First up in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center Speaker Series this year, on Tuesday, is Beth Lindsey Templeton, author of “Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty .” The book was used as the focus of a recent series of workshops for Iolans on ways to deal with poverty issues.
Templeton’s talk will be on her newest venture, “Our Eyes Were Opened,” an offshoot of United Ministries, a faith-based social outreach organization that Templeton directed for 25 years.
Our Eyes Were Opened offers workshops on understanding the mindset that develops in a life of poverty, including limitations that those in poverty may place upon themselves, wittingly or not.
Targeted are those in schools, churches and agencies who work with the poor. Poverty simulation exercises are a part of the ministry.
“I know people really want to help (those in need), but if they don’t understand the issues and reality of poverty it’s not going to help,” Templeton said in a phone interview with the Register.
Templeton uses real-life examples to help policy makers better comprehend that the ways people function are learned at an early age, and are vastly different among social classes.
Templeton will meet with USD 257 teachers on Tuesday morning.
“I’ll be helping them understand some of the conditions some of the kids in their classes might live in and how to overcome them,” she said.
For example, Templeton said, “When children live in overcrowded situations, noise may be comforting. If it’s very quiet (in the classroom) the child might become agitated and not be able to concentrate.” Something as simple as playing soft music in the background can comfort such children and help them focus, without being distracting to others, she said.
“When you think about it, it is perfectly rational,” she said of the behavior. “They are used to things being very loud.”
The objective of her workshops is to “check assumptions we all have. We tend to think our way of thinking is universal. We believe how it works for us (is how it) works for everybody.”
That can go both ways, Templeton said.
People in poverty or from other cultures have assumptions about how middle class Americans think.
“I had one woman in a class from another culture. When I asked if anyone had seen a person die, she” looked amazed, Templeton noted. In the woman’s culture, an entire extended family would gather with a person on their death bed to help that person through, Templeton said. She told the woman, “You’re assuming everyone else here has had that same experience.” Yet for those in mainstream society, the opposite often is true, she said.
Such examples mirror the gulf that exists between the thought processes of those who have resources and those who do not, she said.
Still, she said, “a lot of us have the experience (of deprivation, such as being without electricity) through storms or whatever. A lot of us have common experiences — but it’s all different degrees of experience.”
Templeton also plans to quiz Iola’s teachers on demographic information about Kansas, she said. “It will keep them on their toes.”
Over lunch, she will meet with those who work in adult education.
At 7 p.m., Templeton will give a free public talk on the ways educators, social outreach organizations and churches can better serve those who live in poverty. The lecture, sponsored by the Sleeper Family Trust, will be in the Dale P. Creitz Recital Hall of the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
TEMPLETON first became interested in social outreach work as executive director of United Ministries, a South Carolina-based organization that develops programs and curriculum to interrupt the cycle of poverty and help individuals in need become self-sufficient. She joined shortly after completing seminary.
“When United Ministries first called I wasn’t interested,” she said.
The organization bases its outreach on Matthew 25, “If you do for the least of these, you do for Me,” Templeton said. “I thought, ‘How many ways can I talk about this?’”
Over the years, the ways have become myriad.
Templeton, an ordained Presbyterian minister, said United Ministries now manages a homeless shelter, adult education program, job readiness training program and more for those in need. “We also have programs to address crisis situations such as the newly jobless” she noted.
Through Our Eyes Were Opened, Templeton shares what has worked and what hasn’t in dealing with marginalized populations.
“What Our Eyes does is work with people with resources” to help those in need, Templeton said.
The guidance offered assures such agencies and organizations have “their brains and hearts connected,” she said.
“I’ve seen people who really want to help but they make a bad choice,” Templeton said, citing an example of giving money to a panhandler who might then use that cash to continue a life of alcoholism.
“Over the years, United Ministries staff and volunteers learned that if an organization is willing to develop caring relationships with people and serve as an advocate for them, then significant change can happen.”
But Templeton noted commitment from both sides is necessary.
“Sometimes, they’re not ready,” she said of program participants. “We tell them that when they are, we’ll be there.”
