Don’t be misled into complacency by the book’s title: “Heroes After Hours-Extraordinary Acts of Employee Volunteerism” (Jossey-Bass, $23). Do, however, get out your 1995 calendars, because you’re going to want to volunteer for something before you’re halfway through its 254 pages.
The subjects are not heroes in the legendary sense. They won’t be immortalized for feats of courage or sacrificial risk. But that is the charm of their stories. The heroes here are just like us-busy folks who make time between their jobs and free time to make a difference.
“Heroes After Hours” is a parade of 16 small inspirations, researched and told by David C. Forward, a consultant and speaker-fundraiser on the subject of volunteerism. He has raised more than $1 million for childhood disease vaccinations and does ongoing work as president of the International Children’s Aid Foundation.
His research began with personal letters to CEOs of Fortune’s 250 largest companies, asking for special examples of individual commitment to the company’s volunteerism program.
What resulted might sound noble but bland. But surprise: it’s hard not to get hooked.
The book has three themes: children, cities and the world. The first section, “Saving Our Kids,” includes five stories. One is about Maria Alvarez, a serious young woman and vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank, who entered this country as a non-English speaking Mexican immigrant child, went on to earn a master’s degree, and became deeply involved in New York City’s culture. She ran mentoring and tutoring programs for inner city youths, stressing academics and opportunities for women.
She also became dedicated to a service project called the Fresh Air Fund, which annually sends 10,000 inner city children out-to live with a country family for two summer weeks.
Many of these youngsters have never left their neighborhoods, never seen a cow.
In the second section, Forward surveys what he calls the “Urban Landscape.” Here, a Philadelphia police captain gets a library built in a rough district, with volunteer officers as tutors and drivers. A United Air Lines executive in Chicago matches homeless caretakers with the housebound in exchange for room, board and pay they can save, after his wife is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. A former IBM mail clerk, now a financial analyst, organizes youths in prison to run their own business, silk-screening and selling T-shirts. And a veteran AT&T operations clerk in Norfolk, Va., becomes president of a committee to help the homeless just because she “thought it was time to inject some common sense” into a local church meeting. That help became a successful conversion of an abandoned three-story HUD building into a shelter and counseling center for homeless families.
Every city improves with Christmas, and in Forward’s “Around the World” section, New York glows. But the instigator, again, is an individual with an idea.
William Schreyer of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, & Smith, after hearing a story of senior citizens too poor to talk to distant relatives during the holidays, suddenly remembered the empty phone banks throughout his company on Christmas Day. So, on that day, he made them available to needy seniors for an hour each of unlimited, private, anywhere-on-the-planet calls. With more than 1,000 company volunteers, the Christmas Calls program, begun in 1980, originated from 120 cities in 13 countries in 1992, and placed 14,800 calls that year alone.
Every story in “Heroes After Hours” tugs at the heartstrings. Forward shares them, he says, both to explore the human qualities that motivate these acts and to see whether one person can really make a difference. The qualities are unclear, because the heroes are too modest to reveal much about themselves. But to the second question, the answer is simply yes.
In fact, in a final section called “How to Get Involved,” it is made clear that one needn’t have a master’s degree, run an investment house or march into government offices to make a difference. It is enough just to figure out what you like to do, find someone for whom to do it and show up.
– Lambs Farm is looking for donations ranging from a 2 1/2-ton ton truck to a basketball pump.
The 63-acre farm, at Interstate Highway 94 and Illinois Highway 176 in Libertyville, is dedicated to the well-being of mentally disabled adults, and it offers vocational, residential and social-support services to more than 250 people a year. Almost half its budget comes from retail operations, which are also training sites for the men and women of Lambs, and about 30 percent comes from monetary and in-kind donations.
Among the items on Lambs’ holiday wish list this year are:
A 2 1/2-ton ton truck with a tail-lift for the farm’s enormous transportation needs.
Furnishings for the Benjamin B. Green-Field Geriatric and Retirement Center.
A vertical graphics camera and a graphic-arts film washer-dryer.
A desktop publishing system with full-page monitor.
Two IBM compatible computers.
A Desk Jet color printer.
Hospital-type stainless-steel carts.
An overhead projector.
Camping equipment.
Halloween costumes.
A floor pump to inflate the balls used in sporting activities.
Call 708-362-4636 for more information on making donations.
