In Which I Lecture on Sustainability and May Have Gotten Some Kid Arrested While I was Only Attempting to Shop

I try to mind my own business, I really do.  But then earnest young high school children accost me in the parking lots of stores attempting to sell cheap consumer goods as a fundraiser for their service trips to South America to spread love and god and build things.  Being me, I asked them about their project's sustainability and community involvement.  This confused them.

There were actually two of these earnest young people, one in the parking lot of each store I visited.  The first just looked confused about sustainability and started talking about how these trips built lots of character.  Like I care about her character.  What do these trips do that does any sustainable good?   I never did figure out exactly even what service was entailed by this service project. This first kid also avoided my question about whether she would learn anything about the language or culture. I finally just said I couldn't contribute to that kind of project and went onto store number two where awaited, unbeknownst to me, sales pitch number two.

This second conversation I was a little more prepared for, and the boy doing the selling here was a little better at conversation, or at least he actually asked me what I meant by sustainability.  I talked about community involvement and gave the example of Peace Corps monuments, the name we give to those things that volunteers build when the community isn't involved and then those things just sit until they break.  My interlocutor said there was only a very little interaction, specifically, this group does a play with a group of children, but it's mostly about spreading love and the idea that everyone in the world is one family.

Umm, great, but if you want to demonstrate love and respect and monofamilialness, actually interacting with people in an appropriate way for their culture is probably a good start.  Figuring out if they really want your service project is a good continuation.  You would never, for example, just show up at some strangers' home and build a gazebo on their lawn, right?  It would be weird, and there's a good chance the strangers would be angry and/or very confused.  If you want to help people by doing something for them, you need to first have some kind of relationship with them so that you have some idea of what they want or need, and you will ask first even if you are certain they would love a gazebo on their lawn.  Part of respecting people is respecting that they know what they need better than you do and are capable of expressing these needs.  Yet somehow that basic part of respect gets lost in a lot of development work and groups of people will just show up in the developing world for a week or two and build something and then leave again, feeling good about themselves and talking about their built character or increased faith or whatever.

I was trying to come up with a tactful way of telling this kid that his organization represents everything wrong with development work when some police officers showed up, told the kid he was breaking the law and to go to their partners' vehicle on the other side of the parking lot.

I decided it was probably best for me to clear out at this point, since I was interested neither in complaining about being solicited to nor in protesting for the rights of someone to bother people in parking lots.  I do wonder if the fact that this kid was of Asian origin and male while the other was white and blonde factored into why the police showed up for this kid and not the other.  Of course, I don't know that they didn't show up for the blonde girl; that they didn't do it while I was there doesn't tell me anything necessarily.

Running errands is usually significantly less eventful.