Most people don't like asking for
help. Even admitting one needs help can be a severe psychological hurdle.
Asking for help can be embarrassing and debilitating. It can feel like failure
or surrender. It can feel like an admission of guilt. Or, worse, inferiority.
There's only one thing worse than
asking for help: asking for help and hearing no.
N. O.
After all that...can you imagine?
Admitting you need help, summoning up the strength and courage to ask for that
help, making the call and then, instead of breathing a sigh of relief, you are
face to face with this small, two letter word that means all of your efforts
were for naught.
No means abandonment. It means being ignored, being
ostracized, being devalued. No means
that, while the rest of the world continues to survive, to thrive, to function
– you have been consigned to be left by the wayside.
Unfortunately, all agencies and
non-profits face days when that is the only answer they have. When it doesn't
matter how dire the situation, how justified the client, how desperate the need
– the organization cannot help.
At United Chesed, we are no
different. We're a small organization with very limited funding and a very
specific mandate – we offer one-time or short-term emergency care to the Jewish
community in the GTA. We cannot support a client on an ongoing basis. We cannot
offer legal or medical advice. We cannot give unspecified funds or provide
housing. Unfortunately, there's a lot we just cannot do.
But there is one thing we can always
do. We can listen. And we do. Even if we can't help, we offer our clients our
full attention. By listening, we are saying: we see you, you matter, your
problems are important, your existence is valuable. We want to make sure that
it is clear, even if we have to say no,
that we are not saying no to a client's humanity or to the validity of his or
her need.
In other words, when we say no – it's about us, our limitations, not
the client. When we say no, we still
feel connected to the client, to finding a solution to his or her problem. We
just know that we aren't going to be able to offer that help directly.
That's why we make it our
business to be aware of as many resources as possible so that every no can be accompanied with some
direction as to where to go to hear yes.
Chances are, even if we can't help, there's another organization that can and
we want to be able to help our client find that yes.
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