The Challenges of Personally-Motivated Activism

many many endeavors are precipitated by individuals who have a personal experience a personal need god forbid someone in their family suffers a tragedy and therefore they start an organization to deal with people who have that tragedy they have a child who needs a school in the community so they begin a school in the community and there is a view among community activism that that is the way the community should operate people who have an interest in a project should be the leadership regarding that area there's an alternative view that happens to be my view and i acknowledge that the benefit of the first view and i think that in fact that many if not most of enterprising community um endeavors are triggered by those kinds of self-related interests but there's a counterpoint and the counterpoint is that when people get involved in an organization whether it's a school whether it's a shul whether it's a heisen organization or anything else that is precipitated by a personal interest the way they serve as a leader is tainted in a way certainly colored by their personal interests and therefore for example if i'm on the board of education of my child's school i'm going to be advocating for an approach in education that happens to benefit what my children happen to need and there's an alternative view which is no the people who are making community decisions should specifically be those who don't have a personal interest who don't have a relationship with it on a personal basis and they're able to look at it exclusively on an objective basis i think that a lot of the projects that we do at the orthodox union have the benefit of that attitude and i think that a lot of the decisions that are made are made with that premise in mind which is it's not about me it's not about my family's needs or my friends needs it's looking from the perspective of the community [Music]