Colleges and universities are also communities, and they are growing. We need to make volunteerism and community service central to the idea of being an educated citizen. We need to teach students how to volunteer and why , and we need to create opportunities for them to do so. Well organized, recognized extra-curricular activities are another. Either way, a college or university that makes volunteering a key component of its identity will have a powerful impact on its students and carve out a distinctive niche.
Workplaces are communities, too.
Like any other community, they impart values. More and more businesses are sponsoring employee fitness, family leave, and team training programs to supplement their workers' skills and to instill institutional values and habits that make employees more productive. Programs that offer opportunities for and encourage volunteer service can also be a powerful tenet of workplace culture. Summit organizers have it right when they call upon corporate leaders and others to get aboard the volunteer movement. The values that a workplace adopts, and the programs it sponsors, will go a long way toward determining whether we can once and for all lift 15 million at risk youth up to safer ground and whether we can, once and for all, help people off the welfare rolls and onto the payrolls.