It is time for these streams of thought to enter into dialogue with one another. When they do, environmentalists and social activists will make common cause, for the planet like the poor, suffers from our exploitation. Volunteering is nice, and it's good to know our students these days are nice. Research on the salutary effects of volunteering applauds both youth volunteering and adult volunteering, even as it assesses them differently. Volunteering provides students with formative experiences.
Adults donate labor that makes a difference to the organizations they serve.
As young adults, college-age volunteers are mature and resourceful enough to be useful, inexperienced and thoughtful enough to learn. In the U.S., adult volunteering represents an enormous donation of resources. The major national survey of volunteering, currently rethinking its own estimates because they seem low in comparison with results from regional studies, pegs the number of hours volunteered in 1999 at almost 20 billion. That's the equivalent of about 10 million full-time workers. Roughly one quarter of that time goes to the sorts of faith-based organizations targeted by George W. Bush's fledgling administration to shoulder a bigger share of the country's social service provision.