Gentry
"Perspectives"
April, 2005 |
The Value of Volunteering
Gentry's Christine VanDeVelde discovers one of the South Bay's most
valuable commodities There is an underground economy thriving
here in Silicon Valley. It doesn't get included in the official GDP or
payroll statistics, but our world wouldn't go around without it. It's the
volunteer economy. And we're not talking about dressing up to dance the
night away at charity balls. We're talking about volunteer jobs that are
essential to our community.
It becomes obvious fairly quickly, for example, once you start looking at
the volunteer economy, that our schools could not survive without it --
let alone hospitals, Cub Scout dens, homeless shelters, AIDs hospices,
youth mentor centers and reading programs. Most women really start to
appreciate the scope of it when they become mothers. It's among those
things that you were unaware of until you had children, like nut allergies
and the unmitigated joy of sharing the words of Margaret Wise Brown. In
fact, studies show that volunteer rates are highest among parents of
children under eighteen. Around here that means a volunteer talent pool
with remarkable depth and breadth, an awesome reserve of women who have
taken a hiatus from high-powered careers to stay home and raise children.
There's the pony-tailed woman in a tennis skirt on the Board of Trustees
who's a former corporate lawyer. There's the organizer of the gala who
used to head Human Resources for AT&T and the start-up CEO who cashed in
her options and now drives carpool for every field trip. There's Elaine
Wood of Palo Alto, a Harvard MBA, who circumnavigated the globe as a vice
president of marketing in high tech, and now transacts business from the
sidelines of the soccer fields, overseeing the bottom line of Castilleja
School's annual benefit. With the polish and people skills, I might add,
that should be part of the job description for a Secretary of State.
Nanci Fredkin of Monte Sereno possesses both a convivial style and utter
competence at any task she turns her attention to. A former executive at
Estee Lauder, she's the Pearl Mesta of the Peninsula, the kind of
volunteer whom everyone rushes to volunteer for. Fredkin thinks women
often use volunteer work to recapture the autonomy they had in their
former professional lives. Instead of taking the "Desperate Housewives"
route, these women make sandwiches for shut-ins, create ad campaigns for
local schools, and talk the chairman of a local Fortune 500 company into a
big donation to cancer research.
There is certainly some truth in that analysis, but there is also one life
experience that reliably paves the way for a future career as a volunteer.
Those women who are most likely to volunteer as adults are those who
volunteered as children. Fredkin got started when she donated the proceeds
from her lemonade stand to the children's ward at Oakland Hospital. She
vividly remembers taking those hard-earned dollars to the hospital, being
given a tour of the children's ward, told they would use her funds to buy
a new toy for the children, and thanked for her efforts. "Now clearly,
volunteers at a hospital wouldn't take that kind of time with a
kindergartener," says Fredkin. "But at the time, I had no appreciation of
the behind-the-scenes work my mother must have done to model the impact
that volunteer work has." It was a life lesson she never forgot.
As parents, we give our time and money in efforts to which we have a
deep-seated connection. It doesn't matter whether it's brand-name causes
-- like Packard Children's Hospital, College Track, Cure Autism Now, the
American Cancer Society, and Valle Monte League – or coaching a Little
League team, reading aloud at the children's library or serving hot lunch
at the elementary school. We live in a time and place with many
opportunities for generosity. But to insure these causes continue to
flourish, maybe the most important job we can volunteer for is raising our
children in the tradition of giving back. Whether it's serving supper in a
soup kitchen, collecting clothes for battered women or donating the
proceeds from a lemonade stand, creating lifelong volunteers is an
investment in the future of this thriving economy our communities depend
on. |
