Members of our confirmation class and their mentors volunteered this past weekend to help out with the Stamp Out Hunger project. Its prompted me to think a bit about partnerships. Every year the Post Office spearheads an effort to collect food for food pantries all across the country, and they often invite others to help them in the work of gathering and sorting the food. The food itself comes from folks in the community who leave a box or bag of groceries by their mail box to be picked up by mail carriers or other volunteers, like our confirmands. There is a corporate sponsor, the letter carriers union supports the effort. Its really a pretty good example of partnership: private citizens, a quasi-governmental organization, not-for-profit service providers, labor unions, businesses and even church groups like ours, all working together to feed the hungry. Last year, according to the Stamp Out Hunger website, over 77.1 million pounds of food were collected. That's a lot of groceries!
My question is pretty simple. Why do we have so much difficulty forming such coalitions? Why do we find it so hard to work across the various lines that divide us? We need to get our collective act together and work together to eliminate the need for food drives and food pantries and Stamp Out Hunger Day. We need take advantage of the various strengths each sector of society brings to the table to address the pressing issues of the day. For clearly, when we do, we can accomplish great things!
I'd love to hear from you about other such partnerships. Maybe with more examples of such successes, folks will find the courage to step out of the comfort zone of their own ideas and organizations, and into the greater arena of cooperation!
(Photo Credit: Patti Sousa)
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