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Volunteerism
The desire to serve something greater than oneself motivates men and women to join the Armed Forces. That desire can also be put to good use in our communities. Volunteering helps improve the places we call home. It is an act of good citizenship, but also a way to strengthen the bonds between neighbors and friends, and a good deed that leaves us feeling better about ourselves.
Unfortunately, interest in volunteering has declined in recent years. When I was in Glade Spring earlier this summer, a first responder asked if I could raise awareness of this issue. The decline is reflected in national studies as well as the comments I hear as I travel the Ninth District. Such a trend deprives a community of the best from its citizens. So, if you are not currently volunteering, consider giving a few hours each month to a worthwhile community organization.
There are many avenues one can choose to get involved, from public functions such as fire departments to educational endeavors such as parent-teacher associations to civic organizations such as Rotary Clubs. If you are not involved, I encourage you to find a volunteer opportunity that matches your talents and the community’s needs.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.
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From the writer known as Priscilla King:
"Volunteering" is an appropriate way to respond to special, one-time situations or to find out whether a person is fit to do a job. "Volunteering" has lost favor because too many organizations rely on it as an alternative to paying those who may actually be doing most of the work. Typically the organization collects money, the owner of the office building and the organization's "board members" receive money, a grant writer or accountant or attorney receives money if needed, and the people who are actually feeding the orphans or fighting the fires receive...a way to feel less guilt about living on inherited wealth, if lucky, and keeping people who need wages from being hired and paid.
Of course "volunteering" can also be a way some people show their unfitness for any job. In small towns that don't have a lot of emergencies, fire fighters and medical technicians are usually volunteers because there's no real reason to pay people for sitting around the station for months without being deployed in response to an emergency. So anyone can sign up as a volunteer. It looks good on a resume and, after a month or two without deployment, the "volunteer trainee" understandably starts thinking, "Well, I signed up as a volunteer ambulance driver, but there was no need to hang out at the Life Saving Crew for two whole weekends when nothing happened. I'm scheduled to go in again this weekend but, given this opportunity to spend the weekend at the beach...I think I'll quit."
How bad is that? Depends on the type of organization for which the person has "volunteered" service. A small-town emergency responder is supposed to pray for day after day of rehearsing as much as can be rehearsed without using up resources or wearing out supplies, then spending the rest of the shift playing board games; if you can't handle that, don't sign up. People who "volunteer" to drive or read for individual neighbors with disabilities are paying into an intangible "fund" of family or community love, and will be repaid in kind, or not, many years later; if they fail, they punish themselves. But people who "volunteer" to do office work at their own risk and expense for an organization with a six-figure budget are merely being stupid, and the case might be made that, when they quit without a day's advance notice, they're waking up.
One way to preserve the real moral goodness of volunteering, without letting a noble idea turn into a camouflage for moral rot on both sides, might be to limit the extent to which an organization can rely on volunteers. When volunteers are not meeting or training to meet life-and-death emergencies, they might be allowed to volunteer a total of one day a year and, after that, have to be treated as employees or at least trainees, paid at least half of the minimum hourly wage.
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