The Forgotten Virtue of Valuntarism

...He was asking each of us to inquire as to what we could do in our own communities to improve the quality of life...

...in the growth of barriers between different races and classes...

...Tiernan, who was anything but sullen, clearly has found her calling...

...Perhaps in the distant future public employees will find themselves fighting with volunteers for scraps of work...

...Start with the instinctive opposition of public employees and their unions to voluntarism...

...In such cases, there may be no loss to the public in the services it receives, though of course the public employee loses a job...

...A people cannot work together for the good of the state if they are not on speaking terms...

...When I asked why, the official charged with sending in nominations replied, “I don’t want to give Ronald Reagan the satisfaction of being right...

...So if Reagan is an amiable hypocrite about voluntarism, his liberal critics have not proved themselves much better...

...It’s absolutely essential...

...That each of us bears some personal responsibility to care for society’s weakest members and serve our communities is a fundamental tenet, not only of our civic tradition but of our Judeo-Christian heritage...

...It’s quite another when someone who’s donating his or her time as a tutor makes the same case...

...Kip made me-as she does all the women who stay there-feel welcome...

...Each day my friend returned home utterly exhausted, and often humbled...

...Dozens of men and women crowded together on couches or folding chairs in a dimly lit room that smelled of urine, dirty bodies, and ammonia...

...I don’t like the long faces that some people put on when they come to help the poor...

...The Great Depression graphically demonstrated that the government must bear ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the basic needs of America’s citizens are met...

...Reversing these trends is much easier said than done, for the struggle is over nothing less than the nation’s soul...

...But her name was not submitted...

...As for those volunteers pledging to commit themselves full-time for several years (as with the Peace Corps) or parttime over the course of their lives, they are worth a substantial investment in training...

...It is a responsibility that cannot be discharged simply by contributing to impersonal bureaucracies, either through taxes or giving to the United Way...

...Hunt adds, “Money is no substitute for getting involved with your hands and your heart?’ But most important, voluntarism offers hope...

...Indeed, for those who truly care about a just and compassionate society, voluntarism isn’t just a good idea...

...Of course, volunteers must be used effectively by being placed in jobs they already know or which can be easily taught...

...Many of my friends don’t volunteer, and they have no shortage of explanations...

...The attitude many liberals have about voluntarism perhaps is best illustrated by what happened this year when the federal government asked the state of Massachusetts to submit nominations for an outstanding volunteer award...

...Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in the late 19th century for the poor immigrants of North Chicago, deliberately recruited upper-class, college-educated women as volunteers to give their lives more purpose by exposing them to the plight of those from a different class...

...But Betsy Bloomingdale serving meals on wheels...

...After a little boy greeted us at the door, his mother quickly came, thanked us, took the packages-and then we left...

...In 1948 there were 3.22 police officers for every violent crime reported in America, while today the ratio is 0.5 to 1. As a result, criminals often commit dozens of offenses before they’re caught-if they’re caught at all...

...Residents triple-bolt their doors and stay inside in mortal fear of crime...

...Everyone does, ” she says...

...If you’re a mother of three who’s struggling to get by, it’s one thing when a paid teacher on summer break comes to your door and argues for more money for the schools...

...The trees died within five weeks of our departure...

...Good questions, but ones that could also easily be enlisted to rationalize not making further trips into the ghetto...

...We learned to be suspicious of all simple and easy solutions, especially if they were proposed by people who lacked first-hand experience...

...in the afternoon we made adobe bricks, stomping around in a pit of mud and horse manure up to our knees and then squishing the mixture through our fingers to achieve the right consistency...

...The wooden tables were clean and polished, and there was fresh coffee and just-baked chocolate chip cookies...

...Still, something was clearly missing, and what that was-love and an appreciation of people’s unique qualities-became clear when I spent an afternoon at Rosie’s Place, a shelter for homeless women in Boston run by Kip Tiernan...

...All of these people enjoyed the “basics of life’Lfood, shelter, even “professional” help...

...She adds, “Voluntary organizations will be the only way to promise the services essential to further social change and the living of equality, now that it appears we will have to rely less and less on government agencies and the courts...

...Writing a check to charity once a year or simply paying one‘s tax bill is viewed as comparable-if not superior tospending an evening a month in a soup kitchen...

...In recent years politicians, journalists, and others have offered disturbing evidence of the fragmentation of American life: (continued on page 48) (continued from page 19) in the increasing obsession with self...

...the legislator wondered...

...The call not only bore fruit in such programs as the Peace Corps, but added purpose to those who earned their living working for the government, reinforcing their belief that what they did was worthwhile and important...

...When I asked another friend about voluntarism, she quickly replied, “I think it’s terrible...

...while his administration assumed responsibility for providing jobs for ten million unemployed, it largely left other needs-a place to stay for the night if your landlord evicted you, a hot meal if you just arrived in town looking for work-to volunteers and private charities...

...Yet start lookipg around today for the people celebrating the notion, and a rude shock awaits: they all seem to be Republicans...

...his wife regularly serves meals on wheels...

...But that’s all the more reason public employees should not fear volunteers, but welcome them with open arms...

...FOOLISH PRIDE Voluntarism, like all noble ideas, attracts its portion of the smug and hypocritical...

...The unraveling of the common threads in American life threatens us economically as well as spiritually...

...Education, health care, and helping the elderly are just a few areas where volunteers are needed...

...I want to get paid for what I do...

...Herbert Hoover, who epitomized the Progressive era’s enthusiasm for voluntarism, is credited with saving nearly ten million lives through the food lift to Russia that he organized as a private citizen shortly after the bolshevik revolution...

...I’ve seen the de-institutionalized mental patients who camp out in Lafayette Park, within easy view of the White House...

...I smiled and shook hands and tried to talk with about a hundred people, but only five returned my greeting...

...A community in dire financial straits might have no other choice...

...For in the rejuvenation of voluntarism is proof that our best hope lies in something as simple as venturing forth from the comfort and familiarity of our own homes-and discovering who our neighbors really are...

...This is doubly tragic because the unthinking pursuit of money and respectability-until recently, largely a male obsession-has sapped the nation’s strength...

...During the summer of 1968 I spent several months on a Navajo Indian reservation...

...Still, it is too easy to discount this kind of summer...

...in the disintegration of such community institutions as the church and the public schools...

...He has tried to abolish VISTA, the federal government’s domestic volunteer program, and he has let the Peace Corps languish...

...I still recall the vaguely embarrassed feeling I had as I descended the stairs...

...For when John Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, ” he wasn’t calling for increased taxes to fund social programs...

...Some feminists have already reached this conclusion...

...Government has grown accordingly...

...They were right...

...THE VOLUNTARY MYSTIQUE The staggering job ahead makes the reluctance of liberals to embrace voluntarism all the more dismaying, and the necessity of overcoming these obstacles all the more important...

...And they look even flimsier when you consider how desperately the nation needs a rebirth of the volunteer spirit...

...Or survey a typical scene in any large American city...

...One of the biggest is the liberals’ instinctive support for the 14 million people who work for state, local, and federal governments, six million of whom belong to public employee unions...

...Roosevelt himself understood the limits of government action...

...they have clearly failed...

...The entire exchange took less than five minutes...

...a local decorator had donated bolts of curtain material, and the walls, though bulging with age, were fashionably decorated with lightblue and white printed flowers...

...A second explanation stems from the women’s movement...

...No federal office has been set up to help recruit and train the hordes of enthusiastic citizens supposedly ready to enlist in Reagan’s private version of the War on Poverty, though the administration has produced a glossy brochure filled with quotes extolling voluntarism...

...Not the conservatives...

...And as I left, I worried that the Indians felt that once again an Anglo had come and gone at her convenience, lacking the patience and the dedication that these difficult issues required...

...I want people to value it...

...This preference had its origins in the late 19th century with the “professionalization” of such jobs as being a lawyer, doctor, and civil servant...

...Reagan’s version of voluntarism does not go beyond merely trying to rearrange the existing relationship between citizens and their government...

...The stereotypes are familiar: Lady Bountiful, beaming with self-righteousness, dishing out thin soup and a little religion to the down and out...

...In the field of social services, the phenomenon blossomed during the War on Poverty, when the term “caring professional” became popular...

...We are getting to know everyone, and helping out where we can...

...That was vividly brought home to me this summer during two separate visits...

...They are either out making money, or if I do find someone willing to help she wants to get paid as a consultant...

...Yet I realized that their doing so might mean continued poverty for many and rates of tuberculosis, infant mortality, and teenage suicide far above the national averages...

...Reagan’s rhetoric about voluntarism promised leadership...

...As a solo legal practitioner, she takes on many pro bono cases...

...See “Why I Walk the Beat:’ page 52...

...Reagan’s failure gives those of us who oppose his policies an opportunity to reclaim the cause of voluntarism...

...Several years ago in North Carolina, for example, teachers and their unions strongly resisted an effort to recruit volunteer tutors, fearful that they would displace full-time employees...

...Government only funds fashionable projects...

...The streets and city parks are Littered with trash and broken glass...

...Indeed, the liberal suspicion of voluntarism is neither preordained nor even logical...

...Reagan has called voluntarism “an essential part of our plan to return government to the people...

...Were our motives for volunteering pure, or were we just trying to soothe our guilty consciences...

...Why don’t you move in with them...

...Even some conservatives are embarrassed by Reagan’s paltry efforts...

...Members of a labor union in California donate their time to perform repair work in seniors’ homes...

...A REBIRTH OF COMMUNITY The final obstacle to overcome is far and away the most important...

...in 1960, for example, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had 59,000 employees...

...Volunteers are also voters, and as more of them flock to the schools, the nursing homes, the libraries, and the neighborhoods of their communities, they’ll see for themselves just where more services are needed...

...Yet another sign is what volunteers are doing across the country, and not just in those small towns where voluntarism has always been a strong tradition...

...Finally, many a would-be volunteer is thwarted by a foolish pride that passes for heightened sensibilities...

...More than 23 million adults are in the same predicament, but John McKallip, director of field services for Literacy Volunteers of America, estimates that his organization and all others reach less than 1 percent of them...

...Get off the highway that skirts the ghetto, venture into an institution for the retarded or mentally ill, visit an Indian reservation-it won’t take long to see how much work remains to ensure a decent life for all Americans...

...Closely tied to the bias for professionals is the liberals’ belief that it is always better to help the needy through government programs than through what is disparagingly called “charity...

...This attitude lay behind NOW’S resolution against voluntarism...

...One out of six high school graduates-almost half a million a year-is functionally illiterate...

...How great is the need for volunteers...

...It’s better to rely on experts so it’s done right, ” one friend matter-of-factly explained when I asked about volunteering...

...Unfortunately, in their distaste for these stereotypes and Reagan himself, many liberals have dismissed the virtues of America’s longstanding tradition of voluntarism...

...Overwhelmed at the prospect of overcoming this disintegration, many people feel paralyzed, unsure of where to start and what to do...

...That needn’t be the case...

...perhaps more important, it means that men should volunteer much more...

...There might be some justice in that if Reagan and his friends really meant what they said...

...the wealthy matron caricatured by Thomas Wolfe who holds an opulent ball to “provide jobs for the unemployed...

...Such giving is more than a duty of the heart, but a way people help themselves by satisfying the deeper spiritual needs that represent the best in all of us...

...Little wonder that the president’s critics see his call for voluntarism as a smokescreen to justify devastating budget cuts that, combined with the recession, have made the plight of the poor more desperate that at any time in recent memory...

...the professional charity bureaucrat who works out of a plush, mahogonywalled office and exemplifies what Dickens once called “telescopic phi1anthropy’’a concern for the poor that increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from them...

...But after the Great Crash, Hoover’s exhortations to businessmen to voluntarily keep their employees on the payroll, and his pleas for more volunteers to assist the poor, proved tragically inadequate...

...Had we made the mother feel inadequate because she had not provided for her children...

...This tradition continues in many places today...

...If they and Reagan’s other wealthy friends have taken the president’s call to heart, I’ve somehow missed it...

...And in New York City, the Transport Workers Union recently ordered a group of neighbors to cease and desist in their efforts to scrub down a filthy subway station...

...This not only means that women should continue to volunteer...

...Some tasks are obvious, such as visiting the elderly in nursing homes and helping provide medical care in their own homes...

...In Massachusetts, for example, two-thirds of the shelter beds for the homeless are provided by private groups and staffed largely by volunteers, and Governor Michael Dukakis has been a leader in encouraging this tradition to continue...

...And in the evenings, a group of Princeton students (who also belonged to the SDS) tried to induce their Indian students to take up the cause of Red Power and draft a constitution...

...Tutors can also help adults...

...Indeed, at a time when Americans probably enjoy more leisure than ever before, the charitable impulse increasingly has been channeled into substituting money for time...

...Tiernan illustrates another virtue of voluntarism liberals often overlook: that what is received often is as valuable as what is given...

...An obvious choice from the Governor’s Office on Human Resources was a woman who had spent almost all her time working on behalf of the homeless...

...Even more important, liberals must stop viewing government as the caretaker of first resort...

...Spending an hour or two a week to tutor a small child, giving an evening a month to work in a homeless shelter, teaching a retarded child to broad jump for the Special Olympics-what better way for individuals to fight back against the selfishness that now characterizes our society...

...I can hardly get anyone to help me now, ” she complains...

...Schools of social work flourished...

...Whenever possible, men and women should try to do what satisfies them most...

...Local taxpayers might decide to save money by volunteering to perform government services, thus displacing paid professionals...

...See “How the SATs are Ruining the GNP” by Nicholas Lemann, December 1981...

...But public employees, and the rest of us, should appreciate the immensity of the work that needs to be done...

...And who can lead such a revival of voluntarism, one that recognizes the important role both government and private citizens can play...

...if the union didn’t do the work, the citizens were told, it couldn’t be done at all...

...Many are predicting the imminent bankruptcy of Medicare, as the nation’s health care bill will rise from $332 billion to more than $800 billion within the decade if current trends continue...

...as the [feminists’] seeming repudiation of family...

...GROCERIES ON WHEELS These really aren’t reasons for not volunteering-they’re excuses...

...Tensions between paid professionals and volunteers will always exist...

...There wasn’t a day when I didn’t wonder if I could do it,” she told me...

...We also planted pistachio trees...

...Modern industry, though lowering an unemployment rate as high as 50 percent, would threaten to destroy the culture...

...poor people want to have fun too...

...Betty Friedan, in her 1981 book entitled The Second Stage, calls for a “new passionate voluntarism” that will revive a “uniquely American strength and female tradition!’ According to Friedan, who founded the National Organization of Women, the “polarization between feminism and voluntarism” exemplified by NOW’S 1971 resolution “was as false...

...she now is one of the department’s most outspoken enthusiasts...

...in 1980 it had two-and-ahalf times that number...

...Indeed, though the circumstances clearly call for a mass mobilization of volunteers to meet those needs, so far Reagan’s critics have been dismayingly silent...

...The liberals’ failure to embrace voluntarism can also be explained by their preference for professionals with academic credentials...

...Had the president not cut a penny from the federal budget, the needs of the nation’s disadvantaged would still be unmet...

...Another explanation is hardly unique to liberals: selfishness...

...With professionalization came the attitude that it was better to have a paid employee who “knew what he was doing” than several well-meaning, but uncredentialed, volunteers...

...It’s great, because I get to do what I want to do, ” she says...

...Those responsible for public safety are also overwhelmed...

...The real threat to public employees’ livelihoods is not volunteers but lost tax revenues...

...the services they donated to the state government alone were worth more than $300 million...

...Though an aide told me they had just completed a summer celebration, there wasn’t a trace of gaiety in the place...

...In stark contrast to Reagan, he has established a special office for volunteers and given it the necessary funds to recruit and train people...

...Tiernan neither solicits nor accepts government money...

...it didn’t even rate a mention in the Democratic party platform...

...But as she learned to dance in a circle, jump on a trampoline, and use a crayon, we became a team...

...In one corner a black-and-white TV flickered...

...When I ask my friend how many people in her town volunteer, she looks surprised...

...People should enjoy what they do...

...I’m too busy with my job or my family...

...It amazed me...

...you can’t rely on them, ” she says...

...A legislator asked where her two other children were and was told they were living with their grandmother...

...And money is the only way anybody will think it’s important...

...Hunt, a Democrat, volunteers every Monday in a public school as a math tutor...

...People with problems became cases...

...When I returned home later that summer, I was stymied as to what could be done...

...Perhaps the most ambitious effort is occuring in North Carolina under the leadership of Governor Jim Hunt...

...Volunteering is thus viewed as exploitive, something no self-respecting modern woman should stoop to...

...So we can expect wariness on the part of the public employees to any large infusion of new volunteers in government...

...Literacy Volunteers of America, for example, has 12,000 volunteers helping 17,000 functionally illiterate men and women who cannot read or write above a sixth-grade level...

...Mothers who taught kindergarten were replaced by college graduates with degrees in child psychology...

...The adobe block structure still stands...

...There’s plenty of other work as well, from cleaning parks and subway stations to working in libraries, homeless shelters, and half-way houses...

...The longstanding exclusion of women from all but a few professions was wrong and self-defeating for all of us...

...As for the opposition of many women to voluntarism, it’s critical to separate our praiseworthy quest for equality from the mimicking of the worst attributes of men...

...the aides stood off in a corridor, talking among themselves...

...And at Rosie’s Place, they also seem to have some dignity...

...There are many reasons for that silence...

...At levy elections, volunteers can sometimes be responsible for saving the jobs of public employees...

...The first was to a boarding home for the elderly poor in DorChester, Massachusetts, which received most of its money from the government...

...How volunteers can transform this bleak picture is limited only by the imagination...

...in Washington, D.C., recently, 1,200 volunteers participated in an intensive campaign to help several thousand students in the public schools meet stiffer promotion standards after they’d initially failed them...

...We are a community, ” her husband adds...

...Volunteers can tutor children victimized by bad schools and incompetent teachers...

...I’m reminded of another friend who went into Harlem prepared to commiserate with the residents about the need for more food stamps and better health care, and instead heard mostly complaints about crime and the need for safer streets...

...Such a society would be free of the conservatives’ instinctive desire to ignore and wish away deprivation, and the liberals’ tendency to avoid personal responsibility for it...

...continued on page 50) Betty Friedan has called for a “new passionate voluntarism” that will “transcend our single-issue, specialinterest po litics, including the politics of fmin ists themselves...

...It also shows in the many women who believe they can find fulfillment and earn the respect of others only by having a well-paying job-even if they don’t enjoy the work and their family doesn’t need the money...

...no one watered them...

...About the only employees who won’t benefit from the scrutiny of volunteers will be those who prefer to keep their light workloads and long lunch breaks hidden from public view...

...Her husband is a volunteer fireman, her father-in-law an active member of the grange...

...This virtue of voluntarism-putting those from one world in direct contact with those from a completely different one-is one that was well understood by reformers of a different era...

...Even “Red Power” and a constitution was in a sense alien to a people who were accustomed to settling disputes in night-long conversations...

...Ronald Reagan’s ringing endorsement of voluntarism may be exactly right, but his pronouncements about voluntarism carry with them little recognition of the vast, unmet needs of society or a call for Americans to band together to tackle the staggering problems that remain...

...Were they resentful of our good fortune...

...The president has slashed projected spending for domestic programs by more than $100 billion, with the cuts falling twice as heavily on the poor as on the rest of us...

...There are also many not-so-obvious jobs for volunteers...

...For the foreseeable future, however, there’s room for all the paid employees we can possibly afford as well as all the volunteers we can get...

...what he has delivered so far is anything but that...

...She lives with us in the car, ” the mother replied...

...The bricks were intended for a science center, while the pistachio trees were part of an experiment to determine whether an industry that had proved successful on Israeli kibbutzim would work on the reservation...

...Richard Cornuelle, former executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, has caustically observed that the President’s Task Force on Voluntary Initiatives has done little more than compile a data bank on successful volunteer effortsA‘at least the sixth such data bank...

...A grandfather teaches drama in a school where a group of parents has undertaken a drive to increase the number and quality of books...

...Tiernan stands about 5 feet, 3 inches, and the day I spoke with her she wore a man’s cap over her short, grey hair, a cross around her neck, and baggy khaki pants...

...An older friend of mine who has volunteered all her life has noticed the change in women’s attitudes...

...People ask the United Way or the government to do their caring for them, freeing them to do whatever they want-like watching TV or taking a long vacation in Nassau...

...An endorsement of voluntarism was a plank of the 1980 Republican party platform...

...And as taxes have steadily risen, more and more citizens have felt they’ve done their charitable duty just by paying for larger government programs...

...Yet here lies the real virtue in the revival of voluntarism...

...The public schools are often so bad its graduates might just as well apply immediately for unemployment...

...Though Reagan and his fellow conservatives would not oppose outright a vast mobilization of volunteers, his administration’s dismantling of programs for the needy and its silence on the larger problems facing the nation speak volumes about its true purpose...

...One sign lies in Friedan’s cal1,for a revival of voluntarism for the express purpose of “transcending our singleissue, special-iyterest politics, including the politics of feminists themselves...

...And I remember a legislative hearing I recently attended in which a mother appeared with one of her three children and described how they’d been living all that year in a car...

...The home was bright and cheery...

...I remember when I was 12 years old walking up three flights of narrow, poorly lit stairs in a Washington tenement to help deliver a Christmas turkey, stuffing, vegetables, and a bag of toys...

...Jerry Zipkin emptying bed pans...

...Hunt believes that meeting his party’s traditional obligations to needy citizens, and overcoming the deep divisions that now exist in our society, will require “a new kind of thinking among Democrats” in which “voluntarism is the key...

...My job-be it as a lawyer, journalist, or government employee-already helps the needy...

...Many feminists believe that women should measure their quest for equality by a familiar standard-how much money they earn...

...Budget cuts have made the plight of the homeless worse, she says, but her experience with the indifference of government officials has also made her wary of their cures...

...The needs of our growing elderly population offer perhaps the most opportunities for volunteers...

...It was a frustrating experience...

...And by the end, I knew that the experience had been as special for me as it had been for her...

...A group of women in town regularly visit the elderly who still live at home...

...As the head of the state’s volunteer office in Florida puts it, “There’s never a program in which volunteers aren’t seen as a threat by public employees...

...Volunteers can patrol neighborhoods to help regular police officers prevent crime, as 8,000 of them are doing in New York City...

...Perhaps the most striking thing about Kip Tiernan was the contrast she provided to the aides I’d met at the other home...

...Liberals must also recognize a related fact: that sometimes it’s better to help the needy through volunteers than through government agencies...

...I’m also reminded of a friend who volunteered as a counselor in a camp for the mentally retarded who had been assigned a little girl who constantly hit her and whose vocabulary was limited to “shut up” and “go away...

...Better to rely on the commitment of friends and concerned citizens, she believes, and it is they who keep Rosie’s Place going...

...Fortunately, there are signs of a reawakening awareness of voluntarism’s potential to lead us beyond the politics of selfishness...

...For many liberals, this was the lesson of the New Deal, and the belief in the superior compassion of government has fueled the steady increase in publicly funded programs...

...I’m intimately familiar with these excuses-at some time I, too, have used every one of them...

...And whether it’s helping in a soup kitchen, cleaning up a park, or visiting a nursing home, it’s an act that affirms the larger ties that bind us...

...The constitution was never written...

...lots of them became case loads...

...Last year over 70 percent of its adults volunteered...

...While all the recent rhetoric about the virtues of voluntarism is welcome, the performance of the Reagan gang is truly cause for cynicism...

...Consider this: a crash program to teach just half the nation’s illiterate adults to read and write could occupy four million volunteers for each of the next five years...

...I do my part for the poor by opposing tax cuts...

...Yet many women’s search for equal opportunity has led them to denigrate such traditional pursuits as family and volunteering...

...The elderly pass their days in solitude, alone in their houses and apartments or surrounded by indifference in nursing homes...

...Many of the Indians wanted to retain their own traditions...

...The National Organization of Women recently was on record in opposition to volunteering by women in such fields as health care and social work because it was “exploitive ” and reinforced traditional sex roles...

...More men than women volunteered, and the vast majority of those who gave of their time had full-time jobs...

...THE SUNDERED SOCIETY The bias towards professionals must also be overcome...

...However, many modern liberals are no less wrong than Hoover in the lesson they’ve drawn from the New Deal: that government should always deliver basic services...

...A Charleston, West Virginia, man recently formed a volunteer service to deliver groceries to seniors who find it difficult to leave their homes...

...And in one Massachusetts town, a woman who was highly critical of police response time was offered a volunteer job as a dispatcher...

...Liberals clearly have let the conservatives steal the cause of voluntarism for their own partisan purposes...

...Yet by the end of the summer, Caroline could say “love” and hugged my friend goodbye when she left...

...I gave to charity...

...Each of us who’d volunteered had a chance to meet a culture far different from our own, and to appreciate the complexities of the problems the Navajos faced...

...And rather than reject voluntarism, women should see its revival as an opportunity for leadership in areas in which they’ve long excelled-not just caring for family, but caring for others as well...

...While everyone bemoans the “politics of selfishness” and the growth of special-interest groups and political action committees, volunteering is something tangible that each of us can do immediately...

...As for health care, between now and the year 2000, the number of Americans over 65 will increase by one-third to 35 million...

...What I have seen are the long, snaking lines of men and women who wait outside Boston’s already overcrowded soup kitchens...

...It has forced many of our most talented people into vocations of little or no use for the rest of us, and fostered selfishness and narcissism...

...After all, it was a Democratic president who gave voluntarism perhaps its most memorable endorsement...

...That’s the way it should be, for voluntarism represents one of America’s best traditions...

...The essence of voluntarism is not giving part of a surplus one doesn’t need, but giving part of one‘s self...

...The staggering need for the services volunteers can provide is suggested by just a few statistics...

...Multiplied I by the millions, volunteering can become the catalyst for creating a society characterized by both compassion and community...

...In the social services, as in all walks of life, the standard for evaluation should be performance and not the possession of credentials...

...I know of...

...Kathleen Kennedy Townsend works for the Gcvernor’s Office on Human Resources for the state of Massachusetts...

...In the morning we tutored summer students in English...

...The job of nurse‘s aide-filled largely by volunteers before World War II-became a profession in its own right...

...In speaking to others, of course, what one hears is often different from what one expected...

...The volunteer tutors in North Carolina who were initially opposed by teachers are now among the school system’s greatest supporters...

...And Jacob Riis, whose 1890 book How the Other HalfLives chronicled the misery of the nation’s slums, called for a massive volunteer effort with this observation: “It is precisely in the sundering of our society into classes that have little in common, that are no longer neighbors, that our peril lies...