Word: loeser
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...LOESER'S CASE studies of volunteering are as one-sides as her philosophic discussions. There is nothing wrong with being pro-volunteer; there is no excuse for collecting a series of public relations type examples of the benefits of volunteering, while blissfully ignoring its pitfalls. And these pitfalls are well within the area of self-help that Loeser is concentrating on; there is no need even to delve into economic and social analysis...
...dealing with the relationship between the helped and the helping. Loeser again makes a point and drops it. She speaks of the traditional image of the volunteer as a "Lady Bountiful" expecting gratitude from a pliable clientele. She says this image prevails only in some agencies. Her advice: "Avoid such agencies as you would the plague unless you are the well-organized, aggressive type who might enjoy the battle it would take to bring them around..." She also observes that there are few lower class and lower middle class men and women volunteering, but says she hopes this is changing...
...Loeser's original points are well taken. There is a far wider range of activity available to the average person through volunteering than through paid employment. A paycheck cannot glamorize unimportant work, nor can the lack of one take the glow off interesting and useful work. But she stops at that...
...every woman who found a successful job contact through volunteering, there is the woman who found herself manipulated by a paid professional coordinator. Despite Loeser's hope that women will be regarded as volunteer professionals, there is still professional snobbery that women have to contend with. For every successful collaboration between volunteer and agency, there is still exploitation (a woman who raises money for the high school hockey team finds that the following year the school board, impressed with her efforts, allocates no money to the hockey team, giving it all to the football team instead...
This is not to say that there should be just a balanced "pro-con" set of examples. A one-sided presentation like this is a great deal less helpful to women facing real-world situations and not the idyllic future Loeser envisions...