Chapter 4
Service projects

4.1 Feeding the hungry

The best service is giving a thirsty man a cup of water, and the best time is when he is thirsty [73] .The best type of service is feeding the hungry [74] .Set aside a handful of rice every day while cooking, as an offering to God; each week, feed a few hungry people with it [75] .

Before we started serving food in the shelter on Sunday mornings, violence was the norm. The shelter director told us that, since we began sharing food, there is no violence. [A Sai devotee]

Especially today, feeding the hungry is one of the most popular forms of service in Sai Centers. Feeding the hungry can take many forms, some of which are given below in order of increasing responsibility and work they entail.

• Bring (vegetarian) canned goods and sacks of food to your Center for later distribution to a service agency.
• Arrange food baskets and deliver them to shut-ins.
• Help another organization (e.g. the Salvation Army) prepare food, serve food, and clean up afterwards.
• Make and distribute packages of food --sandwiches, fruit, cokies, etc.
• Take full responsibility for preparing and serving a meal to the homeless.

What your Center will do in terms of feeding the hungry depends on the size of your Center and the time that your members can allot to such service. The service may be performed on holidays, monthly, or weekly. In the beginning, start slowly and gain experience and confidence. You must be able to fulfill your commitment in a consistent manner. Periodic evaluation of the service activity is useful; needs may change, and your resources could be better utilized in some other activity.

Volunteering at a local service organization is a good way to start. Your Center can then learn about the service activity and gain experience without having to bear the full responsibility right from the beginning. When helping another organization, follow their guidelines and rules scrupulously, instead of trying to impose your own preferences.

For example, if you decide to help an organization that serves meat, then assist them without complaining or attempting to change their habits. However, in an activity performed solely by the Sai Center, serve vegetarian food.

Do involve children when possible, in both the preparation of and the serving of the food. It is a wonderful experience for them. But make sure they are well supervised, and read the following box on safe food handling. Special tips on feeding the hungry

Special tips on feeding the hungry

• Treat the people you are serving as your guests. Be friendly. Talk to them, both during the meal and afterwards.
  
  
• Serve them food that you yourself would eat. Then find out whether they liked it. In our zeal to make it healthful, we may be making it tasteless or strange. Yes, serve healthful food, but make sure people can eat it.
  
  
• If delivering to shut-ins, ask them each time what they would like the next time; get them anything special that they need, if you can.
  
  
• Over a period of time, you may be able to develop a list of restaurants, bakeries, and supermarkets that will give you leftover food for feeding the hungry. This is a great way to lessen the waste in our society.
  
  
• Wholesale stores sell food more cheaply, in bulk --from vegetables to fully prepared frozen deserts to cookie mixes for baking.
  
  
• Several mornings a week, one Center takes bananas and orange juice or hot cocoa to the laborers on the streets who are looking for jobs.

Service at holiday time

Holidays can be joyous occasions --for those with enough food, clothing, and shelter. For the poor, hungry, destitute, or lonely, holidays can be sad and depressing. We can lift our own spirits as well as the spirits of the people we serve by doing a bit more on holidays. Here are some examples.

1. Provide Christmas cards and stamps for those in nursing homes. Help them write the cards if they so desire (some people may welcome the chance to dictate a letter).

2. Adopt a family at Christmas. Provide them not only with food but with clothes, new or used toys for the kids, Christmas gifts for all the members of the family, and your time. Contact the family ahead of time and find out what they need or want.

3. Make Christmas cards for shut-ins.

4. Stay in touch throughout the year with a family you adopt at Christmas, and help them out when they need it.

5. Add a special touch that helps express or celebrate a holiday. For example, have Easter baskets ready for the children at Easter, decorate the room for the fourth of July, give people small pumpkins to take home on Thanksgiving, have flowers for the women on mother's day, and have Valentine's cards written for everyone on Valentine's day. Decorate the tables with tablecloths, flowers, and candles for the occasion.

6. At Christmas, one Center gave a present of socks and skicaps to everyone they fed.

7. Go Christmas caroling at homes for the elderly --and bring some cookies.

8. Decorate a shelter for the homeless or an elderly home for the holiday.

9. One Center provides little homemade "favors" for 100 food trays at the local soup kitchen on every national holiday. Examples: a brownie and a loving poem on Thanksgiving, heartshaped cookies on Valentine's day, and colored Easter eggs on Easter.

4.2 Visiting hospitals

. . . going to hospitals and serving the patients who are in the wards --in such acts of service, the members of the Sai Organization must take an active part [77] .

You too should keep God in your mind as the pace-setter, whether you are serving patients in hospitals or cleaning drains in the streets. That is the highest form of spiritual exercise. [78]

Hospitals generally have volunteer programs, which provide varied opportunities for service. Usually, there is an Auxiliary that coordinates volunteers. Volunteers serve at the reception, in admissions, and in the gift shop. They provide clerical help and assist nurses on the floor. In some cases, they serve as liaison between the family and the operating room, helping the family through the ordeal.

Volunteers usually take a training program to prepare them with the skills necessary for the tasks.

Some hospitals have long-term patients, who long to see a friendly face and have someone to talk to. Bring flowers, magazines, and a smile.

Associated with the hospital may be a hospice program to help the terminally ill and their families, by giving the family some relief from the responsibility of caring for the dying patient. An extensive training program in issues related to death and dying is usually required of volunteers in the program.

4.3. Visiting nursing homes

In our western culture, the elderly tend to be neglected. We don't have large family groups living together, so when caring for the elderly gets to be a burden, we place them in nursing homes. There, they can be neglected and feel bored and lonely. So the nursing home is a good place to do service.

Visit the same nursing home regularly, for the residents look forward to talking to the same people. Let the children in your Center participate fully in this service. The residents usually enjoy children, and it is also a good experience for the children.

Visits to nursing homes often involve singing with the residents. However, more personal attention can be uplifting. For example, find out beforehand which residents have birthdays that month and make the visit a birthday party for them. Provide a birthday cake and other refreshments, decorate the place with balloons, sing happy birthday to them, and give them a small gift of something they need (toilet articles, etc.).

Check with the nursing home before you go to see whether they allow food to be brought in; some don't. In providing refreshments, remember that the elderly often have dietary restrictions. Watch out especially for diabetics. We tend to provide too much food that is filled with sugar, such as cakes or cookies. Provide an alternative that has no sugar. Provide wholesome fruit (like bananas) that people can keep in their room if they don't want to eat immediately.

Many residents of nursing homes are disabled and have to be fed. Don't bring food that is rough and difficult to swallow.

Provide real personal attention. Each devotee could "adopt" a person to talk to at each visit. Help people write letters --provide writing materials, postcards, etc., but also write as they dictate, if necessary (at Christmas, bring cards). Help make phone calls.

Here are some other possibilities:

• If it is appropriate, take some residents on an outing --e.g. a picnic, a trip to a museum, bowling, plays.
  
  
• Play bingo or other games.
  
  
• Let Bal Vikas children play musical instruments and sing simple songs.

4.4 Serving within the Center

Service of Sai and service of Sai devotees is the same. When you serve Sai devotees, because they are Sai devotees you see the Sai in them, you seek to please the Sai in them, you revere the Sai in them. [80]

Come what may, do not give up this organization. Consider this organization as your life breath. This is real service. [81]

There is much service to be done within a Center itself --keeping devotional songbooks up to date, keeping the meeting place clean, preparing the altar (if there is one), bringing and arranging flowers, leading study circles, preparing and distributing a monthly calendar, and so on. All these activities, carried out with the right attitude, constitute selfless service.

Don't forget the personal aspect. Just because Center members are devotees, don't assume that trouble does not enter their lives. If someone fails to show up for several weeks, find out why, give them a call, and help them if they are in distress. If someone is in the hospital, visit them, just as you would a close friend or relative.

4.5 Interesting group projects

Service should satisfy a local need, solve a local difficulty; don't just imitate [66] .

In this section, we list interesting projects being done by Sai Centers in the U.S.

1. Garden project. Two different Centers grow vegetables (one on two acres of land) and give them to charities.

2. Flowers. Flowers from a devotee's garden are arranged for nursing homes and a woman's shelter.

3. Stuffed animals. Several Centers make bears, rabbits, and hearts for children in hospitals, women's shelters, and ambulance services.

4. Adopt a family. With the help of local social groups, 4 or 5 familes are "adopted" and supplied with new clothes, toys, and food at Christmas and Thanksgiving.

5. Help victims of home fire. This was a spur-of-the-moment project of a Center. They were able to supply a family with clothes, food, utensils, and appliances.

6. Service to animals. One person volunteers at a home for homeless cats.

7. Help the elderly. In association with a local social agency, apartments are winterized, refurbished, cleaned and repaired.

8. Help the homeless. In association with a local social agency, apartments are repaired and cleaned.

9. Blankets. One Center keeps 60 police cars supplied with homemade blankets (about 5 per week are made), which the police give to children in accidents. Another Center makes dolls and teddy bears.

10. Blankets and clothing. One devotee gathers blankets and clothing on a regular basis from churches and delivers them to various social agencies.

11. New immigrants. Clothe and feed newly immigrated people.

12. Gather clothes. One devotee wrote letters to all her neighbors about her Sai Center's used-clothing project (without mentioning the Center or Sathya Sai Baba) and received a huge response.

13. Adopt-a-highway program. One Center keeps a two-mile section of highway clean.

14. Feed the homeless on the street. One Center walks the streets in groups of 2 to 3 people, offering the homeless food.

15. Staff a shelter. One Center looks after shelter residents at night. They serve food, pass out clothing, and blankets, and maintain order.

16. Help the blind. One devotee volunteered at a conference for the blind and visually impaired. Others read for the blind.

17. Magazines. One Center donates up-to-date issues of popular magazines to a hospital.

18. Remodel houses. Help those in need paint or remodel their houses.

19. Make Christmas cards for shut-ins.

4.6. Volunteer organizations

Your Center, or you as an individual, may want to do service through some other volunteer organization in your community. Many communities have a "volunteer center" or an "information and referral center", which maintains a database of human service organizations and community resources. Generally, this organization has a list of agencies that are looking for volunteer help. The local Chamber of Commerce or United Way can usually tell you the name of this organization or can itself give you information about volunteering.

In any community, many areas need help --alcohol/substance abuse, animal care, youth, mental health, women's services, family health, education, libraries, the handicapped and mentally retarded, disaster relief, housing/home repair, refugee assistance, mediation, nature/environment, prison programs, the elderly, and so on. So find your Center's or your own individual niche, and satisfy a local need. Just remember that the kind of service is not as important as the attitude with which it is performed. Make your service a spiritual exercise.

The table below lists some organizations and agencies that generally use volunteers.