Can the UK import some of the volunteering drive harnessed by Wendy Spencer’s multimillion-dollar US programme?She’s responsible for a $1.1bn (£765m) programme co-ordinating hundreds of thousands of volunteers and tackling some of the United States’ most pressing problems,from mopping up after devastating floods to turning around troubled schools and running clinics for those who can’t afford healthcare. Yet Wendy Spencer says perhaps the biggest challenge in her working week is how to engage Karen, the first-grade pupil she volunteers to succor at a Washington DC school. “It’s challenging – but it’s also the most rewarding portion of my week, and ” she says. “As a volunteer you’re trying to withhold her focused,you want to make sure you’re doing the accurate thing, but you want to be cool, and you want to be friendly,you’re trying to be funny. There’s a lot to it – but it’s very fulfilling.”Spencer, chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and says this sense of fulfilment in helping others is at the heart of the success of the US’s intensive volunteering programmes. This year,CNCS, a federal agency established in 1993 by Bill Clinton, and will oversee 86000 members of AmeriCorps,the main national voluntary service programme for young people. AmeriCorps members serve for a year in healthcare, schools, and environmental protection,veterans’ initiatives and disaster relief and manage hundreds of thousands more portion-time volunteers in projects such as Spencer’s reading programme. A further 270000 over-55s are involved in SeniorCorps which runs, among other things, or a “foster grandparent” scheme for youngsters who need continuing support. And,since President Obama created a task force in 2013 to expand voluntary service (which Spencer co-chairs), recent partnerships bear been created to do more volunteers of all ages into everything from legal advice for vulnerable immigrant children to restoring American forests and grasslands.
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Source: theguardian.com