Nothing left to give Cuts to jobs and services are strangling volunteerism, just when we need it the most by Dr. Marge Reitsma-Street

Last year was the International Year of the Volunteer, acknowledging important contributions people make to their communities. This year, cuts to jobs, services and freedoms in the public and private sectors threaten the very conditions fostering those contributions.
     People volunteer millions of hours to community work, providing informal mutual aid, direct services and planning to community centres, neighbourhood houses, soup kitchens, soccer leagues, churches, unions, political parties, women’s centres and men’s clubs. This community work is essential to “social capital” — the connections and trust created as citizens take time to talk with one other, to help and have fun together, and to address problems that can’t be tackled by any one individual or group.
     Volunteering is not confined to the healthy and wealthy. People living on low incomes also donate substantial volunteer time and energy. In the fall of 2000 a study was published in the journal Canadian Public Policy on volunteering in five poor Ontario neighbourhoods. The 1,000 hours donated monthly to community resource centres by people living in those neighbourhoods doubled and tripled the number of equivalent full-time positions available for programs and committee work.
     In 1997 the Ontario government recognized the value of these thousands of volunteer hours as a “successful investment” and decided not to close community resource centres as originally planned. Instead, it guaranteed secure funding for centre operations, programs and boards, which are made up in part of people living in the neighbourhoods. That decision was based on evidence that the centres help people work together to promote healthy child development and communities. Volunteers are essential to this work, but without the centres there wouldn’t be the space, encouragement, resources and opportunities for volunteering.
     Volunteering depends on resources. Cut resources, and volunteering is cut. For every $10 taken out of the budget of a neighbourhood house or community association, approximately $5 in time or in-kind services disappear. For every hour of paid work eliminated, two to three hours of volunteer work evaporate. Volunteers and community work depend on permanent paid workers and funded services.
     With recent cuts in the private and public sector, the unemployment rate in B.C. has climbed to more than nine per cent. Unemployed people have less energy and money to do community work. Youth and students, no longer eligible for social assistance, must work longer at low wages and spend more time commuting between several jobs, or wait by a phone hoping for a call to work. They have little time to do community work. There’s even less opportunity to do community work for the one in five people living on low incomes in B.C., especially as health, education, childcare and housing costs increase.
     For the 246,020 citizens in B.C. living on social assistance, recent cuts and policy proposals severely constrain their opportunities and capacity to volunteer. These constraints seriously affect the welfare of communities. The proposed B.C. Employment and Assistance Act, announced Jan. 17, will drastically cut the already restricted eligibility, low welfare rates, and minimal support services.
     For example, B.C. will be the first province to completely cut off assistance to people who have spent two years looking for employment; they can only reapply for assistance after three years of “independent” living on the streets. As for parents on assistance, their work of taking care of children will be discounted. When the youngest child is three years-old, parents must look for employment, even if no adequate childcare is available.
     If the proposed legislative changes are passed, people on social assistance will be denied more than services and resources. They risk being cut off from their community, and the opportunities to do community work. With so little money and so many expectations to remain eligible for assistance, energy must be poured into individual survival.
     A consequence of cuts in assistance, services and jobs for all citizens is that the need for informal and formal volunteering will increase. If there are cuts to the programs, staff, services and general budgets in neighbourhood houses and community centres, volunteering will decrease just when most needed.
     Community associations require stability, resources and paid staff to foster volunteering. Undermining them, especially in these socially and economically difficult times, will threaten the vehicles by which communities care for themselves. Adequate funding from governments, banks, unions, businesses and churches are required to sustain the volunteering lifeblood or social capital of communities.
     Social capital cannot substitute for economic capital; they are not equivalent. Both are necessary and depend on one another. Without resources, and without community places or associations in which people take pride and pleasure, volunteering decreases, diminishing the trust and civic engagement in communities.
     If this province opens up to business by cutting the conditions needed to accumulate social capital, then its people are not coming first, and the welfare of all communities suffers.
     Dr. Marge Reitsma-Street is a UVic professor of studies in policy and practice in health and social services, and a professor in the school of social work.