Dr. Val FarmerDr.Val | |||
Rural Mental Health & Family Relationships | |||
Readers Respond: Why Are Volunteers Missing In Action?May 5, 1997
"In summary, a service organization could not be run like a corporation. Volunteers are not employees and should not feel undervalued and forced to follow inflexible rules. Like underappreciated employees, volunteers who are taken for granted become dissatisfied. "Unlike employees, volunteers can cut ties with no financial repercussions. Corporations can get away with brow beating employees and continue to make a profit. Volunteers are the assets of a service organization. Without the human element, there is no organization. To preserve membership, service organization must value members as individuals by providing appropriate services and planning programs with input from members."
"My generalization is that the quality of management has declined significantly over recent years. Many people will continue to do volunteer work in spite of inadequate management, but not everybody. I have dropped some of my own volunteer work because my services and abilities were being misused by those in charge of the particular activity. "The remedy to the decline in the number of people who do volunteer work would require the education of management. Management would have to be trained to do their job and to work with people. In many cases this would be a formidable task as it would include training individuals to suppress their egos for the betterment of their organizations."
"In order to keep up with the Jones's, the wife works (for a new car, new refrigerator, Florida vacation, etc.) The husband and wife are physically tired and need what little time they have for their own family. The main volunteers in my community are retired."
..."Last week I visited my 91-year-old grandmother. She talked about the enjoyment and community spirit that was naturally present during threshing season when farmers shared the labor and machinery as they moved from one farm to the next. Can an economist calculate the cost of the loss of community and the social isolation that resulted from the adoption of the combine? For that matter, can an economist calculate the cost of the loss of community and social isolation from the television, the computer and the automobile? "The point I am making is that technology creates a fantasy of independence that eats at the threads of community expressed in such things as volunteerism, civility, family and so on. I say a fantasy because although we are more individualistic, we are really more dependent on outside forces and are less self-sufficient than ever . . . "I do not think that technology is bad. But it does seem that we as a civilization are building a 'tower of Babel' that may be destined to fall. We need to control technology and not let it control us . . . "Technology with all its inventions has created the necessity of reinventing ourselves. The question is, how do we do it? The answer I think, can only come by individually and consciously making choices that help us maintain the social links that bind us together. I do not think there is only one way to do this but each of us needs to be consciously making choices that increase social interaction. We need to recognize our dependence on one another and on a power greater than the self. |
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