Egypt), as much as I’m trying to learn.

But there’s a certain charm to Hanukkah, that comes from more than just being the Jewish holiday that’s chronologically closest to Christmas that also involves exchanging gifts and lighting candles. I’m overcoming the irony of a nonprofit that focuses on green jobs and a Green economy celebrating a festival of oil. Instead, I look at it, as with everything, from the perspective of nonprofit operations, where using one day’s resources to last eight is the kind of holiday miracle that our funders expect us to perform regularly.

Giving us one day’s resources to last eight is impossible. It’s insulting. It defies science and common sense and spits in the face of good work. It takes overworked, underpaid employees and demands that they do ever more, work ever harder, to meet need rising like a tsunami with resources washing away like sand.

This, I think, is missing the point of the miracle. It is a superhuman accomplishment to do eight days of work with one day of oil. It is superhuman to achieve in six months what should take a year, it is superhuman to meet 2010 (or 2011’s!) needs with resources at 1990 levels. There is no science or logic to it. I want to throw up my arms and quit.

But, always, something comes along. Prairie State offers us a partnership with YES right when the NeighborScapes network has been exhausted for summer fundraising. HCI pays us when our operating funds are right about to dry. A new van is donated right when the possession or absence of a van will make or break our summer camp, a high-skill volunteer with specifically the skills we need shows up on our doorstep a day before we need them. A partnership with National Able brings us Sandra, right when we need her most- even though we’ve tried to reach out to National Able for months before.

I’m educated. I like to operate with certainty and science. I like to look before I leap, plan for the worst, have a back-up strategy AND an exit strategy. But that’s not the funding environment I find myself in, nor the kind of nonprofit I work for. With the economy so unstable and NeighborScapes so new, sometimes I only get one night’s worth of oil.

But NeighborScapes is a lighthouse to too many people for me not to keep the candle burning. So maybe I’ll learn from my Japanese heritage and study a little Kaizen, working towards constant improvement in myself, my work, and those around me. Maybe I’ll honor my white grandfather who spent forty years in a factory for Ford, and see my work as one powerfully important step in a much larger picture. And maybe, during the winter Holidays, it’s the time of year for Hanukkah Miracles to happen.

Chris Furuya is the program coordinator for NeighborScapes, a volunteering, community organizing, and civic leadership nonprofit located in the South suburbs of Chicago. Her twitter handle is earthangelNS.