Last week, the Lions Club held its Wine Festival. It is a great event and it raises a lot of money for community projects such as the Yorkton Community Clubhouse to which the Lions committed $50,000.
It is this great tradition of volunteerism that gets things done in towns and cities across the nation. While governments are generally responsible for our basic infrastructure such as roads and sometimes contribute to other amenities, it is the service clubs and individual volunteers that make our towns into communities.
The feds and the provinces build the hospitals, but it is the local Health Foundation that raises the funds to put the new CT scanner in it.
Events such as the Wine Festival contribute to the community in two ways. First, the event itself provides a fun, social opportunity for attendees. Second, the money raised goes back into building the community. The Lions and all the other groups and organizations in Yorkton really must be commended for their dedication and hard work.
There is some concern, however, about the sustainability of these efforts. Ask any president of any service group and he will tell you it is getting harder and harder to find members for some time now and their ranks are dwindling and aging.
This is actually incongruent with the statistics. A 2012 study showed that volunteerism is on the rise in Canada and Saskatchewan leads the way. About half of Canadians volunteer. It also showed that young people are more likely to volunteer than older ones.
There are a number of factors that may explain the disconnect. While young people are more likely to volunteer, they don’t put in as many hours. They are also more likely to take on individual one-off opportunities rather than join service organizations.
There is also a matter of competition. There are more organizations fundraising now for more projects and causes. The volunteer base is spread more thinly, which means more is being done by fewer people. This is also borne out in the statistics, which show more than half the work is being done by 10 per cent of the volunteers.
Volunteerism is still how things get done in our towns and cities, but the traditional models of leadership and membership are being challenged by a different style of engagement.
There are opportunities for overcoming those challenges. For example, during the Wine Festival, the beneficiary of the event, the Community Clubhouse, provided some of the labour.
These old clubs must remain viable for the good of the community, providing leadership and vision, but they may have to find new ways of tapping into the available workforce.
