Birkenstocks, Flats, Favourite Sweater, Wallet

A few weeks ago, I realized that I left a few things at home: my birkenstocks, some flats, my favourite sweater, my secondary wallet where I keep all those extra cards I don't want to carry around all the time. I asked my mom to mail them to me last week, but she forgot before leaving on a business trip. So I FB messaged my little brother around 8pm Ontario time and asked him if he could find those things around the house and mail them to me (my dad's fairly forgetful so I felt like this would be the most reliable method). He's 15, so it's possible that this is the first time he's ever had to mail something at the post office. And I thought to myself, this is going to be so challenging:


1. He needs to find my belongings around the house
2. He needs to acquire some sort of box, and packing tape, and he needs to assemble it together
3. He needs to be able to record my address, and then put it on the box
4. He needs to know where the post office is
5. He needs transportation to the post office
6. He needs to be able to pay for the package

I figured that since the post office was probably already closed by the time I sent the message, it wouldn't be mailed until tomorrow at the earliest anyway. So I told him that it wasn't urgent, that it could wait until the weekend, and that he could call if he needed help. I checked my phone an hour later, and I got this message:

• mailed it already
• it was 26 dolars
• sweater on the bottom of box
• then berks
• flats on top
• wallet is with the sweater
• good?

And it totally blew my mind.

That he was able to do all of those things in less than an hour just blew my mind.

That's when I realized that I've started becoming a lot more attuned to the small barriers that can prove insurmountable to people in poverty.

It's common practice for me to hold onto completed applications because a client doesn't have the money to pay for registered mail to send it in. It's also common for clients to cancel appointments because they can't find a ride into town, even when their legal issue is approaching a deadline. It's often very frustrating for clients to write letters or affidavits due to low levels of literacy, so they can take days or week to finish. And people who struggle with literacy aren't inclined to keep documents sent from employers, landlords or the government because they're often too hard to read, so it takes a long time for us to find copies.

All that is to say that all of these little things compound to make even small legal issues seem insurmountable. It's actually pretty unremarkable that my brother figured out how to put something in the mail. But that's only because he had someone to drive him (my dad), enough expendable income that $26 didn't make him think twice, and literacy skills. Unfortunately, legal and administrative processes aren't designed for people without those kinds of resources. I called EI once because a client had a really hard time filling out an application because she couldn't remember what she earned each day. I was told to "ask her to look through her BlackBerry calendar to see which days were scheduled longer". Right. It's an example of how in practice, people in poverty often have even less access to justice than they do in theory.

Food for thought. Oh, and thanks Andy! You're awesome - I'll mail you something soon.

Sharon