Wednesday, February 01, 2006

From Minimum Wage Worker

To Helping People

Hong Hunt says:
Hong080605_Snap.jpg
When More And More People
Learn To Be Loving And Caring, We’ll Be Able To Have A Better World
And Better Lives For Homeless Persons
And The Poor.

Hong Hunt was the leader of one of the Jobs for Homeless Consortium teams that helped make it a powerhouse service provider in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years.

She worked with Gary Koenig—a leader in the field of organically developing systems in organizations—and her co-workers to track services that Jobs Consortium provided to each homeless job seeker.

Her work ensured that different direct service staff, who provided a range of employment, training, and support services throughout Jobs Consortium, would have access to up-to-date information on what the client’s needs were, what services were provided to address them, and what were still unmet, so staff could target their efforts.

In the following Career Vision for a Small Planet interview, Hong Hunt shares with us her personal story and strivings, as well as her beliefs and her hopes.

She has the following words of encouragement for young people entering public service work:

  • “When more and more people learn to be loving and caring, we’ll be able to have a better world and better lives for homeless persons and the poor.”

And the followng vision of how to help homeless persons:

  • Each person should be allowed to have a piece of free land to dwell on.

Michael Chacko Daniels, Editor & Publisher, New River Free Press International


A Hong Hunt Data Bank


High School
The Experimental School of Liaoning Province, China

College
Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Teacher that influenced Hong the most
Shen Huizhong, College English Teacher,
who showed special care to ordinary students.

Books that influenced Hong
The Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon,
“Mother Teresa” by Demi (Charlotte Dumaresq Hunt)

Favorite Philosopher
Jesus Christ

Favorite Singer
Celine Dion

Favorite Quotation
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
who despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

--Holy Bible, King James version, Matthew 5:44


Q_____________________________

New River Free Press International:

Tell us about yourself.

What makes you who you are?
_______________________________

HongHunt I was born in a small city named Haicheng in Northeast China in the 1960s and grew up in an era when most students were burdened with expectations of attending college. Although I made it to college, I ruined my health—as a result of not performing enough physical activities, and suffered severe tension headaches.

I had to give up continuing education and avoided office work because my headaches wouldn’t go away for years in the 1990s after I came to the United States. Due to the language barrier, I started working in the Laundry of a nursing home, then in Housekeeping. I had a hard time coping with workers in my environment and got into conflicts often because I didn’t know the proper way to react. I was tired of all my complaining customers and got transferred to Dietary as a dietary aide. The job was very hard and I had to make a career change. So I became a nursing assistant, and also a home health aide.

My personal life was getting worse with traumas and mental burdens. I realized I had to search for a way to rescue myself. Finally I allowed God to enter into my life and saved myself from heading toward self-destruction. Without God, I couldn’t imagine where I would be.

Q____________________________

New River Free Press International:
What was your vision of society

that brought you to the work you do?
______________________________

HongHunt Coming from a background of being a minimum-wage worker, I understood how hard it was for poor people to buy homes. My six years of life working at Jobs for Homeless Consortium, coupled with Jesus’ teaching on giving, helped me to focus my mind on the lives of homeless persons in the community.

There were many times I saw homeless persons sleeping on the sidewalk, behind garbage cans, under trees, or by the doorway of buildings.

I thought there was no way they could be happy or contented with their situation. They needed help since they had lost the ability to help themselves. And I believed that only God could turn their lives around.

After the 9-11 attacks, I became conscious of the problems in this world and formed a strong wish that the hatred would diminish someday.

When I learned about Jesus’ teaching on how to treat enemies, I realized that the only way to gain a peaceful world was through teaching everyone to forgive and love.

I thought we need a system that promotes giving, caring, and loving. So I started talking about God and Jesus’ teachings in my e-mails and started spiritualsupportnetwork at Yahoo groups.

Q____________________________

New River Free Press International:

What do you think we should

remember as we remake the world

through the work we do?
______________________________

HongHunt Nowadays more and more people don’t know God and don’t want God in their lives. This is very dangerous, for history proves that whenever this happens, there is going to be some form of destruction.

When I first started talking about God in my e-mails, I felt that I was very much alone. Sometimes, people’s reactions to my e-mails were unexpected. A few times I thought I was going to give myself a break so people wouldn’t think that I was crazy talking about God all the time. But I haven’t given up and I never will.

There is no end to the work of teaching people to forgive and love, and every little bit of work is worth something.

I used to be pessimistic all the time and I know that being pessimistic only leads to depression and loss of hope. Only through faith and hope can I accomplish my dreams. I need patience, endurance, perseverance, and ability to withstand criticism.

When more and more people learn to be loving and caring, we’ll be able to have a better world and better lives for homeless persons and the poor.

Q____________________________

New River Free Press International:

Has your vision changed as you

have participated in the

remaking of the world?
______________________________

HongHunt Yes. Participating in the remaking of the world made me think about my vision and it came into my mind that each person should be allowed to have a piece of free land to dwell on.

It’s very disappointing to know that there is no land anywhere in our country for us to live permanently, if we don’t have the money to pay for it.

Land was made by God and shouldn’t be taken away from the poor by the rich or our government to make profit out of the poor. I’m sure that if we all learn to love each other, we’ll care for each other and not take into our possession more land than needed just because we have more money than the poor.

When I was growing up, each family had their own home and no one could take their home away. We should make it a dream here, too, that our homes will never be taken away from us.

I can see the importance of having leaders in our government who are truly concerned with the lives of homeless persons and are not afraid of speaking out for the poor.


Q____________________________

New River Free Press International:

What challenges do you perceive in

achieving your vision of society?
______________________________

HongHunt It took me many falls and misfortunes before I was forced to seek help. I rejected God as long as I could. It was the fear of hell that made me take God seriously.

I’m having a hard time not getting angry with my daughter when she refuses to listen to me. I’ve seen in public that anger has caused disputes and fights. I believe that anger is the basic root cause for the hatred and crimes around the world.

It is almost impossible to own homes for the poor these days. I truly think that our government needs to free up some land and help to teach homeless persons how to build homes.

This idea did not come out of my own imagination. It’s based on Mother Teresa’s experience when she started a colony called Shanti Nagar (City of Peace) with 30 acres of land near the railroad—given to her by the Indian government for her to take care of lepers. The sisters who worked for her at the Missionaries of Charity taught the lepers how to do carpentry and construction-type of work and they built their own homes.

This is probably the only way homeless persons can have their own homes because, even with jobs, it’s not easy for low-income people to buy homes these days.


Q____________________________

New River Free Press International:

What needs to be done

to overcome these challenges?
______________________________

HongHunt God’s words have been of tremendous help for me to overcome difficulties in life. It took me a while to agree with God. I’m not as fault-finding as before and I’m conscious of my anger, even though it’s still hard to control it when dealing with my daughter.

It’s easy to say that I need patience and I need to control my anger, but when I found out that my anger was controlling me, I had to admit that I needed to pray for help. It is through God’s words that our minds can be cleaned.

Let’s all start with our immediate environment and let our effort grow in multitudes when people around us will do the same.

We have to believe that homeless persons will have permanent homes and they will be able to take good care of their homes. We should never give up faith in this basic human need.

We need strong leaders and we need to foster leadership among poor people and among the dedicated.

Only when we all learn the great commandment of God—to love God and to love each other, can we all strive to be responsible for ourselves and offer help to each other.


Q__________________________________

New River Free Press International:

What pointers would you give young people

of the 9/11 generation as they work

in public service assignments?
____________________________________

HongHunt One thing for sure is that none of us would want to see 9/11 happen again. It’s a wakeup call for us. I don’t think that I want to live my life with orange alerts forever. I neither want to live in fear that if for a moment we fail to watch our border, someone could come into our country and bomb us.

I believe there is a solution to all our problems and it is through God. God is the only one who taught us to forgive and love. Only through forgiving and loving can we gain peace again. We humans are like sheep in the sense that we’ll get lost and face danger when we don’t follow our shepherd. Only God is our forever protection and we need ongoing monitoring of ourselves that we might not go astray like sheep.

We must remember that the task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us. And the power comes from God when we love God and love each other as God commanded us.

Keep up with the effort, for if we don’t, we’ll perish.

I pray for this whole world to come into the light of our God.

Q__________________________________

New River Free Press International:

What personal and public lessons

have you learned from the

devastation caused by the Asian Tsunami?

____________________________________

HongHunt The only important lesson I learned after the Asian Tsunami is that our fate is in God’s hand. I fear God and that’s why I try not to make God angry by following what God wants me to do. Fear of God is the beginning of knowledge as the Bible said. To people who do not fear God, I can only say I hope they don’t have to learn the hard way. It’s not a matter of offending anyone or putting down any people. For the poor people who suffered the tsunami, I know there was little they could do to run away from the tsunami. But to me, I learned to pray when there was no other way.

A powerful nation like United States had no power facing Katrina. What does it imply? There is no other nation more powerful than the United States. So, no people can overpower hurricanes. We would run like fugitives when hurricanes come. That’s what people are. If we are afraid of hurricanes, why should we not be afraid of God? That’s why the Bible says--fear of God is the
beginning of knowledge.

To the people of United States and the world: Put down the pride and let go the arrogance. Bend our knees and bow our heads to God. Start praying and there will be hope to save our lives and our souls.

Q__________________________________

New River Free Press International:

What personal and public lessons

have you learned from the post-Hurricane

Katerina tragedies in New Orleans?

____________________________________

HongHunt There are many things I learned after Katrina, but I know that no matter what I do, the most important thing I need to remember is not to forget about God and not sin against God. I kept thinking about Noah’s time. People who didn’t love God and sinned against God had no way to escape the flood no matter where they ran.

Additionally, I think that it is not a good idea to re-build homes in New Orleans. I heard someone saying on TV that New Orleans still has hope. I also heard that the federal government is going to rebuild the city. Unless United States runs out of land to build a
new city somewhere else, I really think it’s a waste of money to rebuild New Orleans since the place is just not safe. I’m not against cleaning up the city and fixing up the buildings that are still useful since there are people who want to continue to live there.

I want to share what I did recently at home. I went through most of the things I have and put the ones that I can’t afford to lose together so in case of an emergency, I know where to find them quickly. It’s also a good idea to not let your gas tank go below
half full in case you might need to run in an emergency. One more thing I probably should do is to have plenty of emergency supplies such as canned food, flashlights, can opener, bottled water, etc. in the house.

--END--

About the Editor: San Franciscan Michael Chacko Daniels, formerly a community worker and clown, and now a re-emerging writer and editor, grew up in Bombay. Books: Writers Workshop, Kolkata: Split in Two (1971, 2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (1971, 2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (1972, 2005). Read all about his Indian and American journey at http://indiawritingstation.com/community-service-calls/.

All views expressed in the interview are those of the interviewee
and not those of the editor or this website.



Copyright © 2005 New River Free Press International:
US-India Writing Station and Career Visions for a Small Planet

NOTE: THIS INTERVIEW FORMAT IS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF
MICHAEL CHACKO DANIELS AND HIS ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS:
NEW RIVER FREE PRESS INTERNATIONAL:
US-INDIA WRITING STATION AND
CAREER VISIONS FOR A SMALL PLANET.

__________________________

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posted by Michael Chacko Daniels at 8:55 PM 2 comments