Chapter 8: Volunteering

Last week a few of us volunteered at the Red Cross Food Pantry. We spent the morning sorting food into bags and distributing the food to people who came to the pantry. Sharon, the volunteer coordinator, was an amazing woman, both tough and compassionate with the people she serves. It was a very moving experience to give food to people in need and it was a good reminder of how fortunate I am.

When I talk to members of spouses&partners@mit, it seems that volunteering is a very American activity. Some statistics I found: 26 percent of Americans age 16 or older, performed unpaid work for a nonprofit organization and about 65% of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity. In other countries, the work we consider to be volunteer work is often a paid job or a service provided by the government. Mori talks about how Japanese people are not expected to do volunteer work for strangers. People would wonder why that person isn't doing something to help their own family.

I think a lot about why volunteering is important to Americans. I think part of the reason Americans volunteer and donate to charity is that we prefer to make decisions about how our money is spent on a very local level. We don't trust the federal government to make good decisions with our money, so we prefer to make spending decisions on the state level and in our local cities and towns. Volunteering and donating allows us to decide exactly which causes and institutions we want to support, rather than letting the politicians in a faraway city decide for us.

What are your thoughts about volunteering? How it is viewed in your country?