Alec Aspinwall is out on the streets of New York City again, serving sandwiches and hot chocolate to two young girls, not yet fourteen years old, already veterans of the street. George Ewing is across the country in Minnesota, but his heart is in India, where undernourished children are eating tasty cookies made of high-protein soy, cookies that are the product of George's--and his fellow professionals'--commitment to feeding the hungry.
Both Aspinwall and Ewing have decided that volunteerism is the best way to realize their vision of a better world. In a world seemingly gone mad with avarice, the American people's generosity remains extraordinary. Giving time, creativity, and money to worthy organizations and individuals has long been part of the American character.
Today, more than twenty-one million Americans volunteer almost five hours a week of their time, according to a 1988 Gallup Poll commissioned by Independent Sector, a nonprofit organization that studies charitable efforts in the United States. The positive effects of the volunteer work cannot, of course, be quantified, but the numbers are mind-boggling. Americans volunteer about 14.9 billion hours a year to formal charities, equaling the work of almost eight and three-quarters million full-time employees. It would take $150 billion to replace the volunteer efforts with paid labor.
No dollar figure can explain why Aspinwall drives a beat-up Chevy van in the streets of one of America's worst neighborhoods. Some of his old friends might well be shocked. Just two years ago he was driving a fancy car and bringing home huge paychecks from his job with a San Francisco development firm. But Aspinwall did not find life in the fast lane satisfying, so he quit his job and volunteered to work for Covenant House--a New York City crisis center for homeless kids--where he receives room, board, and twelve dollars a week pay. It is, he assures people, the best move of his life: "I am happy to have left behind the rungs of the corporate ladder and to finally be heeding the call of the Spirit."
Aspinwall is also happy to offer an alternative life to those on the street. The teenage girls he is talking with have both turned to prostitution to make a living; they had been kicked out of their homes by abusive and drug-dependent parents. Aspinwall is hustling these girls, but for a reason very different from why most men approach them. One of his jobs with Covenant House is to man the outreach van, trying to connect with homeless children who might not know about the services his organization provides. He is giving the girls information about how Covenant House can help them get off the street and back into a normal life.
Individuals And Corporations
Volunteerism cuts across all age, ethnic, economic and sociological categories. In Oklahoma, six-year-old Brian Farish worked for six months to collect fifty dollars so he could buy toys for poor children. In Minnesota, Calvin Katter, ninety-one, puts in forty-hour weeks helping the organization he founded a quarter century ago collect religious literature for the Third World. Paul Woolard, when he was president of the Revlon Group, spent his days among the rich and powerful of the nation. One night a week, though, Woolard hobnobbed with a different crowd. He spent that evening in a Lower East Side soup kitchen,
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