Willing to care for one another
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Every Sunday evening — long after their peers have changed from their white shirts and other Sunday attire — a group of several dozen young men and young women gather at an assisted living center on main street in Bountiful, Utah, to lead residents in the singing of Church hymns.
Most residents sit quietly while being serenaded. But others, with voices still almost as rich as the day they sang as teens themselves, join in. Some, unable to see, sing from memory.
Such willingness to care for another — long a way of life for many members of the Church — has helped distinguish Utah as the top state in the nation for its spirit of voluntarism.
A three-year survey by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federally funded agency, showed that 45.9 percent of all Utahns volunteered in some act of service from 2004 through 2006.
Last year, for example, 790,000 volunteers rendered 145.8 million hours of service. That gave Utah a volunteer rate of 43.5 percent for 2006, significantly ahead of the national rate of 26.7 percent.
Overall, 49.1 percent of people in Utah engaged in civic life by volunteering, working with their neighbors, or attending public meetings.
The study, "Volunteering in America: State Trends and Rankings in Civic Life," was tallied using data gathered from research polls conducted by the U.S. Census Department.
Trends and highlights of the data indicated that not only did Utah lead the nation in the percentage of volunteers, it also led in three of the four categories of volunteers, including the highest volunteer rate in the nation for young adults, college students and older adults. It took second in the Baby Boomer category to Nebraska.
Utah was one of only five states to have tutoring or teaching as the most popular volunteer activity.
Those who volunteer tend to continue volunteering, as noted in the data that showed how 72.9 percent of those who volunteered in 2005 also volunteered in 2006, making Utah the sixth-highest ranking state for volunteer retention.
The results may be gratifying for many Utahns, but probably not surprising. Caring for the needs of others is part of the culture for Latter-day Saints, and a highly prized attitude among most people of other faiths in the state, said Rick Crawford, a convert to the Church and state director for the Utah office of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
"It's just kind of the way we do it," he said. Recalling his youth in Illinois before his conversion, Brother Crawford said he didn't remember any public effort to clean the city park.
He noted that many churches and faith groups in Utah, in addition to Latter-day Saints, volunteer in many worthy causes.
The study did not cite how many volunteers in the various states were members of the LDS Church, which could account for some of the volunteer statistics in each state, but the study highlighted how those volunteering for "religious" purposes had the highest percentage at 64.2 percent, followed by educational or youth service at 15.9 percent, social or community service at 6.8 percent, and other 3.9 percent.
"The Church plays a key role" in establishing a culture of service, Brother Crawford believes, such as when adult members take their children to clean meetinghouses, or when chicken soup is taken to an ailing neighbor, or when teens are sent to shovel the snow from the sidewalks of an elderly person.
Such a sense of rallying by the community to help another began with Joseph Smith and continued with Brigham Young who, for instance, required each company of pioneers to improve the trail by building bridges or planting gardens to bless those who followed.
Today, priesthood leaders routinely emphasize the virtue of serving others. President Thomas S. Monson, first counselor in the First Presidency, frequently speaks on the subject by drawing upon personal anecdotes such as his youthful experience of taking, at his mother's request, a plate of Sunday dinner every week a lonely widower. He also speaks often of the importance of the Church and its members joining with others to serve people in need.
"When we can work together cooperatively to lift the level of life for so many people, we can accomplish anything. When we do so, we eliminate the weakness of one person standing alone and substitute the strength of many serving together. While we may not be able to do everything, we can and must do something," he said during a recent address to the Washington, D.C., chapter of the BYU Management Society.
Much community service flies below the radar of the media. Occasionally, stories such as a Utah high school basketball team taking time to read to elementary school students and help the homeless surface in the news.
Besides his state assignment, Brother Crawford also serves as Pacific Area manager of 10 western states; seven of those states placed in the top 16 in the country.
Opportunities for voluntarism abound in Utah, as well as elsewhere, Brother Crawford said. With a large and growing immigrant population, and considering that more and more children are attending public schools from single parent families, or whose parents are incarcerated, there is a great need for mentoring in literacy and language.
E-mail to: shaun@desnews.com
