Honoring Our Volunteers

“I volunteer…” Many of us, who love our communities, work on committees, and seek a better world, know the power and burden of those two words.  “I do this task freely and without compensation. I front-burner an activity from which I derive no personal benefit, but helps my neighbor.”

Americans do a LOT of volunteering.  AmeriCorps (a federal agency) tracks the stats and found that nearly a third of the nation, a record 77 million citizens donated their time and talent to civic, charitable, and community initiatives in 2019.  Those efforts translated into 6.9 billion hours of work, and an estimated 167 billion dollars in economic value.  And that was just hands-on physical service.  It turns out that more than half of all Americans volunteer their money to charities. In other words, they donate.

Still, who knew that volunteers had a national month?  Recognized by the US Congress in 1990, April is National Volunteer Month.  The month has been set aside to honor those who give back and fortify the republic through their service.  Almost eighty million strong, the nation’s volunteers are now working as firefighters in many rural communities, staffing food pantries and soup kitchens, working in women’s shelters, spearheading litter clean-ups, delivering meals-on-wheels, transporting seniors, assisting veterans, tutoring children in schools, steering non-profit organizations, welcoming newborns, and literally giving of their own blood at Red Cross blood drives. 

As early as the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville flagged the spirit of “voluntarism” as a unique byproduct of the America's democratic society.  A democratic republic, he explained, a polity in which the people rule, is undergirded by the understanding that its citizens, as equals, shared a common enterprise.  “We’re all in this together.  It’s on us.” in  contemporary parlance.  Historically, American volunteers organized elections, built hospitals, prisons, schools, churches, libraries and much more. 
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In contemporary life the tradition continues.  Municipal, state, and federal governments support much infrastructure, but organized volunteer community service and philanthropic giving thrives.  Today the number of non-profit organizations registered in the United States exceeds the number of citizens in Trinidad and Tobago. (The number is 1.6 million.) The themes of “getting involved” and “giving back” resound nationwide. 

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This April’s volunteer focus complements ourCore Virtues themes for the month:  humility, graciousness and courtesy, and even forgiveness.  Pastor Rick Warren once described the virtue of humility as “not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.  Humility is thinking more of others.” That’s what voluntarism is all about.  Most of us have an innate understanding that “no man is an island” and we are part of something larger than ourselves. We have a choice to be part of that and to serve others.

One of the most poignant volunteer initiatives underway, “Children of Vietnam,” dovetails with themes of forgiveness and humility. Through this organization many veterans of the Vietnam War (and others) have returned to Vietnam to assist their former enemy -- needy families in the Central Highlands who now benefit from their initiatives building kindergartens, giving food assistance, and providing medical help for kids.  Some work with children suffering from the effects of chemical Agent Orange, which was dropped during the war to despoil the jungle.  "I have the feeling that we need to restore some things," said Captain Larry Vetter, who served in the war.  "The United States government refuses to do that, so I'm here to do my part." They stay for weeks or months and some for years.  It is not just a path of service but one of healing for many, bringing closure to a time when the two peoples were enemies, and lending credence to the old adage that “in giving, we receive.”

​So this month, we salute the millions of volunteers nationwide and worldwide who do more than just your part.  Three cheers for the volunteers.
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Mary Beth Klee

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