During my first few years of college, the term “enough” was associated with community service. I knew “enough” to make a difference. I did “enough” to improve the situation. Over time, I realized overcoming challenges within a community is more nuanced, requiring a combination of experiential knowledge, theoretical understanding, and participation. I was reminded of how little I truly understood while pursuing the community service pathway. Perception and bias often affect one’s ability to assess issues. Understanding and overcoming perception and bias are necessary for developing effective community aid.

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Often, I found people serving by prioritizing their emotions over the needs of the population they aim to serve. Charity is often driven by compassion or guilt rather than an appeal to solve a problem with a sustainable, long-term solution. Many choose to engage in activities that are good enough with the belief that something is better than nothing. People romanticize charitable actions that may be ethically unsound or misinformed. Humanitarian aid is more effective in different contexts when decisions are not based on variable factors such as emotions, religion, laws, and social norms.

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I learned about the complexity of ethics in SLIS 201: Introduction to Information Science. Ethics are moral principles that guide human behavior. Ethics are not equivalent to feelings, religion, law, norms, and science, and thus cannot rely on those characteristics as standards. Instead, standards should derive from any combination of the five frameworks for ethical decision making: the Utilitarian Approach, the Rights Approach, the Fairness or Justice Approach, the Common Good Approach, and the Virtue Approach. The Utilitarian Approach encourages action that would benefit the greatest number of people. In extreme cases, a utilitarian decision should produce the least amount of harm. The Rights Approach suggests each person has inherent value. Since the value of people is not dependent on anything, the Rights Approach promotes human dignity and morality while rejecting the use of people as a means to an end. The Fairness or Justice Approach promotes equal treatment of all humans or a standard of fairness that applies to all. The Common Good Approach promotes welfare for all, supporting decisions that address common issues such as the creation of fire departments to protect communities. Decisions based on the Virtue Approach, which is built on the foundation of values such as honesty and compassion, should be consistent with such values.

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Previously, my work with Cocky’s Reading Express (CRE), due to constraints of limited resources, relied on a few convenience-based decisions that reflected the notion of something is better than nothing. I had the option of selecting books for donation based on intuition or ease. This meant selecting titles that were overstocked or sounded cool. As a result, children would receive books far beyond their reading skill. As a volunteer, the Virtue Approach of ethical decision making compelled me to make choices based on the virtues of integrity and fortitude. To me, it was integral to recognize and respect individual differences and to service each family’s specific needs rather than proving solutions based on generalizations or ease. I chose to create customized literacy kits, which included two reading-level appropriate books, despite the inconvenience of doing so. I recognized another ethical standard during CRE presentations designed to inform parents and to promote reading at home. Presentations were based on the Rights Approach, respecting the decisions of the members within the communities served while offering opportunities to address child literacy outside of school. CRE staff members recognize the difficulties many parents in low-income areas have accessing a library. Out of respect for different circumstance, CRE staff members suggested reading any print material with their child in lieu of library visits. Literacy night presentations supported the mission of CRE while maintaining respect for the right of parents to act freely. In these two scenarios, ethical decision making served to prioritize the needs of the community over perceptions and personal benefit.

 

One of the greatest weakness of volunteers and some charities are limited world views and interpretations. There are many perspectives to consider when addressing a need. Experiences and interpretations vary due to many factors including education, socioeconomic status, experiences, access to resources, and group memberships. Access to information that is different, and perhaps conflicting to one’s own beliefs, can result in a better, more accurate assessment of the issue. Thus, seeking information from or regarding a different perspective is valuable in eliminating information gaps and promoting better understanding.

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The narrative of many does not represent the experience of all. I first realized this while studying various female experiences during China’s Cultural Revolution in CHIN 355: Women in China. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, led by Mao Zedong, sought to transition China to communism as soon as possible by emphasizing communist revolutionary ideals. The communist party promoted the destruction of the “Four Olds”: old culture, old habits, old customs, and old ideas. Notable features of this period include re-education of youth through rural labor and the destruction of the “Four Olds” by the paramilitary Red Guard. The Cultural Revolution is best known in Western societies as a period of communist fanaticism that resulted in the purge of millions and policies that caused the death of millions more. Readings, such as Anchee Min’s Red Azalea, reinforced the notion of depravity and violence during this era. For my final term paper, I chose to compare Red Azalea to a collection of memoirs challenging the common “victim” narrative during this era. The nine memoirs in the book, Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era, recognized the tendency to give certain accounts more legitimacy to reinforce a negative perception. Memoirs, such as Red Azalea, did not reflect the experiences of the nine authors. Thus, stories in Some of Us highlighted positive experiences from the era, such as the suspension of gender practices and identity in favor of equality for both sexes, the opportunity to interact with different socioeconomic classes, the emphasis of collective goals over individual gain, and the sharing of basic needs with the poorest members of China. Studying these memoirs provided a more holistic perspective on the Cultural Revolution that did not cater to a single narrative.

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