Carita Rizzo

I didn’t create Voluntales to write about myself. Don’t get me wrong – wanting to build a website that focused on good things that people were doing came from a growing sensation that I wasn’t making the world any better, but really, it wasn’t so I could talk about myself.

Today, I’m going to make it about me.

You see, the Emmy Awards were held last weekend in Los Angeles and the part of the city I’ve come to know so well had been starving itself for two weeks to fit into a dress for one day. How do I know? Well, for one, I’m Facebook friends with most of them. And yes, I’d been starving myself, too.

But when I was invited to an event thrown by an organization called A Better LA, that was taking place the day before the big ceremony, I decided I had to take a time out from the calorie counting and get my head on straight. Sure, it wasn’t the most convenient thing I’d done on a busy weekend, but it was an absolute necessity.

I get so wrapped up in my life: celebrities, parties, dresses and shoes. For someone who didn’t know Choo from shoe five years ago, I now frequently find myself obsessing over designer purses while most of the country –my colleagues and myself included – wonder where the next paycheck will come from. But you know what really puts life into perspective? When you ask someone what’s been the greatest change since they started their work, and they say, “The killings. We went two years without a murder.” I don’t hear that a lot in my daily grind.

As uncomfortable as I felt going down to one of the rougher parts of Los Angeles, that feeling doesn’t even compare to how I felt when I got back inside my car. A Better LA is trying to help urban kids who think joining a gang is their only option choose another path. They have former gang members telling them it’s not worth it, and that there’s nothing at the end of the gangbanger rainbow, except a prison sentence. It’s heavy stuff. Yet the events are held in parks, to show kids that they can come out and play in their own neighborhood and it’s safe – thanks to A Better LA.

We started Voluntales to tell travel stories. I still want to travel and tell stories of adversity, poverty and hope abroad, but sometimes I feel like those stories are just around the corner, and no one wants to tell them because they’re so damn unsexy. And as much as I can understand poverty in third world countries, I don’t understand it in the richest nation in the world – one where I pay taxes, and a lot of them. Why aren’t more people angry about what’s going on just a few blocks away from the glitziest event of the year? Why am I stepping over homeless people in my gown, to get to my free champagne?

I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I squeezed into my dress, drank my free champagne and loved every minute of hobnobbing on Emmy night. But I’m aware of how lucky I am to be part of that fantasy world. Because it’s not real. And the more often I remind myself of that, the better off I’ll be.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.