Page 43 - 1925 September - To Dragma

32 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

ering of the social impulse among the young men of O x f o r d during
the last century, which resulted in the beginning of the settlement
movement in the East End of London, and which was directly and
indirectly responsible f o r the C. O. S. movement as well? A
careful observer of that movement wrote: "Their activities have
been unceasing and manifold but looking over many years and
many men, it seems . . . that the best work has been done by
those men who have cared most deeply f o r individuals among the
poor." That is a very wise observation. Volunteer social work
finds its best beginning, usually, with the case-working agencies,
those which concentrate on the individual. Those agencies, more
than any others, take seriously the responsibility for his training.
A sort of vividness and sure-footedness comes into the work of
the volunteer who has begun by beginning to know individuals
first; their difficulties; their reactions; their prejudices; their
struggles to overcome. Academic theories get reinterpreted in
that contact, and condescension withers away. From volunteers
trained first of all in the first hand contacts with people in trouble,
have come in very great measure the wise leaders and workers in
the more general field of community betterment.

What are the rewards of volunteer service and why should
one volunteer i f one is able? There is, first, of course, the service
motive without which no social work activity has any vitality. I t
gives a real insight into social problems and leads out eventually
into many channels of civic betterment. Another advantage is
that it can be combined with other demands as a paid, full-time
job can not be. Family and social responsibilities can be so
organized as to leave time free for regular and f r u i t f u l volunteer
work. Moreover it provides what many of us have begun to take
serious thought of in our own lives—some absorbing interest in
the middle years when our families are grown up or other calls
upon our time have fallen off so that we begin to feel less needed
and are therefore less interested in life. I know a woman in her
fifties who is moving this fall f r o m one city to another where she
is a stranger in order to be near a married daughter there.
Through three years of increasing interest and effort in volunteer
social work she has acquired a technical skill which is going to be
recognized in the community to which she is going and which will
admit her on equal terms to the companionship of the social