Media Clipping — July 24, 1998, The Chronicle Herald

Volunteers constitute a powerful, invisible force

By Ralph Surette

A RECENT STUDY came up with some eyepopping figures: Nova Scotians contribute 134 million hours a year in volunteer and civic work in virtually every aspect of social life, which would be worth $2 billion if calculated at $13 an hour, the average rate paid health and social workers.

Per person, it amounts to three hours and 23 minutes of volunteer work per adult per week, nearly an hour more than the Canadian average. If volunteerism died "our standard of living would decline dramatically" unless replaced at enormous cost, states the report by a nonprofit company called GPI Atlantic.

The other Atlantic provinces are in the same league. Elsewhere, only Saskatchewan is anywhere near in terms of the generosity of its citizenry.

This is powerful testimony to a social strength,known by most Atlantic Canadians, but never before measured, that compensates somewhat for our economic weakness.

But if voluntary work is so important, why isn't it taken into account in the formation of government policy instead of being ignored completely?

Come to think of it, why aren't a whole bunch of other neglected facts of economic life calculated into the big picture as well, the hidden costs of environmental damage or of crime and other social ills, for example, or the hidden value of household work, or unpaid overtime? There is, in other words, a larger tale here. What this report, which began as a classroom project by former Saint Mary's University economics professor Ron Coleman, is all about is a new and more realistic way of measuring "progress."

The standard way is through the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a blunt instrument that gives grotesquely false readings. The wipeout of the groundfish stocks on the East Coast showed up entirely as a positive economic factor, for example. Right now the same is happening with the west, its wipeout is boosting economic growth but with no downside showing in the statistics, and statistics are what drive policy.

Crime, divorce, car accidents, catastrophes of all kinds all "create economic activity," but their negative effects are not measured. One such absurdity, says Coleman, involved the supertanker Exxon Valdez, it was calculated to have created more value in terms of the cost of cleaning up its spill than if it had actually delivered its load of oil safely. Environmental damage, in other words is a good thing on this scale.

Some 15 years ago, the statisticians of the industrial nations, realising these faults, began the work of creating a new measure of real progress, a "Genuine Progress Index," or GPI, that takes a much 1arger reality into account. It has taken until now to accumulate the data and create the methods to even start taking these measurements. GPI Atlantic's application of the data to Nova Scotia is supported by Statistics Canada and other government agencies. It is a first in Canada and is meant to be a pilot project for the rest of the country.

The measurement of volunteer time use is just the first of a series. GPI Atlantic will prepare such reports on a total of 20 such indicators in creating the GPI index for Nova Scotia , the cost of crime and income distribution being next.

As for voluntarism, the report says it can be used "as a proxy indicator for the health of civil society" and although it's strong in Atlantic Canada, we can't take it for granted. It has been declining steadily in the United States under pressure of overwork (especially on women, who do most of the volunteering, and the highly educated who mostly run formal volunteer organisations), increased materialism and egoism, and other factors.

The report admits that money is a poor tool with which to measure nonmaterial values like voluntarism. Nevertheless the time has come look on volunteering as more that just an accumulation of individual acts of charity, and to take it into account in formulating policy.

Giving of ourselves for the larger good is part of what we are in Atlantic Canada and what we should remain.

Copyright © 1998, Ralph Surette