Life at ECWT has a weekly rhythm.  Each coordinator who is unemployed applies for three jobs a week.  Most job applications are never acknowledged.  Every once in awhile, someone is called for an interview.  On rare occasions, they are called for a second interview.

Last week one of our coordinators was called for the second interview, and it was looking very good.  The job wasn’t close to perfect.  It didn’t use the full range of professional skills the coordinator possesses.  It was more than an hour and 15 minutes commute one way.  But after a year of unemployment, this was looking pretty good. Then the prospective employer said the  coordinator could work from home two days a week.  The employer called for professional references. He spoke highly of the coordinator.

We were excited, or rather, we would have been excited if we had let ourselves be.  But we have schooled ourselves not to get excited about a prospect of a job.  We tell ourselves that we can’t allow ourselves to anticipate what might happen.  We can’t get our hopes up.

This is extremely ironic. As ECWT coordinators reflected on our first year of existence, we realized that our most fundamental contribution as an organization was to provide hope.  The Garden Program allowed people to grow their own food – a basic accomplishment.  The Skills Bank provides people with the opportunity to earn money to meet their financial needs – a basic accomplishment.

But the deeper effect of these programs is to generate hope.  Putting in a garden is doing something.  Signing up for the Skills Bank is doing something.  As long as we are doing something, it is possible to believe that our situation will improve.

ECWT exists to make it possible for people to take actions that produce hope.

Yet there we were, talking about a job that we desperately wanted to come through - but couldn’t hope for, and launching a fundraising campaign that is critical to the survival of this initiative -  and not knowing how the community would respond.

At the end of the conversation one of the coordinators said,  “I’m afraid to hope for hope.”

This goes from ironic to tragic.

Depression sets in when a person loses hope that their problems can be resolved.   Suicides occur when all hope is lost.

Keeping hope alive is a survival technique.

But when you are unemployed, ridding yourself of hope is a survival technique.

Losing a job erodes a person’s sense of self-worth.  Applying for a job, three times a week, week after week, month after month, without  getting a response – creates a constant drumbeat  of inner voices:  ”You are not worth being hired.  You are not worthy.  You are not as good as other people. ”

Losing a job can destroy your livelihood.  Constant rejection can destroy your sense of self.  It can destroy life itself.

To protect yourself, you prepare for rejection.  You learn to expect rejection.  If you don’t expect anything, you won’t be  torn apart when you don’t get it.  You become cynical and jaded.  You don’t expect things to change.  You lose hope – but the option seems worse.

So unemployed people continue to apply for jobs.  They sign up for the ECWT Skills Bank.

And we ask the community, “Who Funds Hope?”

But we are afraid to hope.  Is there any reason to?

P.S. Yesterday we got the news  - our coordinator didn’t get the job.