When you meet people they always ask what do you do for a living. I prefer to ask, ” What are you passionate about?” I think that if we can tap into what calls us to action we can free our creativity and have fun doing our work. As for myself, I am passionate about poverty. A friend told me that passion is derived from the Latin verb patī meaning to suffer. It hurts me to see how poverty affects so many in our world when we have so much abundance. We work from a deficit perspective when in reality we have more than we need to solve and alleviate the suffering of people. People have the power within themselves to make the world a better place for themselves and for others around them who at the moment might be powerless because of the clutches of circumstance. I am lucky because my passion can take on many outlets in the forms of jobs, careers and volunteer opportunities. I am grateful because by giving I feel fulfilled . By protecting, I feel protected and by caring my heart grows and I have the opportunity to forge a conscious within myself and more importantly to create a Community of Conscious. This is people building together, realizing that we are all connected and that if we tap into our energy for good we can accomplish much and do what we can for those who suffer. Because in the end we can all empathize with each other after we throw off our facades that we carry for we all suffer. We all experience pain but yet we all experience hope.
As for a job defined- I am a professional pediche- aka a grant writer, a strategizer and a advocate of empowerment through affordable housing, civic engagement and social entrepreneurship. I invite you to see the great work that is being done for our communities by the two non profit organizations that I have worked with. My previous employer Affordable Homes of South Texas, Inc., where I was the Director of Strategic Initiatives. AHSTI provides homes to working low income families With my fancy title I merely helped to tell their story which has provided over 2800 homes for working families! Visit them at www.ahsti.org .
And my present employer La Union del Pueblo Entero or LUPE for short. LUPE is a community organization that organizes for social justice and was started by the civil rights leader Cesar Chavez. We believe that together we can organize to create the change that is needed in our lives while empowering people to be leaders in their communities. Please visit us at http://lupenet.org/ to learn more. And a big Hello to my brothers and sisters fighting the good fight for our community through community organizing!
In the end my work and my fun is about learning while helping and experiencing life. Both the ups and the downs and the plateaus and remembering the experiences created with all of you.
martinagentofchange 