“The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman; if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.” -Walt Whitman
I’m a sucker for a good Whitman quote. Perhaps it was the short stint teaching American Literature to high-school Juniors; puzzling them with his sometimes ethereal strings of words and then making sense of them together. But one thing Whitman was never unclear about was his desire to understand the common man, the culture around him and how it interacted solely and then together; about the strength of the common human experience.
Buffalo is a city much like the one described in the quote above. To outsiders it may seem formed of many ragged huts scattered amidst some also rather beautiful buildings, but at its core, it is not the buildings, but the people that matter and there are a lot of great people in Buffalo. Great people, doing great things.
It is for this very reason that I was inspired to begin “Non-Profit Profiles”, a series of articles that will profile some of Buffalo’s residents, who are doing amazing work for the betterment of their communities. Many of these people and/or their organizations seldom receive the press, acknowledgement or praise they deserve because they are often too busy at work, too humble to toot their own horns, or merely because they simply haven’t been discovered yet.
As I began work on the first of these profiles of a wonderful organization on the West Side called Jericho Road Ministries I was struck by the incredible, and often selfless work they were doing to better the world, and more specifically the direct community of neighbors around them. Leaving their offices one afternoon I couldn’t help to think about all of the attention paid to Hollywood personalities and their comings and goings and how little any of that really matters. These, I thought, are the real rock stars of our culture– these people, humbly serving others with their ideas, their passions, their hands and their hearts.
That is what it is all about. That is what these non-profit profiles strive to be about.
I hope you enjoy the articles and perhaps find a place to volunteer, serve, or donate to along the way. The first, Non-Profit Profile, “Jericho Road, An Overview” will be posted tomorrow.