PROFILES & PERSPECTIVES:
EMPLOYEES WHO VOLUNTEER
In this section:
Volunteers Find Personal Ways to Deliver Help
Chopping and Cooking for Charity Is Hands-On Aid
Wallin's Gospel Piano Cheers Metro Center Homeless
Gregory Helps Fix Homes through Habitat for Humanity Volunteer Work
Tucker Is Church Youth Advisor
Kaufman Promotes Democracy Abroad But Practices It in Maryland
Gray Involved with Boy Scouts
Volunteers Find Personal Ways to Deliver Help
Although the 8,000 Agency employees around the world are all helping to deliver America's humanitarian and development assistance, many staffers in Washington, D.C., have found volunteering is a way to feel a personal involvement in what otherwise can be a remote bureaucracy.
People who serve food to patients with AIDS or serve on a school board give of their time in a direct way that they say feels rewarding and satisfying.
Writing contracts, auditing shipments of grain, and handling the program funds or policies for billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid often ends up as an office-bound occupation that never touches the people who benefit from aid.
This month, FrontLines interviewed a few of the many Agency staffers who give of themselves in volunteering for tasks that give that more personal touch. Their stories are featured on this page.
Chopping and Cooking for Charity Is Hands-On Aid
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Left to right: Barbara Mascarenas, Beata Czajkowska, and Shamila Chaudhary work in the Office of Democracy and Governance and volunteer their free time at a Food and Friends kitchen. Nick Swedberg, USAID |
Chopping for charity: that is how the three volunteers jokingly refer to their once-a-week stint helping out at the Food and Friends kitchen, which makes and delivers meals and groceries for people living with AIDS and other life-challenging diseases.
"It's something different from the office: it's a lot more tangible than being a bureaucrat," said Beata Czajkowska, who has volunteered since November. "We mostly deal with papers and directives. We're far removed from the field."
"Right," added Barbara Mascarenas, who started at Food and Friends six months earlier. "With this you know that a few days after you've made the meal it's going to be served to someone."
The two women—along with Shamila Chaudhary—work at the Information Unit within USAID's Office of Democracy and Governance.
"We had been talking about doing something like tutoring—there are so many things one can do," said Chaudhary. "And this organization turned out to be very viable and dynamic. They are very organized."
During their first few weeks, Chaudhary and Czajkowska packed meals. When they showed commitment to coming in every Monday night, they were reassigned to chopping vegetables.
"It's fascinating to see how a big commercial kitchen works," Czajkowska said. "In your own kitchen, you get three peppers to chop for dinner. Here, you get 20 pounds of peppers! But you get used to it."
While her coworkers volunteer on Monday nights, Mascarenas helps out with the cooking at Food and Friends on early Wednesday mornings.
"If I miss a day I feel bad, because I know my friends have to stay later preparing meals," she said. "And it's a little self-serving too, because I love to cook."
Mascarenas and Chaudhary have volunteered before—at tutoring—working with immigrant youth and the Peace Corps. They said Food and Friends is far more satisfying.
"We are like an army of people who are chopping and portioning meals," said Chaudhary. "We go, see what needs to be done, and get it done."
http://www.foodandfriends.org/
Wallin's Gospel Piano Cheers Metro Center Homeless
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Ukraine desk officer Bob Wallin plays for 8 a.m. services at Epiphany Episcopal Church. Nick Swedberg, USAID |
The 8 a.m. congregation at Washington's Epiphany Episcopal Church sways to gospel standards such as "Amazing Grace" and "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," thanks to Ukraine desk officer Bob Wallin.
Drawing on his Baptist upbringing, Wallin shares his piano-playing skills and gospel repertoire with about 200 worshippers, most of them homeless.
The 1844 stucco church in the shadows of Metro Center office buildings welcomes the area's homeless with an early morning service and a hot breakfast every Sunday.
"I've met a whole group of people I wouldn't have met otherwise," said Wallin, who helped transform the church's poorly attended 8 a.m. service into a way to reach out to the homeless nine years ago.
He calls it "an unvarnished experience, no pretenses."
"What I discovered personally is that the homeless are nameless and faceless all week, and the one thing that turns the conversation positive is if you call a person by name. So people wear name tags," he added.
Volunteers arrive at 6:30 a.m. to cook a meal of grits, bacon, sausage, biscuits, and eggs. Recovering alcoholics and drug addicts come at 7:15 a.m. for a 12-step meeting. A social worker who "got hooked" offers counseling and referrals.
The rector often will put his sermon aside and invite the congregation to a discussion instead. Worshippers participate by doing the Bible readings or helping set up for breakfast.
"While this is not developmental in nature, it serves a real need—and not just to eat," said Wallin. "Some regulars have been coming as long as I've been doing this. A sense of community is growing, where they can feel safe and can relate in a different way than they do the rest of the week."
Gregory Helps Fix Homes through Habitat for Humanity Volunteer Work
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Celeste Gregory, third from right in top row, and Habitat for Humanity volunteers. Courtesy of Celeste Gregory |
Celeste Gregory is not afraid to get her hands dirty.
For years, she has helped poor people rebuild their ceilings or retile their bathrooms and kitchens through Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit group that helps people living in substandard housing around the world.
"I spend my week working with the developing world, with individuals who don't have as many opportunities as we do," said Gregory, 25, who is regional assistant for Africa within the Bureau for Global Health. "But I also recognize that there are needs here in the United States as well, and so I want to help here at home."
Gregory first volunteered where she grew up, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When she moved to the Washington, D.C., region two years ago, she became more involved with her church parish, the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown.
She is now the head of the young adult group, a set of 20- and 30-somethings who volunteer with various nonprofit groups, usually on Saturdays.
"We participate in various volunteer activities, like Hands on Housing, which is parish-based activity similar to Habitat for Humanity," she said. "Right now the parish is renovating and rehabilitating three houses in Columbia Heights."
Gregory said she volunteers because her parents taught their two daughters to always help those in need. She was further drawn to volunteering after she attended a Jesuit university.
"Jesuits are very focused on social justice, so through that experience I learned even more about the importance of giving my time to help others," Gregory said.
As if her plate were not full enough, she is now thinking about volunteering with the Red Cross or with the International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps refugees resettle in the United States.
Tucker Is Church Youth Advisor
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Cynthia Tucker of Legislative and Public Affairs, who is a church volunteer. Nick Swedberg, USAID |
Cynthia Tucker and her daughter are youth advisers at their church.
Tucker got involved when she encouraged her shy, younger daughter to get more involved in the church youth group. "It didn't seem right to me to just drop her off," Tucker said.
Tucker, who works in the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs, sat in on the youth Bible study, meetings, and choir practice, so "it was easy for them to draft me!"
Today, as one of her church's youth advisers, Tucker helps with youth activities and leads the youth ushers who serve at services twice a month.
At a yearly youth revival, participants sing, usher, read scriptures, and hear sermons by the church's youth minister.
Tucker and her fellow youth advisers organize other events, as well. For a weekend in July, seven of them took 30 children and teenagers to the Six Flags amusement park in New Jersey. As Tucker said, "It was a real trip."
Asked whether she is in tune with today's youth, Tucker said she might be "somewhat more up-to-date" than other adults, but that "kids always seem to be two steps ahead of you—they only let you know what they want to let you know."
Kaufman Promotes Democracy Abroad But Practices It in Maryland
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Joshua Kaufman, democracy officer, is active on the county school board. Kathryn Stratos, USAID |
When Joshua Kaufman and his wife moved to Howard County a decade ago, Kaufman decided to get involved with the local community.
A democracy and governance officer covering Asia and the Near East, Kaufman's interest in governance first led him to volunteer on Howard County's ethics commission, which supervises public officials and county employees. He chaired the commission for three of the four years he sat on it.
Then last year a member of the Board of Education resigned, and Kaufman found himself appointed to the post.
"It's mornings and evenings and weekends—it's at least 40 hours a week," he said. "It's like a second full-time job, which is pretty difficult when you take into account that I commute an hour and a half each way."
As a member of the Board of Education, Kaufman, 33, attends at least two unofficial weekly meetings as well as two nearly day-long official monthly meetings.
"Prior to joining the board I rarely used my annual leave," he said. "But since joining the board I've been dipping into that time."
Maryland's Howard County is half way between Washington and Baltimore. It is home to 270,000 citizens—50,000 of them are school children.
"One reason I became interested in development is the notion of helping people, and that's what education is about, too," Kaufman said. "Beyond that, the two are very different."
The board works in three areas. Through its executive function, it manages the school superintendent, overseeing student performance and the financial integrity of the school system.
Through its legislative function, the board sets policies.
And through its judicial arm, it hears appeals by employees alleging to have been wrongly fired by the school system or by parents who feel suspension is too strong a punishment for their child's misbehavior.
"Eventually I'll get burned out," said Kaufman, who is a father of two.
When his term runs out in November 2006, Kaufman will have to decide whether to run for reelection. Either way, with one child in the school system and another on the way, he will remain a volunteer, in whatever capacity.
Gray Involved with Boy Scouts
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Harold Gray works with Boy Scouts. Courtesy of Hal Gray |
Nineteen years ago Harold Gray's sons decided to follow in their father's footsteps and join the Boy Scouts. Gray was thrilled.
So thrilled that today—while his sons, 25 and 27, have moved well beyond their scouting days—Gray still shows troops in Bethesda how to tie knots.
"I continue to derive pleasure from working with other adults in scouting and from supporting a program that I believe is a real benefit to young people in an age as complex as ours, when families may not always have sufficient quality time together," said Gray, who is known to his coworkers in the Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination as "Hal."
Having been a cubmaster and scoutmaster, Gray has done his share of scouting outings, taking troops of boys hiking, canoeing, and caving.
In recent years, he has become more involved with the local administration of the Boy Scouts, an organization that last year worked with some 3.2 million boys throughout the United States.
Recently, Gray helped his local troop organize for a community 4th of July parade. Otherwise, he has been preparing to take on a position as assistant council commissioner, through which he will work at the council level to help local districts of the Boy Scouts improve programming.
"It's about character building, physical development, and community and civil participation," Gray said of the Boy Scouts. "And I've always enjoyed the outdoors, the camaraderie, and working with young people."
