06430, one of the zip codes of Fairfield, Connecticut, ranks 40th overall on Mongabay.com's list of the "100 richest zip codes in the United States". But wait, you say, where's its neighbor Bridgeport on the list? Well, let's look at Mongabay's list of the 200 wealthiest zip codes in Connecticut (all lists ranking by income as per IRS tax returns). There's another Fairfield zip code. Still no Bridgeport....
According to money.cnn.com, which ranked Fairfield as one of the 100 contenders for the ten best places to live in the United States in 2010 (the city placed 9th in the same ranking in 2006), Fairfield's median family income per year is $127,920. While I'll be serving at Fairfield University this year, few (if any) of the volunteer opportunities I help shape for students will be in Fairfield. Most will be in Bridgeport, Fairfield's neighbor to the east, which shares a common border but differs on most levels, from road quality to racial diversity to income.
As I prepare to drive to Philadelphia for my VISTA pre-service orientation tomorrow, I decided to take a look at the numbers: how different are these neighbors? I checked out the composition of each city in 2009 at city-data.com. Here's how they stack up:
Population - Fairfield: 57,578; Bridgeport: 137,298
Median household income - Fairfield: $101,192; Bridgeport: $39,949; CT average: $67,034
Primary racial composition - Fairfield: 93.6% white alone; Bridgeport: 35.6% Hispanic, 33.7% black alone, 26.7% white alone
That's just a quick sketch - obviously both cities are far more diverse than any three quantitative statistics could show - but it does paint quite the picture for the service year ahead. Here we have a rich, white town bordering a much less wealthy, far more ethnically diverse city. Suddenly the white = rich assumptions people made about us obruni in Ghana, along with all the corresponding inaccuracies and stereotypes, seem relevant again.
As a final note on the disparity, I'll comment that my landlord rents this beautiful duplex on the water in Bridgeport (in Black Rock, one of the so-called 'safe' neighborhoods) because she decided she would rather pick up and move her son to Fairfield so he could attend public school than pay for him to go to private school in Bridgeport. There was no real consideration of sending him into the Bridgeport public school system. There's a lot of potential for valuable service here.
Tangentially related (if only that it also involves the upcoming service year), I now understand why AmeriCorps NCCC considers itself the hardcore younger sibling of VISTA and State & National, the two other AmeriCorps National Service programs. It considers itself thus because it is. There's no question in my mind - zero - that all three programs provide opportunities for amazingly valuable service, but NCCC gets hands dirty and hearts invested, asking members to give 100% every day physically and mentally. VISTA only asks for the mental and allows lots of that 'free time' unknown to NTrips.
When I was on disaster last year, my team worked multiple 60-plus hour, 6-day weeks. I logged over 70 hours a couple of those weeks. The VISTA commitment at Fairfield? 8:30 to 5 on weekdays. That includes a lunch break. Those 70 hours did not account for lunch. Rather than spend 10 or 11 hours on site plus two more doing paperwork before crashing for the night, I'll work until early evening then pack up and go home. Not every second will be devoted to service. I'll rarely end up in the office until 8 or 9 at night. Crazy, huh? It'll be a huge adjustment to have this entirely different schedule. I may spend a fair amount of off-hours time plotting new service partnerships or volunteering myself, though, which is something to which to look forward. Another thing to look forward to is the chocolate-chip-walnut brownies I made tonight as a gift for the friend I'll be visiting in Philadelphia tomorrow. Nobody said they all had to make it to her. Another difference from NCCC is the freedom and flexibility in food. Imagine going from one half of one refrigerator shelf for a week's worth of groceries to triple that for shop-whenever-I-want groceries. The difference a car makes in independence versus only our awesome, black, 15-passenger government van is phenomenal.
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