Special Gift for Engaged Couple

¶ … Special Gift for Engaged Couple" by Noor Javed that appeared in the November 14, 2007 issue of the Toronto Star highlights many of the attitudes the author possesses regarding the role of social work and charity within society. A careful reading of the article reveals that Javed embraces -- consciously or unconsciously -- a social democratic perspective on the role of social work in society and the important role it can play. While the article itself suffers from some structural problems that hinder readers' efforts to determine what social issue is at hand, the author's clear faith in the capacity of concerted charity work to improve the condition of the impoverished is clear. His story about a mother who donates her son's wedding gift to the Santa Claus Fund is demonstration of this point.

The article itself is less about those who are in need than it is about the nobleness of the people who are willing to give to those in need. In this case, Javed highlights the work of Janet Lee, a longstanding social worker who was looking for the perfect engagement gift for her son and his new fiance. Struggling with what to get them to commemorate the special occasion, Lee settled on making a $250 contribution to the Santa Claus Fund. Her rationale was that this move would stress the important values she hope her son and his soon-to-be wife would learn from her about the responsibility to help those less fortunate than they.

Beyond this point, there is little to summarize within the article. It does not outline a clear social issue or problem, and actually does little to explain what the Santa Claus Fund is and how it will be employed to improve the lives of suffering individuals and communities in Canada. Instead, Javed considers the social work history of Lee, her consistent donations to worldwide relief agencies like UNICEF, and the important lessons she learned as a single mother. On the whole, I learned much more about Janet Lee and her apparently impressive socially conscious lifestyle. Rather than focus on the need of those people who are helped by the Santa Claus Fund, Javed focused on the implied nobility of those individuals who are selflessly willing to contribute to the Fund. Janet Lee is held high as a kind of progressive icon who lives a life of social virtue to which all of the rest of us can aspire.

In this sense, we clearly see that Javed embraces and espouses the basic principles of a social democratic paradigm of social work in which the individual is less important than the community. As Lee congratulates herself: "I do a lot for people around the world, but after reading the paper, it suddenly struck me, why am I not doing more for those in need here?" This kind of extreme socially conscious attitude is defined by Lee's desire to transform society so that it is more equitable to those who are in most need. As already explained, the nature of social work practice in a social democratic paradigm is to provide practical humanitarian care to the casualties of capitalism. or, in other words, it is crucial that responsible individuals and institutions make an effort to help those who have been ground under the wheel of an economic and political system that is built on the premise of inequality. We can see that Javed embraces this approach as he is more than willing to hold Lee up as a principled figurehead whose selfless actions to help others represent the most important way she could celebrate the engagement of her son. She explains, "I wanted to show [...] that you need to care about other people, even when you are celebrating yourselves."