The Spirit ofVolunteerism

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About this Issue

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
VOLUME 16 / NUMBER 5
Published January 2012

The joy of seeing a boy’s eyes light up when he comprehends words printed on a page is deeply satisfying for this volunteer reading tutor.

W

ho gives blood in the United States? Wholeads Boy Scout troops? Who sings carols in
hospitals during the holidays? Who puts out
fires and rescues people in medical emergencies? They arevolunteers, so woven into the fabric of U.S. life that theyoften go unnoticed.
This issue of eJournalUSA is dedicated to theunheralded citizens who collectively contribute some $173
billion annually through their unpaid labor. They are partof a tradition of volunteerism that has deep roots in U.S.
society. Firefighting was an early form of volunteerism that
Benjamin Franklin introduced in Philadelphia in 1736.
This innovative idea spread rapidly, and within a few years
the cities up and down the eastern seaboard of North
America boasted volunteer fire companies.

eJournal USA

The tradition of volunteerism flourishes today incommunities large and small and in a myriad forms as
the Internet opens new vistas for volunteerism, allowing
people to help others worldwide without leaving home.
The tradition is embodied by health care workers
serving in areas devastated by natural disasters, by the“grandfathers” of Alexandria, Virginia, who mentor young
boys growing up without fathers, and by volunteers who
help refugees from distant lands build new lives in U.S.
cities. The Spirit of Volunteerism recounts their stories
and the stories of those whom they serve. neJournal USA 1					The Editors

U.S. Department of State / January 2012 / Volume 16 / Number 5

The Spirit of Volunteerism
4	
Volunteering: An American
Tradition
by Susan J. Ellis and Katherine H.
Campbell
Volunteering began when North America
was a wilderness and continues today.
10	America’s Volunteer Firefighters
by Rick J. Markley
Volunteer firefighting began in the Americancolonies and the tradition remains strong now.
18	It Takes a “Grandfather”
by Jeanne Holden
Volunteer “grandfathers” mentor fatherless boys.

28	Resettling in Seattle
by Charlotte West
Volunteers with the International Rescue
Committee help refugees build new lives in a
new land.
32	Beyond Profit: IBM’s Corporate
Volunteers
by Kathryn McConnell
One of the world’s largest computer companies
encourages staff to share their skills to help
those in developing countries.
37	Additional Resources on
Volunteerism

22	Partners In Health: Listening
Builds a Community
by Lisa J. Armstrong
Volunteers listened to Haitians’ needs andhelped build a clinic and a community.

©AP Images/The Oakland Press, Jose Juarez

Photo left: Muslim and Jewish volunteers, Reem Ameiche and Risha Ring,
sort canned goods at a food bank in Pontiac, Michigan, to help needy
people through the winter.

eJournal USA 3

The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarilyreflect the views or policies of the U.S government.

Volunteering: An
American Tradition
Susan J. Ellis andKatherine H. Campbell©AP Images/ Matt Rourke

The American Red Cross has beena leader in volunteer efforts in the
United States since 1881. It’s stillgoing strong.
eJournal USA 4

eJournal USA 5

©AP Images for Rebuilding Together/Bill Ross

Volunteerism in America©AP Images for Sprite/Dave Einsel

Volunteering provides joy for those who give as well as for those who receive assistance.
Many volunteers work in projects to provide housing for the poor. Putting a coat of new paint on a house is one of the last chores before handing keys
over to new occupants.

“I have seen Americans making great and sincere
sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I
have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave
each other faithful support.”—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

In the United States, just about everyone, at one timeor another, has been a volunteer. On any given day,millions of Americans give of their time and talents
to benefit their communities through volunteer service.
Volunteering is so pervasive in the United States that it
can be observed daily in almost every aspect of life.
In a typical year, about one-fifth of the American
population, more than 62 million people, serve as
volunteers, according to U.S. government statistics. They
contribute more than 8 billion hours of services, valued
conservatively at $173 billion.

The roots of U.S. volunteerism are far reachingand deep. Americans have been banding together tohelp one another since colonial times. The settlers of
the new American colonies all had the same priority:
survival. Physically, the land was a wilderness, and socialorganizational structures were lacking. Cooperation
frequently meant the difference between life and death.
Neighboring farmers combined efforts to clear land,build houses and barns, and harvest crops. Quilting
parties and spinning bees were common occurrences, aswere “whangs,” gatherings of women who helped eachother with annual housecleaning. Church buildings
were built by volunteers, and town records are rife withreferences to donations of land, materials and money, allgiven voluntarily so that each community could have its
own place of worship. Volunteer efforts by both men andwomen were called “changing works.”
As the first settlements became small cities, new waysof voluntary action evolved. Early street lighting was aeJournal USA 6

Nearly 63 million Americans volunteered more than 8 billion hours in 2010. The value of the volunteers’ time was$173 billion, according to the Corporation of National and Community Service (CNCS), a federal agency that leads
President Obama’s “United We Serve” initiative.
The most widely practiced forms of volunteerism were:• Fundraising for charitable or nonprofit Organizations—26.5%• Food preparation and distribution—23.5%
• General labor and transportation—20.3%. (e.g., clean up projects or giving rides to the elderly)• Tutoring—18.5%• Youth mentoring—17%
People born between 1965 and 1981, called Generation X, gave 2.3 billion hours of service in 2010, an increase of almost
110 million hours compared to 2009.
Many Generation X volunteers use their digital skills to help organizations worldwide—without leaving home. The
United Nations Online Volunteering (UNV) service, established in 2000, has more than 20,000 registered volunteers
who completed 15,109 assignments in 2010. Some online volunteers have helped develop many of the 2,000 NGOs
registered with UNV. neJournal USA 7

©AP Images/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Alexa Welch Edlund• Who donates blood?
• Who runs the parent-teacher
organizations in schools?
• Who works to preserve historicallandmarks?
• Who passes out political campaign
leaflets and registers citizens to vote?
• Who uses ham radios to relay calls
for help?
• Who leads 4-H Clubs? Scout
troops? Youth sports teams?
• Who blogs, tweets, and uses otherforms of social media to advocate
for change?

“Now, Son, this is how you hit the ball out of the park,” says an elderly, retired baseball player to ayoung, up-and-coming player. Coaching sports attracts many volunteers in the United States.

This list only skims the surface,but it illustrates the diversityof volunteer activities in which
Americans engage.

©AP Images/Ross D. Franklin©AP Images for Hampton Hotels/ Kevin Wolf

Maintaining monuments and parks in the United States could not be done without volunteers.
President Lincoln looks a bit spiffier thanks to this volunteer

shared responsibility of homeowners
who rotated the hanging of lanterns
at their front gates. “Sunday schools”
were started so that poor children,
working at jobs for six days a week,
could be taught to read the Bible on
their single day off.
As early as the 1600’s, colonists
formed citizen fire brigades tocombat fires in Boston, Philadelphia
and New Amsterdam (later NewYork), and in 1736 BenjaminFranklin formally organized
Philadelphia’s volunteer fire company,
consisting of “thirty volunteers who
equipped themselves with leather
buckets and bags and baskets.” Theconcept quickly spread throughout
the colonies and persists today, whenmore than 70 percent of firefightersin the United States are volunteers.
Three and a half centuries later,volunteerism imbues American
society. Volunteering, because it is sopervasive, often goes unrecognized.
Most Americans probably nevercontemplate the role of volunteerism
in their day-to-day lives and neverask themselves:

Volunteers play an important role in registering Americans to vote.

Americans volunteer not because of coercion or profit,
but because they recognize a need and are willing to takeresponsibility for meeting that need. But because they
assume this responsibility in addition to their everyday
jobs and duties, and because they do not seek monetary
reward, volunteers themselves often underestimate theimpact of their work.
Most historians, too, have overlooked the magnitude
and diversity of contributions made to U.S. history andsociety by volunteers. However, the cumulative effect ofcountless voluntary actions, occurring as they do in every
part of the United States and in every decade, makes
it apparent that many aspects of American history andculture have been shaped by volunteers.
The role of volunteers in the United States has always
been that of pioneer — to recognize significant issues andneeds well before government or other institutions do andto provide services to address those needs.
Volunteering does not happen in a vacuum; it has
always been shaped by changes in demographics, family
composition, employment patterns and economics. For
example, with equal numbers of women and men now
in the work force, many U.S. companies have establishedcorporate volunteer programs, encouraging theiremployees to volunteer by offering release time ranging
from a few hours a week to a year’s sabbatical.

And with people over 60
constituting the fastest growing
segment of the population, some
U.S. volunteer organizations forsenior citizens have responded bylowering their age requirements,
attracting active Americans
in their 50s and 60s to serve
the burgeoning number ofoctogenarians and beyond.
The explosive rise of theWorld Wide Web has changed
everyone’s lives and affectedvolunteering, too. First, it
should be noted how importantvolunteers were and still are to
the development of the Web
itself: open-source programmers,
online community hosts, andcountless unpaid bloggers are
all contributing to this global
exchange forum.
The Web also gave birth to virtual volunteering,in which someone located anywhere in the world, at
whatever time of choice, can provide online service.
This can be anything from editing reports to translating
documents, but also giving technical assistance ormentoring a young person via e-mail and voice-overInternet calls.
Technological convergence, too, is having an impact
on volunteering. For example, smart phones are allowing
micro-volunteering, in which someone can do small tasks
in a few minutes through Internet-connected calling.
Looking toward the future, it seems safe to predictthat the causes served by American volunteers willcontinue to change; the presence and commitment ofvolunteers will not. n

Susan J. Ellis and Katherine H. Campbell are the authors
of By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers.
Ellis is president of Energize, Inc., a training, consulting, andpublishing firm that specializes in volunteerism. Campbell
is executive director of the Council for Certification in
Volunteer Administration, the only independent body setting
standards for those whose career is leadership of volunteers.
She is a past national president of the Association for
Volunteer Administration.
The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect
the views or policies of the U.S government.

eJournal USA 8

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America’s Volunteer
Firefighters
R ick J. Mark ley©AP Images/Green Valley News, Alex Dalenberg

Much has changed since then. Large U.S. cities, like
Boston and Philadelphia, now have departments staffedwith full-time career firefighters, but away from the cities,
most U.S. suburban and rural communities are still
protected by volunteer firefighters.
courtesy of Philip Stittleburg

Community Firefighting:
An American Tradition

Volunteer firefighters do more than put out fires. They also provide
emergency medical treatment, as the La Farge volunteers, above, are doing
for a driver who has rolled and crashed his truck.

L

a Farge, Wisconsin — It’s 2 a.m. and you’re shaken
from a deep sleep by a loud tone, then rapid
beeping. This is followed by a voice crackling
through the radio at the side of your bed saying, “Firedepartment requested. Fire department requested.” As an
unpaid volunteer, you answer the call.
This scene in La Farge, or one very much like it,
plays out every night in countless communities acrossAmerica. That’s because more than 85 percent of fire
departments in the United States are staffed either fully or
partially by volunteers. These volunteers, nearly 1 million
in all, come from all walks of life, sacrifice time with
their families and even their sleep to respond to a rangeof emergencies: rescuing victims trapped in automobiles
or buildings, containing hazardous materials and battling
fires. These men and women are part of a tradition that
pre-dates U.S. independence.

La Farge is a small town in southwest Wisconsin.
As fire chief, Philip Stittleburg oversees a crew of
30 volunteer firefighters, who hold full-time jobs as
farmers, managers, factory workers and business owners.
The volunteer department has one fire station andprotects 2,750 residents spread across 135 square miles(350 square kilometers). They respond to about 50
emergencies per year; vehicle collisions and fires make up
the bulk of their calls.
Stittleburg said the fire department has the same
number of volunteers and responds to about the same
number of calls as it did when he joined 38 years ago.

Benjamin Franklin was a noted inventor, writerand diplomat. What’s less well known is that Franklin
organized the first volunteer fire brigade 40 years before
the 13 American colonies declared their independence
and became the United States of America. During a trip
to Boston, Franklin noticed how much better prepared
the city was for fighting fires than was Philadelphia — thecity he called home. When he returned to Philadelphia,
Franklin organized the Union Fire Company in 1736.
The idea of volunteer fire brigades grew in popularity andsimilar groups were formed in other American colonies.
The early American volunteer firefighters tended tobe financially successful and civic-minded. Their personal
prosperity was important because the volunteers had toprovide all of their own firefighting equipment.

courtesy of Philip Stittleburg

Roots of Volunteer Firefighting

Chief Philip Stittleburg began driving fire trucks when he wasin law school in 1972. Lawyering and fire fighting have been
his life’s pursuits since then.

eJournal USA 12

Volunteer Firefighting in the U.S.
• 86 percent of fire departments are all or mostly volunteer; they protect 39 percent of the
population.
• Of the 1.15 million firefighters in the United States, 812,150 are volunteers.
• 94 percent of volunteer firefighters serve communities with fewer than 25,000 residents.
• There are 21,235 all volunteer and 4,830 mostly volunteer fire departments in the United States.
• Volunteer firefighters save local communities $37.2 billion per year in taxes.
• 72 U.S. firefighters died in the line of duty in 2010; 44 were volunteers.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the commitmentof volunteer firefighters. A sense of civic responsibility
compels men and women to pull themselves out of bed
for those 2 a.m. emergency calls.
“Most of them have the sentiment that you owe
something back to your community,” Stittleburg said.
“The community takes care of you, nurtures you, andyou owe something back. And there’s a lot of satisfaction
in being part of a team that is doing a hard job — a jobthat not everyone can do.”Stittleburg first volunteered for fire service as a parttime driver while attending law school. With firefighting
in his blood, he joined the La Farge department in 1972
after graduating from law school; he was named chief five
years later.
As a lawyer, Stittleburg worked as an assistant
district attorney prosecuting criminal cases. He says bothprofessions require fast decision-making often basedon incomplete information or changing scenarios. If
decisions prove wrong, the consequences can be dire, so
trial lawyers and fire chiefs need to make back-up plans.
Stittleburg says his time in the courtroom has made him
a better fire chief, and the reverse is true as well. He
recently retired from the district attorney’s office, but
remains a volunteer fire chief.
Stittleburg says he’s witnessed some encouraging
changes in both his department and in volunteer fire
departments across the country. With the perspective
he gained as an officer in the National Volunteer Fire
Council, Stittleburg says there is now a much greater levelof professionalism among volunteers, achieved throughrigorous training. Unlike the first volunteer firefighters,
today’s volunteers do not have to buy all of theirfirefighting equipment.

Financing Volunteer Firefighters
Most communities with volunteer fire departments
set aside some tax money to buy and maintain protective
equipment such as fire-resistant pants and coats, helmets,
breathing air tanks and masks, and boots. Public money

More than 85 percent
of fire departments in
the United States arestaffed either fully or
partially by volunteers.
These volunteers, nearly
1 million in all, comefrom all walks of life.
is also used to buy tools to fight fires and perform rescues.
But the money a local government provides is often notenough to meet a fire department’s needs. When that
happens, volunteer firefighters sponsor community events
to raise the additional money. For example, througheJournal USA 13

courtesy of Thad Stutler

Firefighting: A Family Tradition

Thad Stutler, volunteer fire chief in Dyer, Indiana, has family members who have been putting out fires and saving people for nearly a century.
His great-great grandfather, Philip Keilman, joined the Dyer volunteer fire department in 1915.

courtesy of Philip Stittleburg

La Farge firefighters direct a helicopter to land in a snowy field to transport a highway accident victim to a hospital.

activities like raffles and selling calendars, the La Farge
volunteers raise as much as $10,000 per year — 10
percent of the company’s annual budget — to buy
additional fire and rescue equipment.
The federal government also plays a role in helping
volunteer fire departments by issuing annual grants.
When applying for a federal grant, a department mustshow that the equipment, such as a fire truck, is needed
and also must commit to providing some of the money
for the purchase. Stittleburg says he’s used such grants
to buy fire trucks for La Farge. But even with the grants,
many volunteer fire departments keep their vehicles
running a long time.
“When I got here in 1972, we had two trucks: one
was a 1957 International that was our first-line engine
and the other was a 1939 Dodge,” Stittleburg said.
Shortly after he became chief, Stittleburg’s department
bought a 1972 fire engine. “Now, my second-line engine
is that 1972 International; it’s older now than the 1939

was when I joined.” And that 1939 Dodge? It has been
fully restored and is used as a showpiece in parades.
Ben Franklin, volunteer firefighter and diplomat,
would be proud. n
Rick Markley volunteers as the media manager for theInternational Fire Relief Mission, which provides used fireand emergency services gear and training to developing
countries. He is a volunteer firefighter and the former editorof Fire Chief magazine.

eJournal USA 14
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Dyer, Indiana, is a bedroom community 64 kilometers
south of Chicago. Its 16,000 residents are protected by avolunteer fire department led by a third-generation Dyer
volunteer firefighter.
In December 1987, Thad Stutler, then 23 years old,
joined Dyer’s volunteer fire department, fresh out ofcollege with a nursing degree. In 1965, 22 years before,
Stutler’s father, Gary, joined the same volunteer company,
where he held all of the ranks in the department andserved as chief for one year.
The origins of the family’s volunteer fire service
go back to 1915 when Phillip Keilman, Thad Stutler’smaternal great-grandfather, joined the department.
Keilman, who worked as a chemist for E. I. du Pont
de Nemours and Company (Dupont), was one of theoriginal 19 members who formed a volunteer fire service
to protect their town.
“I grew up hanging out at the firehouse,” Stutler said.
In the 1960s and 1970s it was common for the volunteer
fire department to be made up of those related by bloodor marriage, he said. And those who weren’t related wereas close as family.
Times have changed since Stutler learned to fightfires by tagging along after his father at the station. Now,

volunteer firefighters are required to take 1,000 hoursof training when they join. And there are greater career
demands, he said. Dyer’s staff of 31 volunteer firefighters
responds not only to fires, rescues and vehicle crashes,
but also to medical emergencies. The department answers
more than 1,100 calls each year, with more than 80
percent of those being medical calls.
At home, Stutler and his wife have four children,none old enough to join the volunteer fire department.
Like Stutler, the children have grown up around the fireservice, whether it is manning a popcorn machine during
the fire department open house or portraying accident
victims during a training drill.
“They are already knowledgeable about firefighting
and fire safety,” Stutler said. They’ve been taught how
not to panic during stressful situations. But all of thisgrooming does not mean Stutler will push his children
into the volunteer fire service. He still remembers theadvice his father imparted to him as a young man.
“He told me not to join the department because hedid, but join because I want to,” Stutler said. “And if I
did join, do a good job; don’t take the place of someone
else who would do it right.” neJournal USA 15

Fighting Fires Beyond U.S. Borders

Ron Gruening/IFRM

The International Fire Relief Mission ships donated equipment to fire departments in foreign countries. A plumber in North Branch, Minnesota, donates
the warehouse space to store the equipment before it is shipped.

Rick Markley/IFRM

Ron Gruening, left, teaches Honduran firefighters on Roatan Island how to
strap on a breathing–air pack so they can enter a burning building.

Americans’ volunteerism in fighting fires extends
beyond the borders of the United States. Several U.S.
nonprofit groups donate equipment and provide
training to firefighters in developing countries. One suchgroup is the International Fire Relief Mission (IFRM),
whose volunteers often spend their own money to help
firefighters overseas.
“When American fire departments buy new
equipment, the gear that they replace still has a lot of life
in it,” said Ron Gruening, who is IFRM’s president and a
volunteer firefighter. “We send it to needy fire departments
around the world, where it will keep those firefighters safer

and help them protect their citizens. We also spend timein those countries training their firefighters how to use theequipment and giving them basic firefighting instruction.”
In February 2010, the IFRM team delivered
equipment and training to the Honduran island of
Roatán. There, IFRM found a young, dedicated groupof firefighters using mismatched, badly worn protective
clothing. The Roatán firefighters were in for a treat.
“We were fortunate to have come across a protectiveclothing distributor who had a supply of never-used gear,”
Gruening says. “It was in perfect condition; we had to cut
the tags off. It was available because U.S. standards are
improved every few years, and this gear did not meet the
new standard. The distributor was not allowed to sell it to
U.S. fire departments, yet through his donation to IFRM,
he was able to protect those Honduran firefighters.”
IFRM focuses on helping fire departments withchronic funding problems. However, after a massive
earthquake in Chile destroyed several fire stations in
February 2010, the IFRM team sent out an urgent plea
for help to U.S. fire departments. They were able toquickly collect, package, and ship gear to help restock
Chile’s fire departments. n

Photo right: Citizens of Yucca Valley, California, express appreciation for
their firefighters..

eJournal USA 16
Return toTable of Contents©AP Images/Reed Saxon

It Takes a“Grandfather”
By Jeanne Holden

Bernard Jones, the leader of theAlexandria, Virginia, Grandfathers
Group, shows one of his protégés anattention-riveting website.

©Louise Krafft

Bernard Jones, standing, leads a monthly meeting of the Alexandria, Virginia, Grandfathers and their protégés.

N

aVonté rushes into an old townhouse in
Alexandria, Virginia. His brother DeShaunhurries in behind him. A few other AfricanAmerican boys follow. They get hearty welcomes from
Bernard Jones and several other African-American men
inside. It is the first Saturday of the month, and Jones ishosting a meeting of the Grandfathers Group. Today’s
topic is career planning.
Sponsored by the Northern Virginia Urban
League, the Grandfathers Group aims to promote thedevelopment of African-American boys ages 9 to 12
whose fathers are absent from the home. The Urban
League, founded in 1910, helps African Americans tosecure civil rights and become economically self-reliant.
The boys who join the Grandfathers Group arematched with African-American males, usually age 50 orolder, to build one-on-one relationships based on trust.
The Grandfathers offer their life experiences, knowledge,
instincts and abilities to positively shape the character ofAfrican-American boys.
Since the program began in 1998, the Grandfathers
have mentored 150 boys in Northern Virginia. Similar
programs help boys in other urban areas of the UnitedStates. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, only 35
percent of African-American children in the UnitedStates live with two parents, compared to 78 percent ofwhite, non-Hispanic children. Federal research shows thatfatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school
and are at a greater risk of getting involved in crime or
alcohol abuse than children of two-parent households.
The Grandfathers Group aims to help boys who are
growing up fatherless to avoid these consequences.
“It’s good for African-American boys to meet
African-American professionals outside their families andto see that they are responsible adults and good citizens,”
said Veronica Dean, NaVonté and DeShaun’s mother.
“My sons have little interaction with adult males, and theones that they do come into contact with are typically not
African American.”Veronica says her sons’ perceptions of AfricanAmerican men are tainted by TV shows in which they areoften portrayed as homeless or as people involved withillegal drugs or crime.
The Alexandria, Virginia, couple James and Laverne
Chatman created the Grandfathers Group in 1998.
James, now deceased, understood the needs of fatherlessboys firsthand because of his youth in a fatherless home.
But his uncle helped him learn all that a father would
have taught: how to fish, how to knot a tie, and how to
be a gentleman. James, who was a successful businessman,wanted other fatherless boys to benefit from surrogates.
Tony Martin, 52 years old, has been a mentor for
two years in Alexandria. He is matched with Ronald
Clark, 12. “He’s unique,” Tony said. “I have greateJournal USA 20“I want to teach Ronald
to take academics seriously, to keep
an open mind when it comes tolearning and to be a humble person.”Grandfather Tony Martin said about
his 12-year-old protégé, Ronald Clark.
with a boy who was beginning to slack off in school. His
mother was a nurse and worked long hours.
“So I used to go by his house some evenings to talkto him,” Melvin said. “He seemed not so resentful when
he talked to me.” Melvin proudly reports that the boy did
well in school and entered a prestigious state university.
The Grandfathers program is “life changing” for boththe boys and their mentors, said Laverne Chatman. “Wehave found that the mentors are learning better skills
for their own grandchildren, have fewer health issues©Louise Krafft

conversations with him. We talkabout sports and reading. I tell him
about the civil rights movement.”
Tony says that Ronald listens
intently and follows his advice.
Ronald, for his part, says theGrandfathers Group is very good.
Ronald’s mom says he loves it.
Tony often visits Ronald at a local
recreation center, and he attends
many of Ronald’s basketball games.
“I want to teach Ronald to takeacademics seriously, to keep an open
mind when it comes to learningand to be a humble person,” Tonysaid. “If he has any questions, I
want him to feel free to ask them.
I want him to be able to talk to me
about anything.”
A mentor can also help afatherless boy keep from developing
resentment about his life. One of the©Louise Krafft
earliest Grandfathers, Melvin Miller,
saw that boys who did poorly inschool were often angry at not having a father at home,
not being able to afford extras, or at having a mother who
was rarely home. The Grandfathers Group paired Melvin

Malcolm Murray, a dentist, shares his wisdom with a boy
growing up without a father.

because they are positively affecting some lives, and havea camaraderie with each other.”Grandfather mentors are expected to maintain atleast four monthly contacts with the boys. At least two of
the contacts have to be in person. “The personal touch isimportant,” said Clyde Bassingale, a current Grandfather
mentor. “Face-to-face contact teaches a boy how to deal
with people.”
Bassingale said that he and his young friend havegone bowling, had lunch at a pizza parlor and visited the
National Museum of Natural History.
On the first Saturday of the month, the Grandfathers
Group gathers for an activity that is attended by mostof the mentor-mentee teams. At the career day event on
this particular Saturday, a panel of six African-American
professional men shared their memories and experiences
preparing for their careers. Each panelist stressed theimportance of doing well in school.
One, a dentist, pointed out that nobody succeeds
every time and that the most important thing is to keep
trying. Another panelist told the boys, “Look aroundyou. All of us, your mentors and those of us on the panel,are here to show you that there are professional AfricanAmerican men who care about you and your success.” nJeanne Holden is a freelance writer in Northern Virginia
and the author of Principles of Entrepreneurship.

eJournal USA 21
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Partners In Health:
Listening Builds a Community
Lisa Armstrong©AP Images/PRNews Foto/Austin College

Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In
Health, listens to the heart beat of a young
victim of the 2010 Haitian earthquake.

England, she began collecting donations.
The first was 500 British pounds from asupermarket executive she met at a dinnerparty. It purchased scales to weigh children.
Meanwhile, Farmer was envisioning a
project that would provide health care ona larger scale. “It was a long-term vision.
We would start by addressing somethingsmall, and partner with Father Lafontant,”
Dahl said.
Listening Builds a Clinic©Partners In Health©Partners In Health

PIH’s American and Haitian volunteers worked side-by-side treating victims of the 2010 earthquake.

Within hours after the January 12, 2010,
earthquake in Haiti, people of Partners In
Health (PIH) started to arrive in Port au
Prince to care for injured people caught in the rubbleof collapsed buildings. First, the organization’s Haitian
doctors and staff arrived from towns around the country,
including Cange, where Zanmi Lasante (“Partners In
Health” in Haitian Creole) is headquartered.
In the first six months after the earthquake, 733 PIH
volunteers from 26 U.S. states and six countries worked
in Haiti. They set limbs, delivered babies, and treatedtuberculosis, malaria and other illnesses. In tent city
hospitals and makeshift clinics, Haitian and American
doctors and nurses worked side by side.
PIH has provided health care in Haiti for more than
20 years, primarily in rural parts of the country. Today,
the staff also are working in the camps that house morethan 1 million displaced Haitians. Under green tents, inthe blazing sun, they inoculate, offer prenatal checkups
and treat basic ailments. “We were at some point seeing

5,000 to 7,000 people a week, and have seen over
100,000 people at the camps,” said PIH’s Donna Barry.
“Our goal was not to ‘Americanize’ our surroundings,
but to augment the system in place during the emergency
response,” says Ed Arndt, a nurse practitioner at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in a PIH blog post hewrote about his experience. “We were all there to provide
direct care and emotional support to our patients.”
Solidarity: The Key to Success
The notion of solidarity sets Partners In Health apartfrom many other charitable organizations. Their efforts
have succeeded because they respect and listen to what
the people in the impoverished communities want, rather
than telling them what they need.
“One thing that was obvious, even in the 1980s, wasthat Haiti was a veritable graveyard of development projects,
with lots of externally imposed programs,” said Dr. Paul
Farmer, who co-founded Zanmi Lasante with HaitianeJournal USA 24

Dahl and Farmer trekked the dusty
trails at Cange, asking the people what
they needed most. “We’d stop at a terrible,
dilapidated, cracked hut, and one of thekids would find a parent, who was hacking
away at a dusty, postage stamp-sized pieceof land, trying to grow maize,” Dahl said.
Nurse practitioner Ed Arndt from Boston helping victims of the Haitian earthquake.
The response was almost always the same:
They wanted a clinic.
It was the notion of working incommunity leaders and Ophelia Dahl of Britain in 1983.
partnership with the local community that inspired theFarmer and Dahl established Partners In Health in 1987.
“So PIH really started as a solidarity organization for
Zanmi Lasante, which would be Haitian-run and employ
Haitians,” Farmer said. In addition to Haiti, PIH works
with partner organizations and national health ministries
in 11 other countries: Lesotho, the United States, theDominican Republic, Kazakhstan, Guatemala, Burundi,
Russia, Mexico, Rwanda, Peru, and Malawi.
Farmer first went to Haiti’s Central Plateau in thespring of 1983 before starting his first year at Harvard
Medical School. In the city of Mirebalais, he volunteeredin a small clinic run by an Episcopal priest, the Reverend
Fritz Lafontant. That’s where Farmer and Dahl met.
Dahl was 18, and hadn’t yet decided what she wanted
to do with her life, so, at her family’s suggestion, she wentorganization’s name: Zanmi Lasante/Partners In Health.
to Haiti to volunteer.
Dahl and Farmer formed a team, which eventually“I had never been to a developing country,” Dahl
included Farmer’s college roommate, Todd McCormack;
said. “I grew up just outside London, had been to Europe
another Harvard medical student, Jim Yong Kim; andand the United States, and had lovely, very forwardBoston businessman Tom White, who contributed
thinking parents, but had not witnessed real grinding
millions of dollars to build PIH’s first community-based
poverty. It was extraordinary, and made an enormous
health project in Cange.
impression. You couldn’t turn away from the poverty; it“We started PIH in a squatter settlement,” Farmer
was overwhelming.”
said.
“There I met some of the people I work with to thisDahl and Farmer traveled to Cange, a small, destituteday. And that’s part of what makes PIH special. We are allcommunity of people left landless after construction ofstill working together.”a dam flooded their homes and fields. The people were
PIH’s approach is holistic; the group provides
desperately poor, and did not have basic health care. Dahl
food, schooling and other basic necessities in addition
and Farmer wanted to help. When Dahl returned to

It was the notion of working
in partnership with the local
community that inspired theorganization’s name: Zanmi
Lasante/Partners In Health.

eJournal USA 25

Today, PIH staff and volunteers view their work inmuch the same way that Dahl and Farmer did when they
were setting up the first clinic in Cange.
“Going to Haiti is extremely daunting, and it wasvery daunting back then,” Dahl said. “But the key is tofocus on a small area where you can help, rather thansaying ‘I am going to combat poverty’ or ‘reforest thewhole of Haiti.’ It is about looking at long-term prospects,
making partnerships and allegiances, and working
together, through thick and thin.” nLisa Armstrong is a freelance writer who reported on theaftermath of the Haitian earthquake for the Pulitzer Centeron Crisis Reporting.

©Ron Haviv/VII/Corbis

to medical treatment. “We could have given people all
the medicine in the world, but if they were going home
to a place with no roof or access to water or food, they
were going to die,” Dahl said. Today, children vaccinatedthrough PIH efforts 20 years ago are healthy adults.
Unlike most of their parents, they have had access to
education, adequate diets and medical care.
Even after the 2010 earthquake, PIH has worked toprovide more than emergency medical care.
“We’ve increased agricultural outputs,” Barry said.
“We have a farm near Cange, and they immediately got
to work growing corn crops, knowing that food needs
would be high, as displaced people had moved out to theCentral Plateau.” Working with Zanmi Agrikol (HaitianCreole for “Partners in Agriculture”), PIH ramped up
production of Nourimanba, a peanut-based food, to fightmalnutrition, and provided farming tools to more than
1,000 families.

Ophelia Dahl, co-founder of Partners In Health, listens to a Haitian woman stricken by the 2010 earthquake. Listening to local concerns is the key to thesuccess of Partners In Health.
Photo Right: Haitian women sort peanuts to prepare
nourimanba, a highly nutritious food. PIH helped Haitian
farmers launch peanut cultivation and nourimanba production.

eJournal USA 26
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Resettling in Seattle
Charlotte West

People who fled conflict in their homelands find
new lives in Seattle with the help of volunteers
from the International Refugee Committee.
© AP Images

Six women sit around a table littered with sticky
notes and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together
into a map of the United States. Jennica Prescott,a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee(IRC), walks around the room asking if they can findWashington state on the map. They laugh as one of themtries to put Utah on the East Coast.
The IRC has been helping these women and theirfamilies from Bhutan to resettle in the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s amazing to hear the paths of how they got here. The
goal of the organization is to help refugees become selfsufficient,” Prescott says.
Founded in 1933, the IRC today works in 22
American cities, resettling refugees, and in more than 40
countries, places like Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Burma, providing emergency assistance,
education and health services. In 2010, the organization
helped resettle 9,600 refugees in the U.S. and provided
services to 24,500 refugees, asylum seekers and victims ofhuman trafficking abroad.
The IRC office in Seattle has helped more than
18,000 refugees from more than 30 countries to resettle
in the Puget Sound area since 1976. The majority of
their clients come from Bhutan and Burma, with smallergroups from Somalia, Eritrea and Iraq.
Most of the IRC’s work in Seattle is carried out by
about 200 volunteers who work on the administrativeside as well as directly with refugees.
Volunteers become refugee mentors through the
Friend of the Family program. Volunteers are paired withfamilies and meet with them weekly to help them adjust.
They teach the families to use public transportation andhelp them practice English. Others teach classes on how
to get a job or help young people deal with school.
The IRC volunteers span the age spectrum fromcollege students and recent graduates to mid-career
professionals and retirees. All are motivated by a desire to
give back to society.
“I had been looking for ways to be involved in thecommunity since I moved to Seattle. I really wanted to workwith minority communities, especially those that were new
to the U.S. because I missed having the cultural exchangethat I had during the Peace Corps and other travels abroad,”says Tilden Keller, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Haiti
and the Dominican Republic.
Keller mentors two families, one from Burma andthe other from Eritrea. The Meh family of seven, partof the Karenni tribe of Burma, came to Seattle about ayear and a half ago. They were farmers in their homeland
before spending 10 years in a refugee camp in Thailand.
Keller says her relationship with the Mehs has
evolved since she began working with them. In the
beginning, she helped them with practical matters likehooking up the electricity for their apartment and setting
up a bank account. Now she spends a lot of time just“hanging out” with them. On one particular visit she sits
in their living room playing a game that resembles jacks.
Keller has a vivid memory of going to the local zoo,
Woodland Park, with the Mehs. “When we got to the‘Thai village,’ their eyes all lit up. The kids ran aroundeJournal USA 30

photograph by Jonathan Dodds

photograph by Jonathan Dodds

Jared Meyers, second from left, and Reyna Swift, right, visit with the Liana family to help the new arrivals from Burma adjust to life in Seattle.

the house and told me about how each thing was justlike home. I think that it was the first time they really felt
connected back to their old life since they had arrived in
the U.S.,” she says.
Reyna Swift and Jared Meyers, a couple, began
working with the Lianas, a Burmese family of six, in
September 2010. Swift and Meyers were looking to dosomething together that would have an immediate impact
on the lives of others.
Meyers and Swift visit the family once or twice aweek and occasionally go with them on excursions to themall, the zoo or downtown Seattle. A typical visit might
include encouraging the family practice English, talking
about daily difficulties, and playing games.
“I remember the first time we met with the family.
We brought along an UNO [card] game. After we began
playing, Jared and I realized that we had each given thefamily different sets of rules. After several games, ourfrustration began to slip away,” Swift laughs.
The Liana family are members of the Chin, a
Christian minority in Burma. In Seattle, they attend a
Burmese church, which recently celebrated Chin National
Day, and Swift and Meyers went with them that day.
“They face daunting challenges in their adjustment
to life in the U.S. but still remain positive and very strong
as a family unit. Each time I visit, I am impressed withthe way the family works together as a unit,” says Meyers.

This young mother, who fled ethnic conflict in Burma withher child, contemplates a more peaceful future in Seattle.

Volunteers are pairedwith families tohelp them adjust.
They teach thefamilies to use public
transportation andhelp them practiceEnglish. Others teachclasses on how to
get a job or help
young people deal
with school.
Volunteering with the IRC has helped Alyssa Loos,a student at the University of Washington, figure out her
own priorities. She teaches an advanced class of English
as a second language once a week at the IRC headquarters
in downtown Seattle.
“This volunteer experience made me sure that I want
to be a teacher,” she says.
One morning, she teaches an employment class to
two men from Iraq. “Tasks could be preparing food,cleaning windows or washing dishes,” she says.
Loos brings her own experience of studying Arabic
into her teaching. For instance, using traditional sayings
like “Insha’Allah” (“God Willing”) and writing her nameon the white board in Arabic were big hits with her
students. “It breaks down the barrier when I show that
I’m learning a language too,” she explains. “They are so
grateful and work so hard.” nCharlotte West is a freelance writer based in Seattle and an
adjunct professor of history at Seattle University.

eJournal USA 31
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Beyond Profit:
IBM’s Volunteers
By Kathryn McConnell

IBM’s corporate volunteers are
introducing new technologies that will
shape Indonesia’s future.
courtesy of Janice Fratamico, IBM Corporate Service Corps

States. He said the team proposed a five-year plan callingfor installing security cameras to deter crime and aid
emergency workers and adapting mobile terminals likesmart phones to provide maps of the locations of fire
hydrants and power switches to aid firefighters responding
to emergency calls.
Beginning a Relationship

Computer technology skills taught by IBM volunteers have boosted the effectiveness of health education in Nigeria. Here, a health educator conducts aworkshop in Nigeria’s Cross River State for a class of attentive students, except for the little one on the back row.

W

ork in the private sector means more thanhelping a company turn a profit. It means
contributing to communities.
That’s why in 2008 computer giant International
Business Machines Corp. (IBM) started its Corporate
Service Corps linking its employees to governments andnonprofit organizations in developing countries. It is partof a new era of international volunteerism.
Based in Armonk, New York, IBM spends $60
million a year on the corps. “It’s at the intersection oftechnology, economic development and job creation,”
said Stanley Litow, IBM’s vice president of corporate
citizenship. Since the program began, IBM has sent some
1,400 of its employees to work on projects in about 50
countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Litow said
that’s more than any other company doing pro bonowork in the developing world.

The Corporate Service Corps enables IBM to
identify and train its next generation of skilled leaderswhile helping developing nations solve pressing problems,
Litow said. “This is a model that increasingly othercompanies will be emulating.”
The program offers a triple benefit, Litow said:
technical assistance for the communities it serves, achance for employees to hone their leadership andtechnical skills, and inroads for new markets.
Teams consisting of six to 12 employees with skills
in technology, science, marketing, finance or businessdevelopment immerse themselves in places like Cross
River State, Nigeria; Chiang Mai, Thailand; andJohannesburg for up to one month while developing
solutions to local challenges. “They are providing thoseskills to make a real difference,” Litow said.

eJournal USA 34

courtesy of IBM

courtesy of Mathian Osicki & Lisa Lanspery, IBM Corporate Communications

This healthy child brings a beautiful smile to her mother’s face. IBM’s
corporate volunteers in Nigeria have chosen health care as a target for
their service.

Team members come from IBM locations around theworld. They have 2 1/2 months of preparation before theyleave home, meeting with fellow team members via phone,over the Internet and in person. They receive information
about project goals and their host country’s culture.
The Johannesburg team was asked to recommend
ways to use information technology to improve thecity’s public safety infrastructure. “Public safety is solinked to economic development and livability,” Litow
said. “The project required people with expertisein safety, software development, business processes,
government, law and finance.”
Ron Dombroski, an IBM marketing executive, went
to Johannesburg as part of the six-member team that
included colleagues from India, Brazil and the United

Another IBM team went to Nigeria and worked ona health care project for pregnant women and young
children in remote villages in Cross River State. The
IBM team networked each clinic into a cloud computing
environment, with fingerprint reader cards to ensurethat medical records for each mother and child areaccurate and complete. That gave doctors quick access to
information needed to make good decisions. (In cloudcomputing, an organization rents excess server capability
from another entity, freeing it from the need to acquire
its own data center.)With IBM’s help, the Cross River State health project
expanded the number of people it served from 1,000 to
20,000 in a short time, Litow said.
In Jakarta, the Corporate Service Corps is helping to
improve the city’s transportation system. In Chiang Mai,
an IBM team is working on an information system thatwill help the city expand its health tourism industry. In
Cebu, Philippines, corps members are helping officials
develop a land-use plan.
The idea of corporate volunteerism is catching onwith companies like Dow Corning, PepsiCo, Novartis
and John Deere, which are looking at IBM’s model,
Litow said. IBM is also working with the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) and CDC
Development Solutions, a consulting firm, to build a
website for international corporate volunteerism wherecompanies can share information about their programs.
“If businesses share their skills and knowledge withgovernments and people of the developing world, we’ll all
be better off,” Litow said. n

Kathryn McConnell is a staff writer with the State
Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs.

eJournal USA 35
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Additional Resources on Volunteerism
Websites

America’s Promise: The
Alliance for Youth
http://www.americaspromise.org

International Rescue
Committee
http://www.rescue.org

Corporation for National andCommunity Service
http://www.nationalservice.gov

National Volunteer Fire Council
http://www.nvfc.org

Habitat for Humanity International
http://www.habitat.org

The UNV Online
Volunteering Service
http://www.onlinevolunteering.
org/en/index.html

VideosVolunteer Vacations: Rebuilding
New Orleans
http://www.youtube.com/americagov#p/
search/2/o7rX-VzeOEM

Playing Midnight
Basketball
http://www.youtube.com/
americagov#p/search/3/
FAO89Gis6nw

For Americans, leisure isn’t just a time
to relax; it can also be a time to come to the aid ofothers. And many Americans feel a special responsibility to help the people of New Orleans who
were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2008.

An inner-city programin Richmond, Virginia,
teaches the value of hard work and cooperation
giving at-risk youth hope for the future.

Youth Volunteers
http://www.youtube.com/americagov#p/
search/0/2LNcp0PyFpo

Walking to End Hunger
http://www.youtube.com/
americagov#p/search/1/
N8O0T5w-4js

Students and teachers talk about thevalue and benefit of helping othersin their schools, the local community
and around the world. The speakers are students
and teachers at West Springfield High School, asecondary school in Northern Virginia.

Bikes for the World
http://www.youtube.com/americagov#p/
search/2/g91-rEtYUBU
A bicycle can give someone the opportunity to get to work or school or starta business. American volunteers for
Bikes for the World collect used bicycles and shipthem to developing countries where they make adramatic improvement in people lives.

The annual Hartford
Walk Against Hunger
is the largest fundraiser
dedicated to fighting hunger and malnutrition in
the state of Connecticut. Each year, secular andreligious groups join together to raise money.
GlobalGiving Fundraising
Efforts for Japan
http://www.youtube.com/
americagov#p/u/140/
QeWP40L7lB8
Mari Kuraishi—CoFounder and Presidentof GlobalGiving—speaks about the fundraisingefforts being coordinated by her non-profit organization in support of Japan.

©St. Petersburg Timnes/Gail Diederich/The Image Works

A desire to share knowledge with strangers from distant lands animates many American volunteers. Many U.S. senior citizens volunteer as tutors andmentors to schoolchildren.

The U.S. Department of State assumes no responsibility for the content and availability of the resources listed above. All Internet links were active as of December 2011.

eJournal USA 36

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