The theme of this speech will not be “viva la difference.” God made both men and women - each for its own purposes and with its own dignity - and looking down on this audience, I am sure that God is pleased with Her handiwork.
The Bible in the Book of Proverbs says, "...A woman of valor who can find her, for her price is far above rubies; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hand to the needy.”
This Council’s record of service in this field stretches back over 72 years. It is a magnificent record of achievement and success. Yet, there is now reason to believe that this organization, and the voluntary movement as a whole, is entering a new phase - indeed, a new era - in which each of you - and all of you collectively, will be called upon to play new roles.
In the past we have paid lip service to volunteer efforts. We said how indispensable they were! But, in fact, we treated volunteers as second-class citizens. We relegated them to jobs such as raising money, sitting on advisory councils, holding benefits, and playing subordinate roles, both in the rendition of service and in the making of policy. Your ability, your talent, your intelligence has rarely been utilized - except, perhaps, to pry contributions from your husbands. And your energy, your industry, your moral indignation were both exploited and looked down upon as amateurish do-goodism.
Rigid lines were drawn - between the accredited professional and the volunteer - between the paid staff person and the volunteer - between the full-time employee and the part-time volunteer. These differences – these distinctions - became status symbols, indications of rank and subordinacy. And they served as barriers to service, to full participation, and to the fullest possible utilization of your talents, your sensitivities and your abilities.
All of this seems to me to be changing - and changing for a number of reasons. First, the need is so great that we, as a society, can no longer afford this closed professional guild approach to service. There are needs. People are suffering. These needs must be filled. Second, we are beginning to wake up to the silliness of our dichotomies. We don’t have to play the all-or-nothing game. The all-or-nothing game said - if you don’t have a postgraduate degree, then you are nothing but unskilled menial labor – if you can’t donate your services without reimbursement for expenses, then you are not a volunteer, because only employees get paid money, not volunteers - if you can’t work full time, then your part-time services are worthless, except for minor and trivial jobs. Third, we are finding out that money alone - doles, living allowances, and other forms of financial help, are not enough. Service, guidance, affection, compassion are needed-and there simply aren’t enough professionals to go around - to do the human jobs. Finally, we are finding out that for many of these human jobs, these most fundamental jobs, it is not necessary to have a Ph.D. In fact, there are some who would say that a Ph.D. degree can even be a hindrance to a direct person-to-person relationship. Man does not live by bread alone, but he doesn’t live by brains alone either. The professional working alone and overburdened is indispensable: but the need - the crying need - is for warm, sensitive human beings with a capacity to feel, with a willingness to spend time on another human being, with the diligence and the perseverance not to wash their hands of a problem when things get tough and grimy.
That’s what it takes - that’s what we-need.
Professionals - and especially overworked and overburdened professionals - are no substitute for companionship and understanding and concern.
Any other approach, we are finding out, and particularly an overemphasis on professionalism and a subordination of the volunteer is wasteful! We made the first breakthrough nationally, I think, the first major change in the meaning and status and role of the volunteer, with the Peace Corps. Early on, in the Peace Corps, we had to make a decision - a critical decision. Should we professionalize all volunteers? Or should we train them for the jobs and for the culture, and let them find the way? Despite what the experts said, you know what we chose. We chose to let the volunteer find his own way, and to let the people he was to help, help him!
Now with the Domestic Peace Corps, VISTA - Volunteers in Service to America - we are beginning to find the same thing. Ironically volunteer groups objected to the use of the word “Volunteer” in the title. They said, these persons are not volunteers - twenty-four carat volunteers – because they get paid a “subsistence allowance!”
Back before the poverty program was passed, I can remember sitting in the office of Congresswoman Frances P. Bolton. To me, she represented the personification of the volunteer - of the great tradition of voluntary effort in America. And I can remember Congresswoman Bolton saying: “But those aren’t volunteers. After all, you would be paying them a subsistence allowance of seventy-five dollars a month! That’s not a volunteer!”
And I can remember replying to Mrs. Bolton, `"I’m old enough to remember the days when the United States Army was composed entirely of volunteers. There was no draft and there were no draftees. But these men had volunteered their services. Shouldn’t they be paid, fed and housed? That was a volunteer army. And that’s the sense in which we mean volunteer today.”
We should not accept the all-or-nothing definition of a volunteer. We should not relegate voluntary service agencies to a subordinate status.
People - poor people - are in need. And for their sake, as well as for our own, we can’t afford to get trapped by the traditional distinctions between volunteers and professionals. New jobs - important jobs - desperately urgent jobs are opening up! Here’s an example:
Out in Oakland, California, a young woman, 22 years of age, heard about a mother and her six children who had been taken off of welfare. She went directly to the mother and she looked around and she asked questions. She found out that the roof over those six children’s heads had burned down because of faulty wiring. And the welfare people had cut off their check -heir bread and water - and heat and electricity, because without a roof this family was living in illegal housing! That young woman couldn’t stomach that! Like Esther in the Bible, she went down with that woman to the high authorities and demanded justice. She found out what it was like to be poor - to be, shunted around from person to person. But she didn’t give up. And that modern-day Esther pleaded her case with these somewhat un-Biblical words: “What legal basis do you have for withholding the check?” She pleaded the case, and like Esther - she prevailed. The family was put back on the payroll!
And then there was a man - a man 61 years old from Brownsville, Texas totally blind. But he couldn’t prove he was blind. The Social Security Administrators wouldn’t believe him and he couldn’t convince the doctors that even though he was blind, arthritic and tubercular, he was totally disabled. For four years his case dragged on. For four years, until a courageous woman, a volunteer, took that blind old man by the hand. And together they went down to the courthouse to seek justice. But they found - what the poor often find, that their case was not important enough for a court or a judge or a lawyer, and that it had been remanded to a “Hearing Examiner.” Finally, after three days of hospital testing by a battery of doctors, out came the conclusion that there was no work that this man could do, and that he was entitled to total disability pay dating back to four years. Yet, before he got a cent of that money, a vocational rehabilitation expert ran through a list of 1,500 jobs trying to find some job for the man. But he couldn’t. And finally four years later the man got his money. And it took a woman’s persistence to get the results.
These are one-to-one situations - one woman, one person in need. But the work of volunteers is not limited to one individual woman working with one individual poor person. On December 19, the Washington Post published this story: “Washington grade school principals, who were told Thursday to make sure every needy child gets a free lunch, added nearly 400 children to the program yesterday.”
The fact that some needy children were not receiving free lunches was brought to light by school volunteers. They found hungry children in some schools getting in line to receive the lunches of those who were in the program, but were absent that day.
“One official admitted privately that some principals had not been as aggressive about putting needy children on the free lunch program as they ought to have been.”
“Teachers report that the free lunch the children receive is, in some cases, the best meal of the day.”
“Yesterday, the children ate a cheese sandwich on buttered bread with lettuce, a tossed salad with Russian dressing, half a pint of milk and an orange. Thursday, they had corned beef sandwiches.”
Four hundred children, who before went hungry, are now getting the free lunches which Congress and the nation intended them to get. Once again, I am embarrassed, as a man, to confess that women got these results. It reminds me of those lines inscribed on a pillar in the Dane John Field in Canterbury, England:
“Where is the man who has the power and skill to stem the torrent of a woman’s will?” Have you heard about the “Miracle of McKinley?” And I don’t mean William McKinley. I am talking about McKinley, Minnesota. From `newspapers and letters came in this report:
“The progress of the children in a pre-school has been phenomenal in the three months we have been in session, but our greatest satisfaction has been the unbelievably enthusiastic response of the parents. On December 1, we held a ‘parents’ conference, and over 60 parents (and grandparents) of the 70 children enrolled attended this meeting. This number represents almost three times the attendance of an overall PTA meeting held at McKinley previously.”
-- children who never held a book, or heard more than thirty words
-- parents who could not help their children because they saw school as an alien institution
--a place to park their children for six hours
-- both underwent changes--in attitude, in confidence and in ability to learn. And that was done by your own St. Paul Chapter--the St. Paul Chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.
And then there is Venice--I don’t mean Venice, Italy--with all its canals; but Venice, California, with its canals--canals that were dug out half a century ago in a little corner of Los Angeles. That Venice--like the one in Italy was intended to be a fashionable resort area. Those canals in California have bridges just like the ones in Italy. But the water in those canals reeks of garbage. The health authorities in Los Angeles were able only to keep the algae and pollution down to a minimum. Right now, in Venice, a new chapter in the history of the volunteer movement is being written. A total community action program like the ones you hear about in Detroit or Chicago or Atlanta or Pittsburgh is being run and staffed almost entirely by volunteers--by middle-class housewives--by women like yourselves. They couldn’t afford to do it full-time or without some reimbursement for expenses. But in my book, they are volunteers--real volunteers.
Here’s one report I got from that project:
“There was a woman with a 1964 yellow Thunderbird parked outside, with black leather upholstery, bucket seats, and all the trim--dressed in a black silk suit--with a bouffant hairdo--solid gold jewelry, sheer, seamless stockings, I. Miller shoes--and do you know what she was doing? She was saying to a girl in a faded cotton dress with dyed red hair piled up on top of her head—“Would you like me to pick up your sister from kindergarten--in a ‘Thunderbird!”
“Sprawled on a lumpy couch across the room was a tall, well-built boy--18 years old--a school dropout. He had been lucky. He had found steady work delivering fish for one of the main wholesale fish dealers. Lent was coming, and a peak busy season had just begun. But that boy had left work early, and his job was in danger because he had severe pains in his chest. And this woman was asking him: “Do you mean to say that when you went to this doctor down the street and told him how your chest hurt, all he did was give you a penicillin shot and charge you eight dollars? Why don’t you let me drop you off at the Health Clinic a few blocks down the street and let them give you a check up? And then we might look into sick leave or workmen’s compensation.” This woman was called a “Family Agent.” But she and all her co-workers are known simply as the Neumeyer Ladies. That’s the foundation that started this project. You might say these “Family Agents” are not volunteers. They are paid two dollars an hour to defray transportation and baby-sitting expenses. These volunteers include former teachers, social workers, psychologists, and others with college backgrounds who are assigned to work with two-to-five families. Each works as a member of a team. Here’s what they do according to one write-up:
One child may be referred to a youth group supervised by the Neumeyer Foundation; another may be directed to the Youth Employment and Job Training Program. If there is a pregnant teen-age girl in the family, she may be counseled by another member of the Neumeyer team. The family agent may recommend tutorial services for a student needing remedial help; she may attend school conferences with a mother fearful of anyone in a position of authority; she may help organize a family’s budget, read to a pre-schooler, or direct the family to medical and dental services. She is, in effect a friend who knows her way around our culture! She aims to teach the members of the family to ‘stand on their own feet’ and to prepare them to accept the responsibilities of first-class citizenship.”
That’s what we need volunteers for. And that’s what we’re starting to see all over the country.
First, new roles for volunteers are being identified--roles which did not exist until we began to take poverty seriously--until we faced up to it squarely. Second, we are no longer playing the all-or-nothing game. We are finding ways to use volunteers--
-- part time
-- partly paid
-- partly reimbursed
-- partly government-financed.
And we’ve not only discovered poverty. We’ve discovered a vast reservoir of untapped energy, ability and concern—YOU!
And now, it’s time that you and other voluntary organizations reject any status of inferiority. It’s time to take the initiative, to make policy, to be an independent force in shaping anti-poverty programs.
You can do it. You have started already--The-Date: January 15! Let’s go back two and a half months ago.--On that day you and the National Council of Catholic Women, Negro Women and the United Church Women created a new organization called Women in Community Service, Incorporated. Together you signed a contract with the poverty agency--a contract to recruit and screen girls for the Job Corps. That was a revolutionary action.
You, with others, took on a task--of unprecedented scale. Over 1,200 women will be volunteering upwards of 200,000 hours in this project. In the cold, legal language of the contract, you have said that you will screen up to 6,300 applicants, and that--across the country--you will undertake to--
--mobilize and coordinate the efforts of local organizations doing Job Corps recruitment;
--conduct interviews and advise applicants;
--administer mental ability tests;
--advise and refer rejectees.
Those are only four of the fourteen tasks you have said you would do. That day, January 15, a new era began--an era of creative and equal partnership
--between government and the private sector of the economy
-- between paid staff and volunteers
-- between professionals and nonprofessionals. And it is long overdue. It comes--
-- in response to a newly acknowledged need
-- in response to your efforts over, the years to focus attention on the poor
--in response to the discovery that in you, this nation has more than ample reserves of the highest quality.
And that if we will only draw those reserves onto the battlefield, the War on Poverty will be won!
Yes! It is a new era--but in another and humbling sense, it is as old as scriptures, as old as your great and historic tradition. An era when we would do well to go back to the Twelfth Century writings of that great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides:
He wrote of the eight degrees of charity. In the first four, he pinpointed all too accurately the nature of our past actions toward the poor--
The first step of charity, he said--Was to give--but with reluctance or regret. The second was to give--But skimpily--not proportionately the distress of the sufferer. The third was to give--but not until, solicited.
And the fourth was to give by putting money “in the poor man’s hand thereby exciting in him the painful, emotion of shame.”
I would like to think that this new era--will be characterized by what Maimonides called the eighth and most meritorious stage of charity--
“. . . To anticipate charity, by preventing poverty; namely, to assist the reduced fellowman, either by a considerable gift, or a loan of money, or by teaching him a trade, or by putting him in the way of business, so that he may earn an honest livelihood; and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity.”
Those few words might well serve as a capsule summary of the programs created by Congress last fall in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 From Job Training to Small Business and Farm Loans--it is all there.
But Maimonides puts those specific measures in a broader context-- a context which goes beyond the specific programs enacted in August. He says:
“To this scripture alludes when it says: And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him: Yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner: That he may live with thee.”
In the War on Poverty, we are engaged in far more than a series of specific measures to help “the reduced fellowman.”
The War on Poverty means more than that.
That war cannot begin and end with legislative programs, with governmental expenditures, with the efforts of federal and local employees. That effort--the eighth and highest level of charity, involves a personal confrontation, a reaching out to the poor, to those fallen in decay. It requires a “taking them in” even though they be a stranger or sojourner. This is something Congress cannot enact-- or require--or appropriate money for.
-- It calls for a personal effort beyond the power of law to compel.
-- It calls for a collective effort beyond the power of law to initiate.
-- It calls for each of you.
And it calls for all of you acting, together--in concert. As that woman of valor--who stretcheth out her hand to the poor, yea, who reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
