Helping others is its own reward for Circles allies

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May 26, 2015 - 12:00 AM

Since its introduction two years ago, Circles of Allen County has made a measurable difference in the lives of many of the area’s most vulnerable residents. It has helped propel individuals back into the workforce. It has smoothed the way for a reunion between a young mother and her children. It has helped find doctors for individuals with previously untreated conditions. And this is without touching on the boost to confidence that follows these hard-won projects of self-improvement.
The program — launched by Georgia Masterson in the summer of 2013 with grant money from the REACH Healthcare Foundation — aims to reduce poverty and improve quality of life by bringing a disadvantaged portion of the community into regular contact with volunteers drawn from the broad bracket of the middle class. Every Monday evening the two groups gather as one to discuss ways the participants might improve their situation.
This pairing between Circles participants — known as “leaders” — and its volunteers — known as “allies” — is the lifeblood of the program.
As Masterson prepares to introduce a new group of leaders into Circles, she and the program are in need of more volunteers. The ideal ratio of “allies” to “leaders,” explained Masterson, is two to one.
The only prerequisite for volunteering as an ally is attendance at one of two “Bridges Out of Poverty” classes, which Masterson will hold on the evenings of this Thursday and June 2. According to Masterson, the class offers potential allies an education “in why people in poverty react differently to circumstances than those people who were raised in the middle class.”
Tara Solomon, a co-facilitator in the program, describes the nature of a volunteer’s commitment this way: “You really kind of make it your own. What an ‘ally’ means in the smallest terms is a once-a-month commitment. But, actually, it’s a lot more than that. You build trust with the leaders outside of the meetings. It’s a back-and-forth friendship, and a learning experience.”

ACROSS these two years, a growing group of volunteers — diverse in age, race, income, denomination, political outlook and professional experience — have been gathering most Mondays to share a meal, exchange ideas, and to offer practical instruction to the handful of participants who are taking positive steps toward improving their lives and the lives of their families.
But, to hear many of the allies tell it, the benefits of the program flow in the opposite direction, too.
“You know, we all kind of say this, all of the allies,” explains Ceri Loflin, an audiologist at Greenbush — and, at 28, the program’s youngest volunteer — “it feels like the leaders teach us so much more than we teach them. Most of them are just so unbelievably strong.”

AS WITH many of the allies, Joe Haynes’s natural reluctance to discuss his volunteer work is overcome by his recognition that the program’s goals can only be fulfilled by encouraging a new crop of volunteers.
According to Haynes, a retired small businessman and respected former Allen County College accounting instructor, “Prior to Circles I just never had a face to put on poverty, or the opportunity to have a relationship with someone who’s really experiencing that sort of difficulty.” Haynes recalled the material sparseness of his early boyhood in Missouri, but “I think the difference was that I had two loving parents. Even though we didn’t have much else, I had that” — which is not, acknowledges Haynes, a luxury afforded to all of the Circles participants.
A pragmatic man, and one not given to hyperbole, Haynes confesses that the Circles program arrived at a time in his life when his instinct for self-reflection was most pronounced. “I think for a lot of people it’s a natural tendency at this point in the life cycle to think: Have I been a little selfish, you know? Am I really trying to help my neighbors as much as I should? I do think Circles has contributed to that. But, for me, I think the process had already started. You work all your life to save and retire and accumulate wealth for you and your family. And then, pretty soon, you’ve done that and your kids are grown and gone, and at some point your perspective changes. What has been so significant in your lifetime becomes insignificant.” 

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