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PREFACE
The pictures in this book show some of the people of America taking care of their own and often, not their own; people who have the "caring gene" in their make-up.
Though most of us realize the social fabric of these United States is in serious need of mending, few of us step forward with the needle and thread of compassion. But there are those among us who step forward with selflessness, love, and inner resources - often with little else. They are the care givers.
Often the care givers are as surprised by their own courage as they are by the awesome needs of the jobless, homeless, sick, mentally or physically disabled, disenfranchised, the shut-ins and the shut-outs. They share their lives and resources, both material and spiritual, with the young, old, male and female, with all races, in all parts of the country and at all levels of our society. The face of giving is a face without age or color or gender. It is non-judgmental. It is a face of kindness and grace. The care givers see what others ignore.
These care givers are the safety net for the many whom the bureaucracy fails. They are people who tend the needy through years of disability or debilitating disease; aids care givers, the professional photographer who devotes years to homeless kids and teaches them photography so they can photograph their environment, former gang members working in a school for the disabled, a one-time run-away and prostitute who runs a victims services agency and works with street kids in New York. And there is the 70- year old farm woman near the nation's capital who has been an important part of the lives of 29 foster children along with a like number of displaced elderly. A quadriplegic who has adopted 15 hard-to-place children and a woman who delivers 400,000 meals a year to shut-ins. A survivor of Nazi Germany who has built a village for kids with terminal illnesses.... the list is endless.
This book is not about volunteers or activists though much is to be said about both. The volunteers and activists gave 20.5 billion hours of their time in 1989. As Brian O'Connell, president of the national non-profit coalition, Independent Sector, says, "criticism, outrage and reform is (their) single best service." Many of the same reasons that motivate the volunteers and activists motivate the people in this book as well; a sense of their place in the community, the need to remedy a less than responsive government and some control over their life.
But the care giver would seem to be on another plane than the volunteer and activist, at another level, quietly taking care of those who were never above the safety net, who are living out their lives with no where else to fall, except into the life of someone like the people shown in this book.
The people pictured here represent only fraction of those who use their life to help others. We hope the few in this book ennoble the many we are unable to include.
...Dick Swanson, 1997