Herald Editorial:Where are all the student volunteers?

Volunteerism is alive and well among youth, according to author Greg Mortenson, who spoke at Gull Lake High School two weeks ago about his life work to “promote peace one school at a time” and his book Three Cups of Tea, documenting his story.

A story of youthful supporters — elementary school children who helped to beget his “Pennies for Peace” fundraising program with an initial donation of 62,300 pennies.

The program is now active in 450,000 schools and feeds his Central Asia Institute, with the total of 130 schools built to date. If anyone believes in the power of youth and their heartfelt empathy in action, it’s Mortenson.

Is there this much idealistic enthusiasm among WMU students?

Maybe.  But only in isolated pockets.  Take the Sigma Lambda Beta fraternity, which ran an awareness program of Latin American media with a faculty guest speaker this fall, complete with dinner, and then donated the proceeds to Macy’s Feed America program.

“We try to get everyone involved, but it’s according to their available time.  Some cooked, some planned,” said Marco Ferriera, the fraternity’s program director.

They all gave something.  Next semester they’re linked up with (KCIS) Kalamazoo Community in Schools to do reading, writing, editing, and bookmaking with Kalamazoo Public School students, and a CPR awareness and certification program.

Although they may do even more, Ferreira added.  Pretty impressive for a six-guy fraternity.

Community service is huge part of “Greek” life, but probably because it’s also a huge part of many fraternity and sorority creeds at the national level, like Ferreira’s. However, he said there are no hard and fast rules about volunteering.

On Nov. 5, throughout the evening, the WMU student Rec Center attracted 680 people, mostly students, 168 of which were faculty members, who signed their names to letters in a national fund-raising campaign for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee.

Adam Parez, WMU junior and assistant director of the local event, said last year’s second annual Up Till Dawn campaign generated 20 participants.  Parez attributed the surge in volunteers to WMU’s Greek community.

“It was a Greek requirement for all sororities to participate in this event,” Parez said. “Besides that it was better organized and participants had the chance to win prizes.”

While 168 versus 20 is a huge gain for St. Jude’s and the “feel good” of it for everyone involved, like faculty board member Jamie Wagner who herself went to St. Jude’s, it’s still a small percentage of the more than 26,000 students at WMU.

Others in the greater campus community are not so strongly encouraged — and the void exists.

“We have seen a trend.  The need for volunteers has increased, but we have also seen that volunteer numbers have picked up,” said Amanda Reel, program coordinator for the Volunteer Center of Greater Kalamazoo, a clearinghouse of local volunteer opportunities (from a couple of hours to long-term commitments).

WMU’s Michelle Nickerson, director of the campus Job Site that also hosts area volunteer opportunities, agreed.

Some students just access the agency posted on-line and volunteer, she said, “while some people come to us and we sit down with them to help them find the best fit.” The free guidebook on local agencies that is produced by the Volunteer Center of Greater Kalamazoo is distributed at Student Volunteer Services.

The University’s Fall into the Streets program just for First Year Experience students recently generated 300 volunteer participants for Kalamazoo agencies out of the 1,100 students enrolled in the First Year Seminar.  “It’s up to the discretion of teachers of courses to require (it),” Nickerson said.

Others, too, on campus are required to volunteer by various teachers, such as in the Career and Technological Education department.

Mortenson in his talk blindly cited a survey of college grads, 20 percent of which in 1970 expressed an interest in doing something to make the world a better place, while 45 percent of today’s grads expressed the same thing.

Ask any researcher on this campus, what someone says they will do is not necessarily the same as what they actually do.

It doesn’t seem young campus adults are out there, putting their time to good deeds anywhere near the level Mortenson might want to believe and probably not near the level of his inspired elementary youth either.  One such moved youngster, his friend Zak, has created the Red Wagon Program that anticipates raising $1 million this summer for homeless Americans with a walk from Tampa, Fla. to Los Angeles.  Zak’s so convinced of the heart of kids that his board members must be under 18 years of age.

Reel said volunteers between the ages of 18 to 24 years old make up 12.2 percent of the organization’s tracked volunteers and 12.2 percent in the age group 25 to 29.  Together that’s about equal to the 50 to 59 year olds who comprise 22.4 percent of the organization’s total tracked volunteers, while kids under 18 come in at 30.6 percent. The real numbers of people donating time in Kalamazoo may be higher because some people go straight to the organization offering the volunteer opportunity and don’t stop to register their efforts with the Volunteer Center.

But, why volunteer?

People have time, Reel said, and they “want opportunities to learn new skills, network or just give back.”

Middle and high school students in the greater Kalamazoo community are taught through curriculum and supplemental programs that coping skills such as volunteering helps a person feel good because it boosts the volunteer’s self-esteem, too.  That sounds like a win-win all the way around.

So where are all the rest of the student volunteers?  They can’t all be waiting to volunteer just at the holidays, can they?

Is Mortenson idealizing youth volunteerism or witnessing a whole new generation of do-gooders that can’t be compared to the “I want it now-what’s in it for me,” Generation-Y students of today?

Incentives to participate motivate some people to get there.  Encouragement develops the habit of volunteering.  Even mandates for “being Greek” are in keeping with community.  And, course requirements — they teach, model, and get students beyond the service of studying.

The need in Kalamazoo is great for more young adults, such as with Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Even though currently Big Brothers, Big Sisters has 176 students and 27 faculty members who are “Bigs,” according to Marketing Director Janene Weis, “volunteers are needed for our programs in schools throughout the Kalamazoo area.”

She added that the program only requires four hours a month and offers flexibility to meet — and be important to — a child.

Of all the reasons to volunteer, Big Brothers, Big Sisters results show youth mentoring impacts delinquency, drug and alcohol use, grades, self-confidence and a stronger sense of a better future for the kids who are mentored.

A Better World.  That’s what Mortenson’s enthusiasm regarding youth is really about.  If this isn’t motivation for more students to volunteer beyond all the requirements, what is?

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=11693

Posted by heraldstaff on Nov 12 2009. Filed under Editorial, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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