Meeraf Taddesse titled “The Price of Celebrity, Forgetting Your Own?” In the article she discusses how many successful people in our community do not seem to reach back to the community to bring others to success. She also points out how especially high profile Ethiopians does not appear to mentor and guide others into non-traditional Ethiopian professions such as sports, arts, and fashion. I too used to think that there weren’t that many of us entering non-traditional fields until I began a project with my sister and I became exposed to how many of us are working incognito in television, movies, arts, music, and more. I wondered like Ms. Taddesse why these people did not make more noise and make opportunities known to those in the community who might be interested in similar fields. Part due to a different project I was working on and part out of sheer curiosity I sent out a list of questions to people in the community regarding what it’s like to help their people. I sought out those individuals who have helped people in the community, whether in the past or currently. I mainly wanted to know what kept people – especially successful people – from volunteering to help the community. The bottom line that I heard from the majority of the group was that helping needs to be an organized effort in order to reach as many people as possible and, as several people put it, we are a difficult group of people to organize. According to those with experience here are some of the reasons why it’s hard to help our community (I use my experiences to highlight people’s points rather than theirs since I promised responders anonymity.
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| "No one can save the community alone. We have to work in collaboration to lift up our communities” |
Everyone Is An Expert Even In Areas They Have No Training In
I am a licensed psychologist with 10 years of training under my belt. I am still a young professional with much to learn, but I at least have the basics down…or else I would not have been awarded my degrees or my license to practice. Imagine my surprise, amusement, and then irritation when a friend tried to argue with me about the etiology of schizophrenia. Might I add that my friend has no professional training in mental health or illness. According to my friend – schizophrenia (a disorder that involves hallucinations and/or delusions) comes from people not being nice enough to the sufferer.
My friend insisted that if a schizophrenic patient had one person in his or her life that treated the patient with love and dignity the patient would be healed. Well, this theory is missing from the 100+ years of psychiatric and psychological research. I would like to think if healing someone with such a serious disease was as simple as that then the disease should be obsolete by now. No matter what I said my friend remained unmoved that he was right and years of psychological study were wrong. I finally gave up. This scenario, people insisting they know something about an area they have little to no experience in, plays itself out regularly in our community. This becomes problematic when it happens in an organization because it causes splintering of services and volunteers. Even worse – it at times can lead to volunteers hurting those they are trying to help rather than helping them. In order to improve this, those volunteering to help our community need recognize people with expertise in different areas and they need to let them lead in that particular area. If you are volunteering outside your area of expertise, then it’s important to defer to those with experience and training.
People Are Shy To Take On Leadership Roles
Another problem with organizing our community is that it is difficult to convince those trained professionals who do know what they are talking about to take on leadership positions in community organizations. The problem is that our community is slow to trust and quick to judge. Therefore progress is slower than it needs to be and in the mean time those in leadership have to put up with lots of judgments and criticisms. Over the past 3 years I have written monthly articles for Dinq magazine on basic mental health and wellbeing. In that time frame I have been approached by many in the community who have tips on how I could do this better:
Why do you write your articles in English? Why not write it in Amharic?”
“Because I do not read or write in Amharic. Would you like to help me by translating?”
“Well, I am very busy but I’m sure someone can help you! You know, most people do not understand what you say so you should write it in Amharic.”
Or
“Why do you write about such depressing things?”
“Well, mental health problems like depression are depressing things by nature, but I write about how to overcome it or help someone else overcome it.”
“Yeah, but no one wants to hear about sad things. You should write about happy things.”
The funny thing is, when I ask them to get involved to make the work better the answer is usually no. So in the meantime I can only do what I can with the limited resources I have while still getting feedback on how I’m not doing a good enough job. There were times I felt I was wasting my time or that no one benefitted from my efforts, but I realized that I was giving more weight to those who approached me with criticisms versus those who approached me to discuss how much they appreciate the information in the articles. I also had to take the criticism for what it was – attempts to help me do better. I had to look beyond the delivery and be open to the message (I found an Amharic translator who helped for some time and I included lighter pieces in between the heavier pieces I wrote.) I struggle off and on with this and I only write a monthly article for a magazine.
I cannot imagine the experience of someone who takes on a prominent leadership role in a community organization. It is not always easy to roll with the punches and for someone who is sensitive or who is not supported by those in the organization there may come a time when it becomes too much. Unfortunately, an organization with lots of leadership turnover is just not going to be as successful. We need to identify people who have good leadership skills combined with expertise, put them in leadership roles, then nurture and take care of them so they can do what they are good at.
Volunteer Work is One Step Forward and Two Steps Back
Everyone wants to be there when your organization is doing well, but people are not quick to volunteer when you are just starting with a new project or if your organization falters. It is hard to find people who are willing to stick with a project during the harder times. Often, people do not realize that projects could turn out to be more long term than they anticipated. They get frustrated when a project is not quick to succeed. I remember a friend telling me of the frustrations he experienced with this. He is an active member of a community church where he and a group of young people, college students and young graduates, organized themselves to provide after school tutoring to K-12 church attendees at no cost. All the parents had to
They practically had no utilization even after calling parents and begging them to bring the kids over. After a period of this the program was disbanded. The volunteers left feeling frustrated and as if they wasted a lot of their time, energy, and money.
Some of you may be asking “How did Mahlet go from successful people reaching back to their community to why community organizations don’t function well.” Here it is: many non-Ethiopian celebrities are able to help their communities because there are existing community organizations that they can tap their time, money, or celebrity image into. As Teddy Fikre has often said – no one can save the community alone. We have to work in collaboration to lift up our communities. In order to help successful Diaspora members reach back to our community – our community has to be ready with its hands raised for someone who is reaching back. We have to establish effective community programs that these successful people can then tap into. I imagine many of these Ethiopian celebrities are not sitting there doing nothing. They may be helping one person at a time – a cousin here, a friend there. Compare that type of service Liya Kebede is doing with the existing Fistula Foundation in Ethiopia. We commoners need to have successful functional organizations ready so people like Liya can maximize their resources through us.
People Want To Reinvent The Wheel
How Many Queen of Sheba, Dukem, or Red Nile restaurants are there in the U.S.? If you haven’t noticed, when people in the community see one person with a great idea in no time there are 5 more people trying to do the same thing while claiming their version is better. This is the same with community organization events. That K-12 tutoring program I mentioned? I know of at least one other church, one friend, and a young professional’s organization that also wanted to do it – all in the same city. How much more effective would this have been if all these people pooled their ideas, resources, and community contacts to set up one tutoring program and then nurtured it into fruition rather than trying to compete with one another.
What’s Your Point?
Some of you may be asking “How did Mahlet go from successful people reaching back to their community to why community organizations don’t function well.” Here it is: many non-Ethiopian celebrities are able to help their communities because there are existing Diaspora members reach back to our community – our community has to be ready with its hands raised for someone
We have to establish effective community programs that these successful people can then tap into. I imagine many of these Ethiopian celebrities are not sitting there doing nothing. They may be helping one person at a time – a cousin here, a friend there. Compare that type of service Liya Kebede is doing with the existing Fistula Foundation in Ethiopia. We commoners need to have successful functional organizations ready so people like Liya can maximize their resources through us. No one can save the community alone. We have to work in collaboration to lift up our communities.
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