May

Westminster Presbyterian Church, the Islamic Society of the Niagara Frontier, and Temple Beth Zion are working together on Sunday, May 22, 2011 in their annual project called Mitzvah Day. Congregants will go out together in teams of from five to twenty people to twenty-six social service sites, some of which are perfect for families working together.

Captains for each site come from all three congregations, and have worked together to create opportunities for service and benefits that will last all year. They will be gardening at several locations, including the Martin Luther King Park, Benedict House, Conner’s Children’s Center, Compass House, Gilda’s Club, Tifft Nature Preserve; learning to build with Habitat for Humanity; cleaning and cooking at Friends of the Night People and Ronald McDonald House; sewing and knitting to benefit Haven House and The Community Afghan Project; building playground sandboxes at the Jewish Community Center, hosting a party for chronically ill children at Women and Children’s Hospital, just to name a few.

This year, twenty-one additional Buffalo organizations will each have a presentation table at the Volunteer Fair at Temple Beth Zion. That way, during lunch, the Mitzvah Day volunteers can learn more about other service opportunities. Organizations ranging from the Buffalo Zoo to the Buffalo Museum of Science to Read to Succeed Buffalo, Inc., to Upstate New York Transplant Services (and seventeen more!) will be on hand.

You could even say that “Each one teach one” has expanded through programs like Mitzvah Day into “Each one reach one.”

“Each one teach one” is the name of literacy projects nationwide, but it has been attributed to an African Proverb and sometimes to education in secret during slavery days. The idea makes sense, and it makes mathematical sense, too. That’s because making a choice to do something or not to do something is a binary choice—it has two possible prongs. If each one reaches one, that means that the choice to do something positive has been made each time and reaches someone each time. If only half did so, only half would be benefited.

Social scientists explain the choices to gossip or not or to get a flu shot or not in the same way. Making a decision not to pass gossip along can stop it in its tracks. Getting a flu shot can do the same for an epidemic. But if only half make the decision, only some will benefit.

Statistics don’t tell us why people make a decision, just that they make one. But the context does affect decisions. Everyone knows that Buffalonians help each other shovel their driveways in winter and take visitors to a Bills or Sabres game.

Mitzvah Day is neighborliness gone viral. That’s what helps create the cultural narrative of the City of Good Neighbors.

Linda Chalmer Zemel, Buffalo Alternative Medicine Examiner and Buffalo Books Examiner. Originally published on Examiner.com