When stock markets are high why do fewer individuals volunteer? Curiously, around the country, charitable donations are rising while volunteering drops. There is a growing aversion to donating time. While people are willing to donate dollars they are less willing than ever to donate their time.

As a people, we are generous with handouts. We throw change in Salvation Army buckets at Christmas, hand out from our car windows a few bucks to a cardboard-toting beggar on the corner. We support public radio. And then we pat ourselves on the back.

In Central Pennsylvania there is a plethora of charitable opportunities. The American Red Cross, United Way, YMCA & YWCA, numerous soup kitchens and hospitals are our staples for volunteering. But there are little, overlooked operations that tend to other, more specific needs.

For example, the Neighborhood Dispute Settlement brings feuding neighbors to the table to solve problems without involving the authorities. The Sleeping Bag Project has a corps of people who fashion sleeping bags from donated fabrics and give them to our homeless so they don’t freeze to death. Run mostly by volunteers for three decades, CONTACT Helpline is a 24-hour service that helps people anonymously with any problem. And these are just a few of the lesser known organizations out there.

Each volunteer opportunity represents a varying degree of involvement. Individuals work head-to-head with a forty-year-old illiterate man on correct pronunciation or work behind the scenes to organize a walk-a-thon for the Special Olympics. Volunteers answer phones for fund drives or sit with an eighty-year-old woman laughing about her girlhood days. Other volunteers talk to complete strangers in a crisis who need someone to simply listen. Charities hope that volunteers will devote about 12 hours a month, but if other summer activities interfere, organizations will happily take whatever time volunteers can spare — and every volunteered hour eases the life of someone in need.

The 500-strong volunteer corps of Holy Spirit Hospital [HSH] not only connects with the patients in the hospital, but also has recently followed the trend of going out into the community. Vickie Morgan directs the volunteer services at HSH and energetically describes the variety of areas in which volunteer work. Greeting patients, delivering flowers and gifts, filing, working in the medical library, and assisting the nurses are just some of the hospital-bound jobs. The community programs that stretch to the outlying neighborhoods, like Medical Outreach, the Health Fair, Comfort Care, and a health and emergency care education seminar that visits schools called "I’m In Charge!" are all dependent on the donated time of volunteers. A newer program, "CANSURMOUNT," hooks volunteers up with newly diagnosed cancer patients to build a friend/sponsor-type of a relationship together during what will most likely be a daunting time in the patient’s life. Last year, the 77,000 hours donated to HSH by volunteers had a monetary value of nearly $1,000,000.

To volunteer Bob Owens, 77, retired from both the Navy and project manager on Three-Mile Island, money can’t characterize the value on what he’s gotten from the past eighteen years as an HSH volunteer. "That smile on a person’s face because of something you did is priceless," said Owens. "Don’t subtract more from society than you’re willing to give."

These opportunities or possibilities like them are available at most of the region’s hospitals.

For those who want to see, feel, and easily measure the volunteering results, there aren’t many places better than a food bank. At The Central PA Food Bank [CPAFB], the area’s major supplier of donated foods, the tactile work of breaking up bulk foods into more manageable portions might give some volunteers more satisfaction at actually seeing progress. Over 200 food manufacturers, markets, and other groups donate large amount of food to the bank, which are then disbursed to most of the area’s food pantries. For those who prefer to avoid the food handling, Kendall Hanna, Executive Director of CPAFB, can always use help with the filing and clerical work. Hanna is proud to rely on such a dedicated corps of volunteers. "We have a six-year-old girl who had her birthday recently. Instead of gifts, she asked for food donations to be made to the bank," Hanna awed. "We literally could not do our jobs without the volunteers."

Volunteers can supply things that help feed the needy, but can also supply lifesaving gifts. My Brother’s Keeper Quilt Group does just that. This completely volunteer-staffed movement is the brainchild of Flo Wheatley, a Northern Pennsylvanian whose vision to help the homeless has spread to nearly every major city around the world. Simply enough, the group’s purpose is "to help the homeless people of our society stay warm until they can be helped or healed by others."

In 1982, Wheatley started quilting together spare fabrics around her home into blankets and handed them out to homeless people in her neighborhood. Soon, countless Samaritans were infected with Wheatley’s generosity and started using her sewing pattern to make these "ugly quilts." Wheatley says that every year, men and women approach a quilter and relate a story that breaks the heart and always ends with "if I didn’t have that quilt, I wouldn’t have made it." In addition to Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco and other world cities, there is a quilting group right here in Harrisburg run by Rob Williams at the Diocese of Harrisburg. Volunteers will be furnished with instructions on how to make the quilt, who to contact for help, and how to keep going. Wheatley sees this calling as more than putting a blanket on a cold person. "I consider this nursing," explains Wheatley, "even though it looks like sewing."

There isn’t a large amount of personal involvement with those kinds of operations and it may suit some, but there are higher levels of volunteering for those who want it. Often, they can bring about intensely soul-gratifying moments.

Imagine dealing with this situation, for example, which arose at CONTACT.

He had given the cats four days’ worth of food. His bills were paid two months in advance. The doors were locked. The pills were in his hand. He loathed "the egocentrism of the world" and was very serious about leaving it for good. He called CONTACT.

For an hour and a half the CONTACT operator listened and responded to him, often laughing at his humor and crying as she felt the gravity of his intentions. When she told him that she cared about him, he cynically said she was "just paid to say that."

"Sir," said the operator, now executive director Sharon Stabinski, who never even knew the caller’s name. "I am a volunteer. I don’t get paid."

In that instant, the caller regained a bit of faith in the world. "I didn’t think that there was anyone who’d sit up at 3:00 am on a Saturday for free and try to save a stranger’s life," said the near-suicide. "I don’t feel great, but I do feel better. I’ll see what happens tomorrow."

And that’s just one story.

CONTACT Helpline was born thirty years ago this November when an Australian minister found a suicide note by one of his parishioners saying there was simply no one with whom to talk. A 24-hour phone number was soon published, guaranteeing confidence and anonymity to all who called. All crises from breaking a nail to suicidal tendencies were treated with care and human understanding and, if needed, they were directed to a place that could better help. It began here in Central PA in 1970 and there hasn’t been even one lapse of phone service since, making the Central PA CONTACT one of only three help lines nationwide to provide uninterrupted service for so long. Neither TMI, nor hurricane Agnes, nor any states of emergency could stop the volunteers from being there for their callers.

"We do not judge anyone," assures Stabinski. "We listen. Often, they just need to be heard." An intense training of the volunteers arms them with acute listening skills that suppress the need to form an opinion and ask questions of the caller.

"It would be difficult for someone like you who loves to ask questions," said Connie Gruber, a 15-year CONTACT veteran, referring to a nosy MODE writer. "We have to simply acknowledge the callers’ feelings." Over 50% of the students in the training classes drop out or are put into other areas of support. "It’s very rewarding," said Gruber. "But the worst thing about [volunteering at CONTACT] is that there isn’t a sense of closure. We not only never get to meet the people we help, but also don’t get to know if everything worked out. The irony is that we never have actual contact."

There are some voluntary jobs, though, where actual contact is the entire experience. Larry Gardener is the executive director for the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Capital Region. As most of us know, Big Brothers and Sisters is a foundation designed to strengthen our community’s future through one-to-one services to our youth. The demand for companions, though, always outweighs the supply. "Many people do not know that in addition to a single person’s program for becoming a Big Brother or Sister," informs Gardener. "We also have a couples program that will train pairs to be companions for a child together." There seems to be a lack of men as well. "I’d like to see more guys share the man they’ve become with a man-yet-to-be," hoped Gardener. "It doesn’t take extra time to be a Big Brother. A couple of hours a week or month watching a basketball game with a pizza for dinner is perfect." That’s all it akes to "to do good things" in a child’s life and your own.

"Some children have special needs," said Kay Straw, manager of the Special Olympics of Pennsylvania Area "M" (Dauphin, Cumberland, Perry, and Northern York Counties). The Special Olympics "help children and adults with mental retardation grow stronger in body, mind, and spirit" and focus on accomplishment rather than winning or losing. This year, Area M is sending more athletes to the Pennsylvania Special Olympics (every state has its own games) than anywhere else in the Commonwealth. Straw, who has a special-needs child as well, explains that "there are so many different things a volunteer can do for us and receive back something intangible: the unbridled excitement of an athlete and the love of another."

Volunteers can assist in training, coaching, officiating, chaperoning, transporting, entertaining, administrating, and fundraising. There’s even a job called a "hugger" whose duties are to encourage the athletes during the event and hug them afterward, assuring them of how well they performed. Isn’t that a cool job?

To finance the lowered costs to get the athletes to and from these events, Area M has fund-raisers like the Cabin Fever Games, the Harrisburg Heat Auction, the Area Games, walk-a-thons, bake sales, and car washes – all which need volunteers to run them. These would require just one Saturday or Sunday a year. Can’t spare that one day a year? "One hour is fine with me," bargains Straw. "I am not picky."

Haven’t we all had to rely on the kindness of a stranger for a phone call when we were lost, a ride when we were broken down, or even a bed when everything was turned on its ear?

Life is unpredictable. We might lose our home in a fire and pray that God, the Goddess, or the universe bless the men and women who donated their time to be sure we were fed and sheltered at the Red Cross.

Life is also predictable. We will someday offer a toothless, wrinkled smile to the young volunteer from the Dauphin Co. Center for Aging as he sits and loses a game of checkers on purpose and talks with us every week.

None of these volunteer organizations are expecting you to give until you take away from yourself. They actually want you share a part of yourself and, in turn, make them a part of you. Don’t placate your troubled mind by writing a check. Reach out for a few hours and know who it is that you’re reaching. That dollar bill you drop in the can at work won’t go a fraction of the way that an hour of your time will.

To paraphrase the great Chief Seattle: What we do to the web, we do to ourselves.