Saturday, May 10, 1997

Voluntarism -- Can it reach 2 million children?

By Mike McManus

The President's Summit on Voluntarism set an ambitious goal to enlist 2 million new adults to donate time to reach out and give "children at risk" access to an ongoing relationship with a caring adult or mentor.

Is that an achievable goal?

America's commitment to voluntarism already seems large. A survey by the "Independent Sector" reports that 93 million U.S. adults are volunteering time - 49 percent of the nation, who gave a remarkable 20.3 billion hours of time, 218 per person.

However, those numbers are spongy.

"U.S. News" reports that 4.6 billion of those hours are informal volunteering, such as baking cookies for a school fair. A huge hunk of volunteering is little more than singing in the church choir. Only a tenth ofchurch volunteering serves people outside the church.

Only 4 percent of 93 million volunteers are tutors and a tiny 1.2 percent are mentors. That is a million volunteers. But if two million more are to serve kids at risk, it will require a 200 percent growth in four years.

Yet I think it is possible, judging by initial pledges. The Greek Orthodox Church in America has pledged to assist one needy child for every ten families in more than 550 of its churches nationwide.

Father Alex Karloutsos said, "It is hard to make a commitment to do one on one. But if we get 10 families to help a child financially, emotionally, educationally, it is doable."

In Tucson, Arizona a Volunteer Center pledged to connect every youth in need to an adult who can serve as a positive role model -giving youth hope, pushing them to be independent. The partners cooperating are city and county police, businesses, colleges and non-profits. The initial goal: 2,000 kids by the year 2000.

Shell Oil Company has promised to double the number of its employees who serve as community volunteers from 2,600 to 5,200 out of 19,000 employees. That may sound ambitious, but in 1975 there were only 100 employees doing volunteer work. Today, there are 1,200 just in Shell's Houston's headquarters.

Workers are allowed to take off from paid employment time to do volunteering, such as working in one of seven adopted public schools. Last Saturday, a group repaired a home for an elderly woman and built a wheelchair ramp. All 20 Shell service stations collect clothing for poor kids, which will be sorted by volunteers and donated to 21 agencies who will distribute it.

Why does Shell take this step?

"USA Today" quotes Philip Carroll, President and CEO: "From a businessman's perspective, today we recognize that if something is not done about the social problems, about the difficulties with youth, we've got a serious problem in the long range. It's not altruism or anything else.

"It's a simple, practical matter that something is fundamentally wrong with the country. So how do we address that? We've tried now for 25 or 30 years to have government as the focus ... Fundamental change happens one person at a time."

If many more people begin helping, "we can make tremendous progress."

Big Brothers/Big Sisters now has 105,000 volunteers, and hopes to double that number in four years.

I'm proud to note that one of them is my son, Tim McManus, 25, who picks up "Junior" once a week on Tuesday after work in York, Penn. They might go to the pet store together, plant a garden, ride mountain bikes, or visit a miniature horse farm.

One day they drove to Gettysburg where they talked about what the Civil War was about while walking at battle sites.

In the evening, Tim fixes Junior dinner and they read together, taking turns. The boy may read "Curious George" while Tim reads from "The Three Investigators."

What's been the impact?

The boy, aged 7, was "extremely quiet, withdrawn from me" at the outset, Tim says. Now he is a lot more open. To Tim's surprise, it is a lot more rewarding than expected.

"I get more out it than he does. It enables me to see the world through a kid's eyes who has not seen anything. It has given me a fresh perspective to see what it is to be an inner city kid in our white culture."

There are 30,000 children on Big Brother/Sister waiting lists. In York alone, as a result of the Voluntarism Summit, the number of calls from potential volunteers jumped from three per week to 15.