In Service We (Should) Trust

One of the key figures behind the genesis of AmeriCorps is on a mission to recruit volunteers. Millions of us, actually.

Your country needs you and your talents, right now, according to author and expert Shirley Sagawa. There's need for your time and skill to help address any number of societal challenges. And if you're on the fence about whether to step up, perhaps knowing that you'll not only build a better world, but you will enrich your own life dramatically at the same time will provide sufficient motivation. Consider two examples:

Arthur Jacuinde's life very well may have been saved. His trajectory to his late teens brought him through gang activity, the justice system and group homes but left him lacking a high school diploma or work skills. Jacuinde was rudderless, but knew that he needed to change the course of his life or face a bleak future. Through his service through the Fresno Local Conservation Corps, he gained work experience and job skills, as well as appreciation for his own value and worth, and purpose and direction for his life.

Retirement from an academic career at Case Western Reserve University left Doris Thomas feeling empty. Through responding to an Experience Corps newspaper ad calling for volunteer tutors, she works in consultation with public school teachers, providing one-on-one help developing reading skills several times a week for needy students. The improvement the students demonstrate fills her with pride and a sense of meaning so rich, her volunteering continued even through her diagnosis and treatment for leukemia, as service kept her mind focused away from her personal challenges.

A Leading Authority's Call to Action

Shirley Sagawa is a visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-founder of sagawa / jospin consulting firm. She was an appointee of the first Bush and Clinton administrations and primary architect of the 1993 legislation that gave rise to AmeriCorps, and additionally served on the Obama transition team.

A recent leg of her book tour brought her to San Francisco where she stated her case for the need for an invigorated culture of service with specific examples of problems solved and lives transformed. Here, she speaks to Tonic about her work and the proscriptions offered in her latest book.

As argued in her important new book, The American Way to Change: How National Service & Volunteers are Transforming America, Shirley Sagawa maintains that there could be no better nor a more necessary time than right now for us as Americans to be reminded of the core importance of service to who we are, as well as to how we will carry ourselves to where we want to go.

The challenges we see might seem overwhelming to the point where we're tempted to hang a discouraged head and look away: schools are overcrowded and underfunded; vast reaches of our inner city populations face bleak employment prospects, food insecurity and crime; our population continues to age while health care worker shortages loom while tough health care challenges remain largely unsolved. Energy and environmental challenges that range from the local to the global are increasingly apparent.

Many might wish that government would provide solutions to all of these large-scale challenges, and it’s arguable that for some of society’s most pressing problems, the public sector could choose to do more or do things differently.

However, for the source of the most effective solutions, Shirley Sagawa tells us that we need look no further than the nearest mirror. She calls for a new, revived dedication to service, envisioning a national quilt of volunteerism stitched together with one million citizens engaged in full-time national service such as Teach for America and AmeriCorps, and 100 million individuals who volunteer at least 100 hours per year.

We would successfully address our most dire needs and challenges while at the same time strengthening our communities, and creating for ourselves through the act of service happier, healthier, and more meaningful lives.

Lives Transformed

For those who not currently volunteering but giving serious thought to is, Sagawa advises to start with a thorough personal inventory: how much time you have to give, what skills you want to offer, and what you are looking for in a volunteer experience — is it to make new  friends? To sharpen skills? To open a door to full-time employment? Be clear with yourself, and treat the process as if it were as an application for a job.

But rest assured, you are needed.

“Especially now,” Sagawa tells Tonic, “at a point where there are so many opportunities that will call upon what you love to do, what issues matter most to you. You can find something that will use your talents and make a difference.”

As if to nudge those of us on the fence to jump off into a life that includes regular time dedicated to serve, Sagawa offers several compelling cases, drawn both from personal stories as well as a growing body of social scientific research, that reveal the many ways that service improves the lives of those who choose to serve.

As she explained to her audience: “We know that if you do volunteer, you will advance your career, make friends, you will be happier and healthier, and you will help strengthen your community. So why not?”

Precisely because of these benefits that accrue to those who serve, especially those such as Jacuinde or Thomas whose lives were at a critical juncture, “service ought to be prescribed for those in life transition,” Sagawa told the audience, perhaps only half in jest.

Smarter Organizations, Strategic Thinking

While traditional modes of volunteering (stuffing envelopes, making phone calls to raise money, etc.) still abound, Sagawa’s book sets these to the side in favor of highlighting savvier, smarter and more strategic incorporation of volunteers.

For contrast, Sagawa highlighted recent research that describes a feast-famine approach to volunteers characteristic of outmoded thinking. An organization starts off with no money, gathers and deploys volunteers to get things going. Grants and donations begin coming in, allowing them to hire professional staff, so they cut their volunteers loose. Inevitable economic slowdown shuts off the flow of funding, necessitating the layoff of the professional staff, leaving them back at square one by looking for volunteers.

“That is not a strategic use of volunteers,” she tells Tonic. Smarter organizations need to put service and volunteering more squarely in the middle of how they draw up plans and deliver service such that a healthy base of volunteers remains in place regardless of economic trends.

“But if you think about society’s intractable problems, you’ll find jobs and tasks that volunteers are uniquely able to pick up.” As example, she offers that “you might not be able to pay a professional to help students write college application essays. But if you explain the need, and tell folks how their help will make a difference, they’ll happily volunteer.”

A Culture of Service 100 Million Strong

If people are able and willing to serve in greater numbers, according to Sagawa, this places a responsibility on our institutions and organizations to give dedicated thought to the potential role of volunteers at every level of operation. “In fact, there are programs utilizing the talents of a broad range of individuals and skills, and they are contributing in ways that really make a difference,” explains the author.

Her book includes dozens of examples of organizations at the leading edge of this new mode of thought and action when it comes to service, who are making substantive use of available resources and human capital to define root causes and deliver real solutions to pressing problems.

What Government Can Do

She noted, recalling a sense of discouragement, that “after Hurricane Katrina, we weren’t called to serve. After 9/11, we were told to go shopping."

Even though she contends that government can't fix it all, that's not to let them off the hook for realizing that service has an important role to play in the formation of policy and the legislation needed to implement it.

"Public problem solvers almost never ask ‘how can we include volunteers?’ to meet our most pressing objectives.” A shift in thinking must take place, she maintains.

California and New York have recently elevated service to cabinet-level positions. And in eleven major US cities, soon to be followed by ten more thanks to funding by the Bloomberg Foundation, mayors are creating chief service officer provisions to leverage well-targeted service toward solving community problems such as providing safe public play spaces, feeding the hungry, aiding the public schools and improving environmental conditions.

Especially now, with challenges looming as public coffers run dry “we can’t afford to leave any resources on the table,” she tells Tonic.

Photos 1 and 2 courtesy of Wylie, photos 3, 4, 5 via AmeriCorps.