The Privilege of Giving

As the year draws to a close the festive season is a timely reminder of how lucky I am. However, as I get older I realise that this has more to do with privilege than with luck.

Privilege can come from many aspects, such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, and education. Whilst everyone has a hard luck story, many people are highly privileged and therefore have little ability to truly empathise with those who are disadvantaged.

I personally have a background of mixed privilege which certainly makes me appreciate and value some things in a different regard to many of my peers. Whilst I am now a well-educated, middle class, white, heterosexual male with a family and house in the suburbs, one may not realise that when I grew up money was scarce, food was basic, and my parents made sacrifices so I didn’t have to go without.

I feel obligated to remind my children that they are privileged and one way of doing this was explaining to them why I don’t get a Christmas present from work. You see, my employer, ANSTO has decided to make its number one key strategic priority “putting people first”. This priority doesn’t start and finish with employees; it’s about all people and extends to the broader community. Instead of receiving presents, we pull together to give to those who are disadvantaged and less privileged than we are.

At the final ANSTO Staff Forum for the year, we broke into teams that embraced gender and organisational diversity and set about a number of challenges culminating in giving back to our community.

At ANSTO’s Lucas Heights Campus, we built seventy trikes that were donated to the Sutherland Shire Family Services, an organisation which supports domestic violence-affected families and children. My ANSTO colleagues in Melbourne at the Australian Synchrotron assembled 15 mega Santa sacks full of toys which were presented to the Pyjama Foundation for Childhood Literacy and Development.

The point I am trying to make is the importance to remember that the real joy is giving and to never feel entitled when it comes to receiving. This holds true all year round and is equally applicable to giving opportunities to those who are less-privileged as it is to giving presents at Christmas.

Merry Christmas.