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A Good Time to Act Locally
By Jennifer Dowley
We are well into the season of giving. It's time to take stock of what has been given to us and to give to those we care about in return. We are immersed in the culture of giving in the last weeks of the year (even the IRS gets involved, creating incentives for individual charitable giving). But this year is different. Our internal psychologies have been changed by the events of September 11 and those that followed.
I have talked with a number of people about how they are responding. One person said that it was a reminder to pay close attention to the things she cares most about and the things that make her life rich and fulfilled. Another said that he was now focused primarily on trying to see that his resources went to doing good works locally. Through this effort, he felt that he was able to provide an antidote to the attitudes that provoked the September 11th attack. At Berkshire Taconic we were moved to open a September 11th Fund to serve as a local means for giving to victims of the attacks. Over $25,000 has been donated through us for victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. I'm pleased to say that most of the people who contributed to the Fund are new to the Foundation, and I'm heartened by their expressions of concern.
At Berkshire Taconic our board and staff feel, now more than ever, that the work we do in our wonderful part of the world is even more important than before. If our local and national values are about compassion, open-mindedness and generosity, then we want to see them reinforced right here where we live. Maybe only then is there a hope that these values will prevail in the international arena.
One of the funds that the Foundation manages offers a modest but potent means of growing these values. Richard Henriquez of Millerton died in 1995 and left his entire estate to establish "The Alice and Richard Henriquez Memorial Fund." Each year this fund sends dozens of young adults from the Berkshire Taconic region to travel and do community service abroad. Mr. Henriquez believed that an understanding of other people and their cultures, as well as sensitivity to the destabilizing effect of social and economic injustice, is what the young men and women will need to successfully live in the coming decades. If there were more Henriquez Funds to send our children to live within other cultures, to extend themselves beyond their own horizons, I'm sure that we would be in a better position to accommodate the tensions and uncertainties of becoming a global society.
It is our hope at the Foundation that all of us will renew our commitments to the local places we love and need during this season of giving. It is a good time to act locally in the firm belief that it will make a difference globally.
Jennifer Dowley is President of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, which is located at 271 Main St., Suite 3, Great Barrington, MA 01250. For more info call 800-969-2823.
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