- [Narrator] Live from your public media studios, WVIA presents, Keystone edition Reports.

A Public Affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is Keystone edition reports and now, moderator Larry Vojtko.

- Hello, I'm Larry Votjko.

Civic engagement is declining.

You may wonder how does it affect me?

Why does it matter?

A decline in civic engagement means fewer volunteer firefighters, fewer people helping out to get food and other services to those in need and fewer people taking an overall interest in helping others.

But the question is why it is it happening and what can be done?

We'll get into it in a bit.

In the meantime, if you have questions, call 1-833-408-9842.

Send an email to Keystone at wvia.org or tag us on social with a hashtag, Keystone reports.

WVIA Sarah Sinto explains a little bit more about Civic engagement.

- [Sarah] Civic engagement has a fairly broad definition, which means there are a variety of ways to get involved.

Volunteering is just one form of civic engagement along with community activism and involvement in local politics.

Whether that means running for office or helping in other ways, like volunteering at bowling places.

Studies show people who volunteer are more likely to be employed, but there is a downward trend in the number of people who volunteer on a daily basis.

So what can organizations do to maintain participation?

Organizations can encourage people to get involved as a family.

Studies show young people are more likely to volunteer if a family member is.

Also consider offering options to navigate barriers like transportation and scheduling.

Finally offer incentives.

Something like food or a tax benefit may motivate more people to get involved.

For more information on these studies, visit WBIA.org.

For Keystone edition reports, I'm Sarah Sinto.

- Well, now we need to hear from you.

We're ready to take your calls, 1-833-408-9842.

You can also email, keystone@wvia.org or message us through our social channels using the hashtag, keystonereports.

Let's welcome our guests who are here to share their expertise.

Andrew Chew is the Director of Research at the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development.

Fermin Diaz is joining us from the Downtown Hazleton Alliance for Progress and Chief John Orr is joining us on zoom.

He's the chief of the Ralston Volunteer Fire Department.

Well welcome everyone.

And Andrew, I wanna start with you because you have been studying this issue of volunteering going over data that stretches back almost to the beginning of the century and almost up to present time.

So tell us about that research and what you found.

- Yeah.

So since about 2003 or so, since data on volunteerism has been tracked, what we've seen is that the number of people, of the percent of the population who actively volunteer has been trending down, but a little bit of a bright spot in that data is that even though fewer people are volunteering, the amount of hours that people who do volunteer are doing so, has stayed about the same.

So the volunteers who are out there are just as passionate and involved as ever.

There's just not quite as many of them as there were 20 years ago.

- So we don't have as a pool of possible volunteers as we used to have.

Now, of course, you're just looking at the data, but in perhaps some other of your readings or research, is there a why to this?

Or have you somehow developed an analysis on this of why you think this is happening over this time?

- I think there's a lot of reasons, but one of them might just be changes in how we live and where we work in relation to where we live.

For example, in the counties of Northeastern and central Pennsylvania, between 40 and 50% of workers work in a different county from where they live.

And since 2000, the average commute time to work has gotten about 10% longer.

When people aren't spending as much time in their hometowns, it leaves them less time to volunteer.

It maybe makes them a little bit less connected to their local community.

And it makes it very difficult, especially for types of volunteering like a volunteer fire department, for example.

- Right and we're having some difficulty because obviously firefighting, EMTs, paramedics, ambulance drivers, all of that is very important for any community to have.

And I was reading some, some articles on this and apparently, maybe almost 50 years ago in the seventies, we would have 300,000 volunteer firefighters in this, in our state and now it's down to somewhere, I've seen figures around 30,000, 35,000, and I'll go to you chief ORE because you have spent a long time as a volunteer firefighter.

So have you seen these same sorts of figures?

And if so, what has been your experience over the years that you have been involved as a firefighter in volunteering the numbers of volunteers, how to persuade someone to become a volunteer?

Tell us a little bit about your story.

- Well, it's a tough road to get down.

Like you said, I've, and like I said, I've been in this for 51 years and you have seen it.

That used to be that when the trucks went out the door, you could go out with probably a full crew on and some people complaining 'cause they didn't make the trucks or you were still writing the tail boards even.

But now if you go out the door with two on board, sometimes you're lucky and EMS is getting even worse because a lot of it is because of the time and that you have to put into as far as training and what the state is mandating as far as training.

- Tell us a little bit more about that.

What kind of training is required?

What kind of perhaps some costs that are involved in addition to time, I mean really out of pocket costs as opposed to the time that you're volunteering.

- Well, as far as EMS goes, to be an EMT, when I started in '75 as an EMT, it was 81 hours.

Now it's up over 200 hours that you're putting in as far as training plus the cost of it is, depending on where you do your training at, it's running right around a thousand dollars to train somebody.

And usually the fire departments will front that cost as long as the people are going to volunteer for you when they're done, but sometimes you don't always get that.

Or sometimes they get part way through the program and decide that, this isn't for them and bail on the program.

And so now you're out of your money plus their time.

- So as I understand to answer this challenge, answer this problem, your community, and a few of the surrounding communities have decided to join forces in a way.

So tell us about that plan that is in place now and how it came about and where you are now in that.

- Between Ralston Volunteer Fire Company Truck run, Volunteer Fire Company in township volunteer fire company.

We've probably been working on this problem between the three chiefs for the last 20 years, anyhow, in that neighborhood.

It hasn't been a steady thing that we've worked on all the time, but we've seen the problem and have tried to address it and it has finally gotten to the point where we knew that we had to address it with the municipalities.

And what is unique about this program is that not only are the fire departments involved, but there are four municipalities involved.

With two that are more or less saying, Hey, yes, we understand we have a problem.

We need to take care of this problem because it is our responsibility as a second class township to provide fire and EMS services, to protect our citizenship in that, in order to keep things going the way they need to be, we need to step in and say, all right, we're going to help you do this.

So the townships have really stepped up and have funded some of the money with this program to get it started.

And then we also went to like coming county commissioners and like coming county commissioners funded some of it in there too, to keep the program going simply because you have a unique situation here where the municipalities and the township of the fire departments are both working together to try to solve this issue.

So.

- Right.

So what is required of a municipality that desires to get involved in this collaborative, this collaborative event, this collaborative organization?

- We have four municipalities involved with it right now, MacIntyre township, Lewis township, upper township and lake coming township.

All four of these townships are townships that the three stations protect in one form or another.

Ralston is primary for MacIntire, Trout run is primary for Lewis township and upper township is primary for lake coming in the township.

- Yeah.

- And we're also looking right now in Cogan house township, which is kind of to the South.

- Yeah.

So chief do the municipalities, do they have to, is there a fee that they have to present, that they have to put forth in order to participate?

- Right now, each one of the townships has put in $30,000 per year for the next three years to fund this program.

- That's what I was trying to get at is how, how the program is funded, how that's shared among the communities.

- Yeah, they're funding at a $30,000 per year for the next three years.

- So I just wanna invite our audience to participate if you have a question, please use a phone number or get to us at Keystone at keystonereports@wvia.org through social channels as well we'd like to hear from you, if you have a question or have some relevant information to share.

And I'll be getting to our other, our guest from Indias of the Hazleton Alliance for Progress.

But we went out and looked at a couple of other organizations.

Many organizations of course rely on volunteers for their day to day operations.

And one such organization is found in Bloomsburg.

Now, not only is it trying to help these, the people in need with physical things like clothes and food, but also instilling in the individuals a sense of self worth, it's called Agape.

Now that word comes from Greek, meaning unconditional love, but it has been adopted in Christian traditions to represent in one word, the love that God has shown to man kind in his covenant with humanity.

And mankind's reciprocal love of God that is most deeply expressed through service to others as a way of demonstrating that love for one another, agape.

So let's learn more about this organization that depends on volunteers.

(slow music) - People just need to be encouraged to do the best that they can.

God has put us all on this earth for a purpose.

And so many people don't know what their purpose in life is.

And we're trying to build that confidence with our clients, that they are worth something you need to get out and work.

We have a program called getting ahead and just getting by world and it teaches themselves confidence.

That's most of our problem.

They don't think they're worth anything.

And the community around, that don't recognize the poor and don't recognize homelessness.

That's not the way they wanna live, but they're in a situation that they can't get out of.

And so we're trying to help them get out of that situation, become self-sufficient and we vet our clients, it's just not a totally free entitlement program.

- I wanted to really highlight our clothing program.

The clothing program is actually distributed once a month to people who may need clothing, who may be homeless, or, had a tragedy of some kind in their life.

- Those who volunteer, they're contributing to the community in a way that maybe can't be served any other way, but I feel this is a call to help my community for those who need help.

I'm very fortunate God has blessed me.

And so I wanna pass that on.

And of all the volunteers that are here, they just enjoy the fellowship with other volunteers and staff, they enjoy what they're doing.

They get encouraged that they have a purpose in their life and right now, part of that purpose is to serve here at Agape.

- The Agape Organization.

Well, we turn now to Fermin Diaz who is on the board of the Hazleton Alliance for Progress.

And Fermin, tell us a little bit about this organization.

Is it a governmental organization?

Is it non-profit?

Is it a community organization?

how is it structured and what is its purpose?

- The Downtown Alliance For Progress is a non-profit.

We are the main street organization.

We work with the Downtowns bondering Hazleton, but through partnership with other organizations, sometimes we reach our are a little bit farther from our Downtown.

- And so you have certain projects and certain, tell us a little bit, give us, I noticed on the website, there are lots of projects.

So maybe you could pick out two or three of those, - Yeah.

- Tell us what they're about.

- We got a kitchen incubator.

We help to develop like the farmers market in town.

We help to develop education program, but our main program, internal volunteerism is the leadership under rise.

We notice that we have a very young community, the average age is 34, 35, and we want to integrate them to different institutions.

So we create a leadership program for basically Hispanics that is most of the population of the town.

And we teach them the skill that you need to be part of a, as a volunteers in an organization.

And we trade in leadership management, what kind of organization we have the community because United States is a federal Republic.

Most of the Hispanic don't come from federal country organizations.

So we try to show them how we operate here so they can serve in the community because in different two other trendings, most of the Hispanics live around 20 miles.

They live very closely and they work in the factories and live in town so they have more time to serve.

At the end of the program, what we do is like an event a meet and greet, last year beer club, because the COVID where we invite non-profit of the area, we had to meet with the people that was in the program.

Usually we got 60 to 65 people at time participant.

And we got so far very good results because right now, the treasure of the Downtown Alliance for Progress was a supporter and she participated, Another lady, Maria Rosario, she's a business owner.

Now she's board member in the Chamber of Commerce.

And we got another organization that born in our program, is Latino (indistinct) is our organization to help entrepreneur.

And we got too many case of success, because we identify that one big issue is belonging.

When you serve, you need to feel that you belong to this community and you own something back.

And we try to create this environment in our organization.

And plus we do mainly like first Friday events where we try to showcase different character, getting together.

And that's the kind of program that we work in terms volunteerism.

- Yeah.

We heard about that in the video in Agape, there's a sense of fellowship.

Andrew, in your, Fermin mentioned that they're trying to reach out to the younger people in some of your data, what have you found about volunteers and younger people?

- We've absolutely found that there's a ton of research out there that show is the connection between volunteering in youth and continuing to volunteer as an adult.

So it's gonna be so important as a region that we ingrain the new generation with the values of volunteerism and civic engagement.

We've done polls of college and university students around Northeastern, Pennsylvania.

And we have found some promising statistics that there are a significant number of college students in our area who are getting involved.

So we just need to keep them involved and make that a habit that they carry through to adulthood.

- Well, let's take a look at another organization in our area, the Wilkes Barre Chapter of the NAACP, another group, that's having an impact in the community.

So let's take a look at what they're doing to make a difference.

- It opens so many doors.

Once your rates realize that you are not no one, you are everybody that you'll ever need to be to make a difference.

The Wilkes Barre branch of the NAACP has been around since the 1930s.

Throughout those hundred years, we've seen a distinct evolution in Wilkes Barre that mirrors the evolution of the story of people of color in the United States.

This year, we've made a very big health and education push.

We have been co-hosting events with Wilkes Barre University, and the city itself to really vaccinate and make sure that people of color have the same access to vaccines as every other demographic in the city.

We all recognize that as much as we love our country, our town and our community, there are always things that can change.

And if we sit back and we wait for it to change, we're not gonna like the outcome.

Because many times the people who are motivated to make change are motivated by money, motivated by power.

And we need people to step up who are just motivated by doing good.

Recognizing that you are the power is the way to make the change.

No matter who you are, what you look like, where you're from, there's a spot for you.

The NAACP is here to facilitate that and help you learn if you're ready.

- Well, I'm going to go to a gentleman now who has spent over a half century doing good.

And that is Chief Orr and Chief, you had been discussing over your many years as a volunteer, that decline in volunteerism.

We've heard data to that effect, but now we're, we're just getting emerging from this multi-year pandemic.

Let, did you find that the pandemic worsened that problem, did you have more difficulty over the last several years in trying to keep the keep the organization staffed?

- Very definitely.

Because especially with ambulance crews that you see that a lot of 'em because of the COVID, didn't want to get on board and run for fear of catching the COVID.

So they tended to shy away or not respond at all.

So that was leaving a large hole in some of the response times and in some of the response areas to actually go out and take care of people.

- Now, it seems like we're emerging from this.

Do you have hopes now that it will be a little bit easier to encourage people to come out and volunteer?

- We do, but you know, there again, it's, with the amount of training and with the amount of involvement and a lot of people look at the fact that we do a lot of fundraising simply just to be able to stay afloat and they don't want to do the fundraising.

They're there to do the EMS or the firefighting.

And so they tend to shy away from it.

But it's all a package that you have to do the fundraising in order to keep the rest of the cycle going too.

So it's kind of a, - That's right.

- hard sell sometimes.

- Sounds a little like public media, Andrew, your study, the data ended in 2019.

So prior to COVID, but have you taken a look at volunteering over this last couple of years and what have you found?

- One thing we did find, we went out in 2020, and we asked non-profit organizations and social service organizations, what some of the difficulties they were facing during the pandemic war and they faced numerous challenges, like all sorts of organizations did.

But one of the big things that came up was that they didn't have access to volunteers.

Either volunteers couldn't come in, they were unwilling to come in because of the pandemic or it wasn't safe for them to have volunteers in.

So it's gonna be a huge help if they can get some of those volunteers back in, so that can use volunteers to fulfill their missions.

- Right.

Right.

And I'm sure that knowing your interest in following data, you're going to be taking a look at this in the years coming up.

- Definitely.

We're coming close to the end of the program and I'm going, I ask the same question to each of you and you have about 30 seconds to answer it.

Okay.

And I'll start with you Fermin.

What advice would you give to somebody who is willing or interested in volunteering?

How could they get started?

What advice you give them?

- The main advice that I will give to every parents or young people that are here or immigrant, because I am very focused as an immigrant, is there are so much to learn that are people that are older, that are like libraries for free.

You can get knowledge and experience without then.

There are too many mistakes that you can avoid, too many good advice and skills that you get for free and you can pass on in future generation, in your kids, your neighbor.

So that's my main page, there are so much to win for you and for the community.

- So in other words, by volunteering, it's almost like a free education.

- Yes.

Without student loans.

- Without student loans.

Yes.

That's a good, that's a selling point right there.

Chief Orr, what advice do you have or here's your opportunity to invite some people to volunteer for your organization?

- Well, I would say if you have the desire or want to learn, don't be afraid to knock on the door and say, Hey, I'm here to, to help you.

It doesn't matter what you do or what you can do.

You don't have to go out and fight fires or run on the ambulance to help us out.

There's steps of many ways that you can help your volunteer organizations in keeping things going.

And if you have the desire to do it, please do it.

I mean, that's, we're always looking for volunteers and we're always willing to let you come into the herd and help us out.

- And Andrew, what advice would you have?

- In our work, we spend a lot of time identifying community challenges and the solutions to those problems.

So to someone getting involved, I would say, look at at what are the challenges facing your local community that you see where things could improve and look around and you will probably find people out there who are already working on addressing some of those challenges and find those folks and get engaged with them because there's a lot of work already going on that most people might not even be aware of.

- Right.

Right.

Well, we're going to have some other sources on the website and you can always go to wvia.org and even here at WVIA, we're interested in welcoming volunteers.

So please, I invite you to take a look at wvia.org.

I'd like to thank our panelists for participating and thank you for joining us.

For more information again, wvia.org/keystone reports.

And remember, you can rewatch this episode on demand anytime online or on the WVIA app.

Thank you so much for watching.