to ask herself "are we really helping?"

Here are some random thoughts playing on my mind...

Yesterday, I read from Community Empowerment Collective's website about

"we want for people to be empowered and fight against poverty but what is the opposite of poverty, is it not wealth? An irony is that, we don't also want them to gain wealth, for wealth has a more negative underlying meaning" and.. "we would want people to get their selves out of poverty but deep in ourselves, we don't want them to get richer than us." (Not verbatim)

In ourselves, we have some discrimination for the poor... since we identify them, isolate our analysis to them and try everything that we an to make them integrated with the larger community. Is it not discrimination, in the first place?

Is it not true? Why are there social workers in the world? and why are we paid, if we would want to make a difference? Isn't our service for free? For some and for me, responses would be 'of course, we need to be paid too for our professional services' or 'we also need money to live'. The next question is.. what does being 'professional' mean? and if you need money, then why don't you get into another high-paying job?

Social workers are middle class people. Like me, we could play in between the crossfires of the rich and poor. We have poor friends so much more as we have rich and middle class friends. In this sense, a social worker's heart is divided into two. Her heart is with the poor and is bias with the poor but her upbringing has taught her from the start the live of the rich and to dream the life of the rich. It is a difficult challenge in the mind and in the heart to throw all these things away and sometimes inevitable to resist these subconscious yearnings for gratification. An example of which is.... though I advocate for organic and have learned the wrought that chemicals bring, I can't resist myself from buying those chemical soaps, perfumes and shampoos, which makes my life a little more fragrant everyday. Or this everyday fight to not buy soda or drink coffee or chocolate and everything else.