Media Clipping — July 15, 1998, The Daily News

Volunteers R Us

Nova Scotians lead the nation in helping others

By Stephen Bornais, The Daily News

Nova Scotians volunteer far more than anyone else in Canada, a new economic survey has found.

The survey found Bluenosers give an average of three hours, 23 minutes a week to voluntary work—the highest rate among the provinces and well above the national average of two hours, 40 minutes.

We gave 134 million hours to formal and informal voluntary work last year.

This unpaid work was worth nearly $2 billion to the economy the study said. Those millions of hours are the equivalent of 81,000 jobs.

The study, The Economic Value of Civic and Voluntary Work in Nova Scotia, was prepared by GPI Atlantic, which will use it make a Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia.

Statistics Canada's Hans Messinger, who was instrumental in the survey said the agency will devote more resources to studying how Nova Scotians, and Canadians in general, use their time.

"It's well recognized there's any awful lot of production that takes place outside the formal marketplace," he said.

Saint Mary's University economics professor Andrew Harvey is blunt.

"If it doesn't have a price, it doesn't get attention," he said.

Ron Coleman, chief researcher and GPI Atlantic director, said "voluntary work is generally seen as isolated acts of charity ... what's missing from our current understanding is that there's enormous social and economic value in this work."

Coleman said the survey should help provincialpolicy makers understand the value to society provided by volunteers.

"One analyst said it is questionable whether every broker, or advertising executive, or lawyer, actually adds to social wellbeing," Coleman said. "But there's no question volunteer work is a critical part of our social wellbeing."

GPI Atlantic used Statistics Canada timeuse surveys and pioneering work by Harvey to estimate total volunteer hours, to calculate what it would cost to replace these services by the government and private sectors, and to examine trends that might aft feet the time people can devote to volunteer work.

The survey found formal volunteer participation increased with education — university graduates have the highest rates. This group also has the highest overtime rate, a time crunch unappreciated by policymakers, the study noted.

Formal volunteering is done through agencies: Meals on Wheels, minor hockey, the Red Cross, for example. Informal volunteering can be, for example, time spent helping seniors remain in their homes, doing unpaid child care, or participating in neighbourhood cleanups.

Another distributing trend the study found was the time stresses facing married women, the single largest source of formal and informal volunteers. Onethird expressed "extreme levels of time stress."

If volunteering didn't exist or was withdrawn, Coleman said, it would lead to a "dramatic decline in our standard of living and our quality of life. Or it would have to be replaced by paid (labour)."

The study found volunteer agencies were a valuable training ground for future workers, with many people saying they improved their job skills while doing volunteer work. But such self-serving goals were at the bottom of reasons why people volunteer.

David Gallant, of the Volunteer Resource Centre in Halifax, echoes the survey saying public and private downsizing has been something of a boon to volunteer agencies, who have tapped into these workers, he said.

"What we're finding is that a lot of people—who normally would be pounding the payment looking for a job that's just not there—are doing volunteer work as a way of keeping their skills up."

GPI explained

The Genuine Progress Index is intended to go beyond traditional measures of economic development, such as gross domestic product.

GDP is the value of all the goods and services in a country.

GPI, by contrast, is subjective. It assigns positive or negative values. Under GDP calculations, an increase in crime causes increased spending (for example, more police, security systems, and jail construction). Under GDP, they would show up as an increase in society's production. Under GPI, these costs would be deducted from economic progress.

The intention is to given policymakers and citizens a better understanding of where a society is and where it is going.

Negative trends undetectable by traditional methods are more easily spotted with GPI, proponents say hopefully allowing corrective action to be taken.

The Economic Value of Civic and Voluntary Work in Nova Scotia is the first of 20 reports, making up a GPI for Nova Scotia.

In the coming weeks, GPI Atlantic will release data on unpaid household work and child care, unpaid overtime and the cost of underemployment, and the value of leisure time.

During the next year, there will be more GPI surveys.

The work is funded by the Department of Economic Development and Tourism and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

Copyright © 1998, The Daily News