Fwd: valuing my work and going after what I want

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Tomato Insurgent <tomato.insurgent@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/8/26
Subject: Re: valuing my work and going after what I want
To: Sara Mosenkis <


I am in Buenos Aires right now on an open-ended trip with my friend Max who I've know for 20 years (since elementary school). This year, before coming to this city, we spent 5 months working very hard for no money as volunteers on organic farms in Patagonia (in Chile and later in Argentina). I found this work very rewarding and meaningful because of the skills it required me to develop, the physically healthy lifestyle it dictated, the beautiful locations where it occurred, and the opportunities it provided to know people outside of the rushed context of standard tourism/travel. We did not start the trip with much money and our volunteerism was financially possible because these farms provided free lodging and food for us in exchange for our work.

This is only the most recent of many activities/jobs that I've done under the rubric of 'Volunteerism.' During 2003-2004 I was a corps member in an AmeriCorps program in Boston, USA and my work was primarily focused on teaching environmental science in third-grade classrooms (students aged 7-8). The corps members were frequently called 'volunteers,' which is interesting given that we were being paid for our work, albeit far less than the federal minimum wage.

More recently in Boston I drove a truck and loaded and sold produce for a food-salvage non-profit; for compensation I only took as much food as I could carry even though I was frequently offered small amounts of cash. In this case, I very much valued my identity as a volunteer because I found that it improved the quality of my relationship with the founder and manager of the program.

Then last year, my brother and I volunteered doing reconstruction work in New Orleans for four months, during which time we lived in a tiny dorm in a volunteer center in the lower ninth ward and had most of our meals provided for us by the organization. This was a very similar financial arrangement to the organic farms I've stayed at this year, full-time, live-in volunteerism.

So, even though my resume has far more volunteerism listed than 'real work,' it is not as though I've been engaged in leisure-type, something-for-nothing activities. And in each case, what I got for my work was not just 'a good experience' but rather tangible financial compensation: the Americorps stipend (and health insurance and paltry scholarship), room and board (not cheap to buy on the open market), or even just (all my) food.

In each of these volunteer positions I was doing work that I enjoy and believe in; I was not soley exhanging my time and effort for the financial compensation provided. However the compensation I recieved made it financially possible for me to commit myself to fulfilling the requirements of the positions. Reciprocally, none of these positions could feasably have been compensated with a standard or minimum wage, given the financial constraints of the organizations and individuals for whom I was working. Thus I was able to provide services that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive: for the recipients under a private corporate model, or for the government under a subsidized public model.

Volunteerism in this sense can fill in the gaps in the work opportunities, social services, and organizational structures available through our current economic system of heavilly regulated capitalism/socialism. If a houshold is required to purchase all its requisite goods and services on the market, the minimum wage is usually woefully inadequate. But for many positions in public service, independent agriculture, and other fields, this same minumum wage (plus taxes and benefits and all the other regulated necessities) is already prohibitively expensive for the employer. While of course, these regulations were put in place to protect workers from exploitation, I have appreciated the opportunity to arrange my own, more flexible compensation, to decide for myself what is an amazing opportunity and what is an unacceptable exploitation. Could I support a family living in an apartment by volunteering? of course not! But I have neither a dependent family nor an apartment.

And while I do have a network of family and friends on whom I can rely in a pinch, and while this is surely partly due to the privilege of growing up middle-class, I do not think that volunteerism in principle is limited in scope to only the privileged. Financially, everyone needs some money and some belongings, alot of food and a place to live. But this does not all have to come though the standard channels (empoyment, vendors, landlords, etc.) recongnized in regulated capitalism/socialism. Volunteerism, work-trade, barter, and other subversive economies have always been irreplacable and should be celebrated and promoted as a medium for more rational exchange.

Matthew Holland, 24, Buenos Aires, Argentina