If Eastside Project participants enter into this relationship as volunteers, they go in from a position of prestige, status, and power over the community member. Wearing the volunteer's hat, the participant approaches the relationship with a sense of giving to others. The reason we pursue this distinction is that the nature of the relationship of the participant to the community member is affected by the label or definition we apply. ESP participants who enter these relationships as students, rather than volunteers, enter with the acknowledgement, at least at some level, that they are more vulnerable to what happens in the relationships than if they formed the relationships as volunteers. There is one other reason for pursuing this distinction.
Volunteers can walk away from their volunteer work with a sense of well-being and satisfaction.
And rightly so. What they do is generous, needed,valuable, and good. But volunteerism and relief work address only the symptoms of social ills. The student, on the other hand, must wrestle with questions that are not necessarily within the purview of the volunteer. Rigorous analysis and investigation into what causes and supports homelessness, bigotry, homophobia, sexism and racism, inequities in pay between men and women, and a whole host of other ills that affect our society, are the appropriate domain of the student.