For most of my life, I have practiced volunteerism. When I was young my parents directed me to shovel the driveway of the elderly neighbor. They told me I wasn’t to accept any money. They told me that the neighbors couldn’t shovel the driveway and didn’t have anyone to help them. I ended up shoveling their driveway, the neighbor called me to the door, thanked me, and was prepared to give me a $20 bill. It took everything I had to tell her no, I wanted the money. I did say no even when she insisted. And this would build volunteerism into my life.
So important, thank you for writing this. It's something I think about a lot that people really don't write about enough! I manage my town's food bank and at 50 I am the youngest volunteer by at least 15 years. Honestly its not too hard for me to find volunteers, but it IS hard to find ones who can lift heavy boxes and run up and down the stairs. But of course the hours (a weekday mid morning) don't allow many younger people the opportunity to help if they did want to.
I think a lot about David Brooks' concept of the Second Mountain and it gives me hope that senior volunteerism is less about the generation, per se, than the age or phase of life. In other words, volunteers are largely older people who are no longer climbing the ladder or have gotten to the end of their careers or even just to the point in their lives that being of service to a community has become a higher priority. It's possible that even though younger people now may not volunteer as much as previous generations did at their age, they're still going to get more involved as they get older and reach more personal milestones and medical events that change their priorities.
All that said, yes we do need to get more people to engage with their communities in this way for all the reasons you mention. I don't know the best solution but I'm always trying to get my friends pumped up to help out at the food drives and whatnot (probably to their great annoyance) in the hopes that the fire will be lit in them as well, and they'll in turn motivate others in their lives to get involved too. I've also found that a lot of people who want to volunteer and aren't online a ton don't even know what opportunities are out there that would work for them and how skill-building the work can be, so doing local (not just social) media campaigns about new opportunities has been fruitful.
Absolutely true that the covid paranoia changed the timbre of volunteering. People tended to retreat--under the strong propaganda of the State--into a cocoon of (false) safety. In a puzzling development, acts that should have been "just about you," like wearing a mask, became symbols of "helping others," when they were nothing of the sort. In the aftermath, we are stuck with the remnants of this fear-based focus, and the damage done to communal practices, of which volunteering is one. As an aside, I coordinated volunteers for one of the oldest road races in my area for 16 years. The last few years, I had key volunteers drop out, ostensibly for their safety amid covid fears. Finding replacements, even in a community chock-full of runners, proved difficult. Here's hoping the programs of which you speak, all much more important than a running event, return to their pre-covid levels of participation.
Thanks for the comment and you're correct that COVID made alot of long time volunteers retire completely. Don't discount the impact your group has in your community and to each other. It's important and I hope you are able to find the people you need!
Thank you so much for publishing my opinion piece!
So important, thank you for writing this. It's something I think about a lot that people really don't write about enough! I manage my town's food bank and at 50 I am the youngest volunteer by at least 15 years. Honestly its not too hard for me to find volunteers, but it IS hard to find ones who can lift heavy boxes and run up and down the stairs. But of course the hours (a weekday mid morning) don't allow many younger people the opportunity to help if they did want to.
I think a lot about David Brooks' concept of the Second Mountain and it gives me hope that senior volunteerism is less about the generation, per se, than the age or phase of life. In other words, volunteers are largely older people who are no longer climbing the ladder or have gotten to the end of their careers or even just to the point in their lives that being of service to a community has become a higher priority. It's possible that even though younger people now may not volunteer as much as previous generations did at their age, they're still going to get more involved as they get older and reach more personal milestones and medical events that change their priorities.
All that said, yes we do need to get more people to engage with their communities in this way for all the reasons you mention. I don't know the best solution but I'm always trying to get my friends pumped up to help out at the food drives and whatnot (probably to their great annoyance) in the hopes that the fire will be lit in them as well, and they'll in turn motivate others in their lives to get involved too. I've also found that a lot of people who want to volunteer and aren't online a ton don't even know what opportunities are out there that would work for them and how skill-building the work can be, so doing local (not just social) media campaigns about new opportunities has been fruitful.
Absolutely true that the covid paranoia changed the timbre of volunteering. People tended to retreat--under the strong propaganda of the State--into a cocoon of (false) safety. In a puzzling development, acts that should have been "just about you," like wearing a mask, became symbols of "helping others," when they were nothing of the sort. In the aftermath, we are stuck with the remnants of this fear-based focus, and the damage done to communal practices, of which volunteering is one. As an aside, I coordinated volunteers for one of the oldest road races in my area for 16 years. The last few years, I had key volunteers drop out, ostensibly for their safety amid covid fears. Finding replacements, even in a community chock-full of runners, proved difficult. Here's hoping the programs of which you speak, all much more important than a running event, return to their pre-covid levels of participation.
Thanks for the comment and you're correct that COVID made alot of long time volunteers retire completely. Don't discount the impact your group has in your community and to each other. It's important and I hope you are able to find the people you need!