Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991                   TAG: 9103260471
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VOLUNTEERS/ AS GIVERS, TEEN-AGERS OUTDO ELDERS

The criticism is always overdrawn. Often the elders making the criticism don't notice that they may have grown smug and self-righteous and are more materialistic than their offspring.

Now comes evidence that a majority of today's young Americans not only are concerned about others and their community, but also give generously of their time to help the poor, the elderly and other needy.

A survey by the Gallup Organization found that 58 percent of teen-agers said they did volunteer work in 1989, compared with 54 percent of adults.

On average, they undertook 2.6 volunteer assignments a year and gave 3.9 hours a week. Twenty-five percent gave five or more hours a week. This translates into 1.2 billion volunteer hours by teens.

A study last October also indicated that Americans in their 20s, stereotyped as caring about nothing but careers and possessions, gave a bit more of their time to serve others than did those 30 and older.

It's natural for people to offer less of themselves as they take on full-time jobs and obligations such as marriage and family. The signs are encouraging that as they move out of volunteer efforts, some others will be ready to take those up.

Not as many as there should be, of course. Volunteering answers an impulse, but it needs encouragement and guidance. Not only are parents often delinquent when it comes to encouraging young people to take an interest in the community and the needy. Schools often are as well.

It may soften the principle, but it does not contradict the value or the effect of volunteering to ask someone to do it.

The survey on teens says most got into such activities through schools and religious organizations. Somebody, it seems, is teaching youths to care and do.

Wide-eyed, fresh-scrubbed youngsters will embark on such tasks condescending to the poor unfortunates; but the more time they give to this work, the more they'll discover a feeling of kinship with those they're helping.

It also appears from the survey that teens put more faith in institutions that serve others - charities, health and social-service organizations, colleges - than they do in big, impersonal entities such as government and organized labor (though they serve people, too).

So perhaps youth is not just loud music, fast cars and hanging out at malls; perhaps, as in the past (or, if you like, as in your day) it's also a time of idealism, of a search for meaning and self-worth that possessions and flurries of motion can't give.

Some jobs are too large, too complex or too sophisticated for volunteers. They can't replace all the efforts of government, laboratories, hospitals and the like.

But other talents are needed to make those big institutions better at what they do. Some who come to labor in the trenches as youths may find there is work they can do as adults that also helps others, and that offers its own rewards.

Not all can be hailed as heroic, but all of us - young and old - can devote ourselves in some way to the larger community.