Apathy, as they say, runs rampant, as does laziness.
People, especially my generation, the 30-somethings to 50-somethings, are not taking the time to volunteer. In my town of Marion, the town has been forced to post classified ads in local newspapers to announce positions on volunteer boards that no one wants a part of. The town’s biggest party, The Marion Block Party, was cancelled in 2011 because the people who had run it for so many years just couldn’t do it anymore, and there was no one there to pick up the slack.
At many of the area’s Portuguese festivals, the average age of volunteers is well past 70 and you can rarely catch a glimpse of any of the young people giving a hand. We’re talking everywhere….New Bedford, Fall River, Taunton and all the small towns in between.
I’ve talked to many people about why they do – or don’t – volunteer their time to help out local organizations and the answers are all generally the same: they are just too busy. I’m not a big fan of that excuse. We just think we are busy, but we find time to golf, shop, fish or whatever else we want.
In fact, the truth is we all tend to prioritize what we want to do over everything else. We are no busier than our parents or grandparents, many of whom worked in the mill for a dozen hours a day, went home to cook meals for their families before shoveling off to night school to learn English.
There’s a disconnect
There’s something lost that we have to find. Working a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving with my 10-year-old, I was taken aback by the abundance of people, actually too many volunteers, who helped out that Thanksgiving morning. Why then and not other times? They, like me, wanted to feel good about themselves by volunteering for the needy before going home to a fat turkey.
But the problem with most volunteering is that there are no apparent rewards like that; just a feeling that you are helping an organization that needs it. That may not be enough for people.
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