VISTA Volunteers Experience Poverty

As a member of the very first group of urban VISTA volunteers, I was dismayed, not to mention astonished, to read that current VISTAs are frustrated because they can’t make ends meet without taking second jobs (“Should Workers Share the Poverty They Fight?” Aug. 5).

My VISTA colleagues and I trained in Chicago, where many of us lived in public housing projects because that was what our stipend could support. After graduation, a group of us went to Newark, where most lived in projects again because it was what we could afford; my roommate and I wheedled meals from friends at the end of most months because we were out of money.

The reality of poverty became part of our lives, and we became more effective as VISTAs--and eventually, I believe, better citizens--precisely because we experienced that reality.

VISTA was built on the compassionate principle that poverty will be significantly diminished, never mind eradicated, only when enough folks have gained the understanding that comes of walking a mile, or more, in those shoes.

Now comes a generation of VISTAs whose principles seem weirdly disconnected from that essential thesis; they give rich new meaning to “unclear on the concept.” And they make me sad.

David Hamlin

Los Angeles