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Volume I, Issue 4, July 2001

Pathways to Change: Linking Service to Sustainable Change


Feature Articles
By Michael McCabe

With volunteering by youth at an all-time high in the United States, it is important to examine the continuum of civic action to ensure that we are creating pathways that allow more volunteers to facilitate more sustainable community change.  We must recognize that each level of participation plays a valuable role in meeting needs in our society and that volunteers may be involved in multiple points along the continuum at the same time.  However, the hectic pace of life, lack of infrastructure to more fully engage volunteers and a skepticism of policy-making in the US and worldwide result in the vast majority of volunteers being involved only sporadically.  If we do not focus our energies on providing infrastructure support, training and networks to facilitate the involvement of the 90 million volunteers in other parts of the continuum of civic action, we risk resigning ourselves to clean the same dirty rivers and tutor in the same underfunded schools year after year.

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Comments

Lisa Coble, Newport Hospital, Manager of Volunteer Services, Newport RI USA

July 23rd, 2001, 4:47pm

Lots of good points and food for thought in your article. One comment I am so tired of hearing.....we (meaning managers of volunteer programs) should become more flexible and creative to create opportunities that will meet the schedules of all the overextended people who wish to serve. How about they change their schedules to meet our needs? How about getting people back into the mind frame of how can I help you versus what can you do for me?

We are in a society where the smorgasbord of choice is diluting the quality of experiences we have. How about telling a teen to pick two hobbies to get good at instead of 4 or 5? How about reinforcing the value of slowing down and making a 3 hour per week commitment to a nonprofit for at least one year?

The individual gains immensely by truly learning about the organization, and learning about the sense of accomplishment gained by serving others....not themselves.