
DATE: Sunday, April 27, 1997                TAG: 9704280199

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  154 lines

SERVICES RUN ON VOLUNTEER FUEL THEIR HELP CAN MEAN EVERYTHING - FOR NOTHING

Susan Presson, volunteer coordinator for the American Red Cross Tidewater in Norfolk, came in one morning recently to discover she needed blood from three blood drives picked up and there was no one to do it.

Then Charlie Hill called.

``It must have been just by the grace of God,'' Presson says. ``He said, `What can I do for you today?' I just about cried.''

Charlie Hill is a 75-year-old retired Navy officer whose wife, Martha, receives radiation treatments three times a week. But on the days she's not being treated, she fixes sandwiches for the two of them and they drive blood wherever the Red Cross needs it. That day, it was Greenville, N.C.

``It was a good, rainy day, and I didn't have anything else to do,'' Hill says. ``I just feel this is a service I can render. I had a good friend who was a volunteer for the Red Cross, and he got me started on this.''

Thousands of people in Hampton Roads transport blood, paint houses, receive hospital visitors, and save lives - at no charge. They save their neighbors, in Hampton Roads and across the nation, millions of dollars in taxes and other costs, and they keep many agencies from going under entirely.

They're volunteers - living proof that you can get something for nothing.

Colin Powell, President Bill Clinton and former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush are convening a three-day summit in Philadelphia today to celebrate volunteerism and figure out how to get more of us to do it.

There are widely conflicting statistics on how many Americans volunteer their time. All that matters, those in the thick of it say, is that many do but many more could.

``The barriers for people getting started are usually time,'' says Paula B. Cook, executive director of VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads, a clearinghouse in Norfolk for volunteers.

``You find that once they get their foot in the door and find something they're interested in, then time's suddenly no longer an issue. But you've got to hook them first.''

Some studies show that time limitations are irrelevant. One survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington, D.C., found that mothers, even working mothers, are more likely to volunteer than women without children.

That's because, like Hill, they get hooked into volunteering by friends or family. The elementary school needs help, or the church, or the soccer league. They don't complain, they go to work.

When Dr. Steve Pearman finishes a long day at Princess Anne Family Practice, he often starts another shift at the Beach Health Clinic, an all-volunteer effort to provide health care to the uninsured.

``It sounds corny, but I went into medicine thinking that if I had the privilege of becoming a physician, I wanted to give something back to the community,'' he says. ``That's where I really want to put my effort.

``What I like about the Beach Health Clinic is I'm helping people who are trying to help themselves. They are the working poor.''

Officials of the Red Cross and the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia, to name just two agencies, say they either would cease to exist or would require massive new funding if they didn't have volunteers. The Red Cross uses 3,000 volunteers in the Mid-Atlantic region, and the Foodbank keeps a database of 1,500 to call upon.

``We never have enough volunteers,'' said Barbara Mann, volunteer coordinator for the Foodbank in Norfolk. ``We'll never say no to a new volunteer who wants to come and help. You always need fresh people to come in and help out.''

In larger operations, it's not simple to use volunteers. Like paid employees, they often must be trained and managed.

``They don't want to drop in and stuff envelopes, they want to do something meaningful,'' says Cook, the VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads director. ``That's often more difficult to arrange.''

The largest, smartest operations employ volunteer coordinators just to deal with the logistics. Many potential volunteers want to work with children and the elderly. But agencies must do background checks on anyone put into those settings, and that costs money and time.

It can be worth the investment, however. Consider this demonstration of volunteer power: Virginia Beach is the largest city in the country served by an all-volunteer emergency medical service.

``If the city turned around and had to pay for this, it would cost $7 million,'' says Ed Brazle, a division chief with the city's Department of Emergency Medical Services and a volunteer himself. ``And we're progressing and doing new things every year.''

About 700 volunteers run the service's stations and ambulances, working a minimum of 48 hours a month. Many work much more than that.

``It's a balancing, a juggling act,'' Brazle says. ``Not everybody can do it. You have to have a family commitment.''

The Virginia Beach emergency service would seem to be a perfect case for the argument that government doesn't have to do everything. But Cook says it's not that cut and dried.

``I think there's huge strength in volunteerism, and it needs to be recognized and managed. I think we need a balance.

``On any one issue, you're always going to find a community where the government's not doing it, the community is. But that doesn't mean it's possible everywhere.''

The Presidents' Summit for America's Future is rightly focusing on a more important topic, Cook says: how to increase volunteering among young people and channel it in the right direction.

A study by the Independent Sector, a charities watchdog, concluded that children and teen-agers who volunteer are more likely to continue when they are adults than children who don't volunteer.

At the Virginia Marine Science Museum in Virginia Beach, more than 300 teen-agers interpret the exhibits for visitors, giving them information about the plants and animals. Kathleen Reed, the museum's volunteer coordinator, says many of the youth volunteers go on into science careers, and some come back to work at the museum as adults, either on staff or as volunteers.

``We don't push them to do anything they're really uncomfortable with, but we do encourage them to do public programs,'' Reed says. ``And I can't tell you how many young people come back and say, `Gee, I'm not afraid to do oral presentations now or present myself in public.' They meet people from all over the world - they're always excited about that.''

Michele Moody, 17, is practically a fixture at the museum, having volunteered there since the second grade. Sunday mornings she helps in the otter habitat and with the trail animals. In the evenings, she helps run Girl Scout sleepovers in the museum.

It's hard for her to explain why she enjoys the work, but she says she thinks about it a lot as she prepares for college.

``I get to work with animals, and I like that. I help people understand the exhibits, and I feel like that's important, too.''

More than anything, Cook says, there's a need for people to initiate projects themselves without waiting for government or a service agency.

``If your neighborhood needs cleaning up, go do it,'' Cook says. ``Don't wait for some agency to have a board of directors meeting and decide what their mission is and whether or not this fits.

``Go do it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MARK MITCHELL/The Virginian-Pilot

Volunteers Helen Clanton and Dorothy Holloway load food boxes at the

Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia. Foodbank officials say they

either would cease to exist or would require massive new funding if

they didn't have volunteers.

Graphic

HOW YOU CAN HELP

There are many ways to find opportunities for volunteering.

The main regional clearinghouse is VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads, at

100 E. Main St., Norfolk. The agency's number is 624-2400. It

publishes annual and quarterly directories of volunteer