Page 170 - The Drucker Lectures

The Era of the Social Sector [ 151

one in France, and one in South America. And it made an in-
credible difference to them; it changed their basic outlook. Now
two of my grandsons have lived in Japan. As young people, one
studied here in high school for the better part of a year, and the
other, after he had finished college, worked in Japan as a soft-
ware designer for six months. This made an enormous difference
to them. We’ve been able to do this because we have friends all
over the world, but this is not the right way to do it. It needs
organization. It needs to be done professionally, rather than hap-
hazardly. And that requires another nonprofit institution, and
so it goes on and on and on. While government can encourage
these things, it cannot do them. They have to be done locally.
And they have to be done in large measure by volunteers.
There is another need. When I grew up, most people lived
in a very narrow community and could not escape the small vil-
lage, such as the valley in which my ancestors lived for several
hundred years in England. Community was fate. You were born
into it and you could not get out. Now that is gone. Most of our
young people today live in big cities. They live a much better life
than their ancestors did in material terms. They are educated.
Yet they have no community.
We need citizenship; all we can do in our modern democ-
racies is vote and pay taxes. That is not enough to be citizens.
To be citizens, you have to be able to do something where you
see results. And so the tremendous growth of the volunteer in
the West began in the United States, where we have the oldest
tradition, and this movement is now rapidly coming up in West-
ern Europe. This answers a need of today’s people—a need for
something where they can first choose what they are doing. One
chooses to work in international education, and then the next
one in rehabilitation of criminals or of alcoholics, and the third
one in teaching disabled children. These are choices, and they
are meaningful to people.