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Daily News SPECIAL PEACE CORPS SERVES OTHERS WELL By Celia Taylor “Service is the path to happiness, to greatness and to God. You don't need to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”- Martin Luther King, Jr. In the article titled “Beyond Benevolence: Friendship and the Politics of Help,” Norman Kunc and Emma Van der Klift write, “At the end of the 20th century, the most significant barriers preventing individuals with labels of disability from fully participating in schools and communities are still attitudinal. Specifically, our society still perceives those with disabilities as perpetual, receivers of help. Descriptors such as “less fortunate” and “needy,” telethons and tearjerker journalism all continue to perpetuate this view.” Certainly, those with disabilities have a lot to teach us about the subject of help. They have spent a good portion of their lives being helped, whether they wanted to be or not, by well-meaning individuals. However, if society is not going to stop devaluing people who have developmental or other disabilities, a change in the way we view those people must occur. We must allow them to reverse the tide by providing opportunities in which they are more often the helpers rather than the “helpees.” On a recent Friday morning, I met with the Special Peace Corps, a program that espouses a life of service to others. It is comprised of young men and women 19 years of age and older who have “life challenges that are the result of, or complicated by, neurological impairments, epilepsy, head injuries, developmental disabilities.” Most of them come from The Life Experience School, a peace education day school for children with special needs. It is unique in both its philosophies of promoting nonviolence and a life of service to others as well as providing a wide variety of experiences to the people who are involved. Just as the Peace Corps was established in 1961 in this country to assist developing countries by providing knowledgeable volunteers, the Special Peace Corps was established to provide an alternative way of life for young adults with special needs who have a desire to help. Like the Peace Corps, the Special Peace Corps members participate for a two-year period or until community employment can be arranged. The Department of Mental Retardation provides contracts to those who choose the Special Peace Corps for their vocation. They are a close-knit, warm group of people who work at the Holliston and Millis Food Pantry, serve food at the senior center, visit nursing homes, deliver food in Natick to shut-ins who are elderly or who are disabled, assist at animal shelters and sanctuaries and care for places of worship or public parks. This group is completely different from any vocational program I've seen. Because The Life Experience School educates its students in the ways of peace and social activism, the students see themselves as instruments of peace. For them it's a way of life, not just something to do everyday or somewhere to go. In 1994 Lewis Randa , the founder of The Life Experience School, had a vision. He knew that stuffing envelopes or doing other piecework in a typical program for people who had completed their classroom learning could be as unsatisfying to the individual with special needs as it would be to you or to me. In his writings he says, "like others in society, mentally challenged persons are compassionate, deeply spiritual and conscientious. The need to serve is universal. Not only do these 'activists of the heart' have something special to offer, in many respects society needs them. The participation of these peace makers with disabilities is itself a gift to communities-and the vehicle of this gift is the Special Peace Corps." Each morning the members of the Special Peace Corps attend the morning meeting which serves to remind them that each is connected to the other and their highest calling is to serve oneanother and society. They also talk about their day, commend each other for the good job they're doing and finally, they recite Special Peace Corps creed: "When I am hungry, send me someone to feed; When I am thirsty, send me someone who needs a drink; When I am cold, send me someone to warm; When I am sad, send me someone to cheer; When I need understanding, send me someone who needs mine; When I need to be looked after, send me someone to care for; When I think only of myself, draw my thoughts to another." Celia Taylor Milford Daily News |