We have so much, what can we do to help? My fellow blogger, editor, and dear friend Jackie Wilson has a burden for helping the people of Appalachia, and she wants you to get involved as well. I've invited Jackie to guest post today here at Mom for Less to tell you more about the Monkey Do Project, a project designed to help those in need.
You know how sometimes you get something in your mind and it sticks there, poking at you every now and again like a deep splinter in your big toe until you give it the proper attention that needs? That’s been happening to me for about 30 years now.
As a child, I would travel from my home state
of Indiana to my parents home, the hills of Southwestern Virginia, passing
through some very depressed areas of both Kentucky and Virginia. I would see
shacks and trailers and dirty kids wearing t-shirts and shorts playing in the
summer. I would see outhouses out back and pigs roaming free in yards, rooting
around by sad little gardens. I would see old people, wrinkles creased deep
into their faces as if pressed on with irons, rocking slowly on porch swings
and fanning themselves with a piece of paper, one leaning over to spit tobacco
off the porch, the brown juice running down his or her chin.
It wasn’t until young adulthood that I realized
that these scenes made up part of Appalachia, and even years beyond that when I
had a full realization of exactly what made up Appalachia. It was a weird
dichotomy puzzling the two together in my mind—the beautiful, peaceful scenery
that always made me feel grounded and at home, with the poverty that seemed
like a slice of normal there.
Today, in 2012, there are
still some parts of Appalachia that are 150% above the average U.S. poverty
rate. If you look at a cluster map, the red areas of distressed Appalachian counties
look like clusters of measles, instead it’s a representation of a group of
counties the government has labeled as “the most economically depressed
counties [that] rank in the worst 10 percent of the nation’s counties.” Some of
these are exactly where I passed and witnessed those things as a child.
I know what some of you are thinking, “This is America. Get
up. Get out. Get a job.” Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Some of these areas
have been left devastated by the coal and mining companies who destroyed their
land and then left when there was nothing else, leaving people without jobs and
homes and in some cases without safe drinking water. Some of these people are
tobacco farmers, a dying industry (as you can imagine) and have been left to
find other ways to support their family. Some of the people in these areas have
no roads to their homes because it’s too expensive for the government to cut
through the mountainous rock to build them. Some people have no food or even
running water. And, although a great deal of people walk everywhere, many don’t
even wear shoes in the summer because they have to keep them in good shape for
the cold of the winter. So, you see, it’s not just all lazy people who won’t
help themselves. It’s not people trying to live off of “the system” because for
many, there is no system. At all. And this is happening right here in our
United States of America. The Land of Plenty. The Home of the Free.
A little part of me always knew I was supposed
to do something about it—to help those people of Appalachia that I saw as a
child. Those that make up a stretch of 205,000 square miles over 13 states,
around 24.8 million people. Some, including me, would say my need to help is a
“calling.” So, I recently created the Monkey
Do Project. It’s just getting off the ground, but I would love for you to
learn more about the project, the people in the Appalachian region and how we
can help.
Follow the Monkey Do Project on Twitter as @MonkeyDoProject and on Facebook at Rock the Sock Monkey.
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