BlogTalk Radio is a really fun format and a great way to loop people into a conversation, both in real time during the show as well as through blog audio. This first one was a bit experimental (Jim and I could hear ourselves echoing) so we’ll keep making adjustments the more shows we do! Thanks for listening.

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Noelle Gentile, creator of the Facebook group “YES WE CAN-VOLUNTEER!!!” will talk with us about the enthusiasm of Brooklynites for volunteering – and how it’s taking shape since President Obama took office.

We hope you can join us.

Bloomberg unveils new volunteer initiative

At a rally in Washington Heights on Monday, April 20, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new program, NYC Service, designed to encourage New Yorkers to volunteer.

“Throughout my life, I’ve found that giving back is one of life’s greatest rewards and that civic service may be the most important thing we ever do,” the mayor said.

Here are some of the elements of his plan:

• NYC public schools will teach kids about civic engagement.
• The city’s Summer Youth Employment Program will begin to incorporate service projects.
• The city will publicize volunteer opportunities through 311 and a new website.
• Americorps volunteers will make up a new NYC Civic Corps that will help nonprofits and public agencies manage their volunteer crews.

Obama signs national service bill

President Barack Obama embraces Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., as bill co-sponsor Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, second left, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., watch before Obama signs the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act at the SEED School of Washington, a public boarding school that serves inner-city students facing problems in both the classroom and at home, in Washington, Tuesday, April 21, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act on Tuesday, April 21. The act increased the number of Americorps volunteers from 75,000 to 250,000 and boosted the educational stipends available to those who serve in that program.

The bill also:

• Funds a summer service program for schoolchildren in grades 6 through 12 that pays $500 toward future education
• Opens up new opportunities for older Americans to take part in volunteer activities
• Commits federal money to nonprofit start-ups with an experimental bent
• Creates a National Service Reserve Corps of former national service participants and veterans who may be deployed in national disasters

Leah Todd of SafeWalk is ready to walk you home. Photo: J. Flood

If you feel sketchy walking home in Brooklyn late at night and you don’t want to spring for a cab, there’s someone you can call. Starting in May, SafeWalk, a burgeoning volunteer program, will see people home on Friday nights from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m., serving Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.

At a recent informational session, coordinator Leah Todd explained that volunteers convene with their bikes at a predetermined location on Friday nights. Folks needing an escort can call (866) 977-WALK (9255), which forwards the call directly to a volunteer’s cell phone. At least two SafeWalk volunteers will bike to meet the caller and see them safely to their destination.

The program began in 2006 in response to a spate of assaults in Williamsburg. After a hiatus in 2007, the entirely volunteer-run service returned last year and is now seeking volunteers for 2009. SafeWalk volunteers commit to one Friday a month, and one team covers the entire area.

“We can travel a decent area given 10-15 minutes on a bicycle,” said Todd. SafeWalk serves an area as far north as Greenpoint and as far South as Atlantic Avenue. While waiting for calls, volunteers ride around, give out cards and put up fliers advertising the service. Unlike RightRides, which receives funding to serve women, trandgender and gender-queer persons specifically, SafeWalk is available to anyone.

“If you’re not totally comfortable, call us. That’s what we’re there for,” said Todd. “You’re not bothering us!”

SafeWalk aims to serve Brooklyn bargoers, but also wants to reach out to people walking home—or to other destinations—from work or the subway. Follow SafeWalk’s Twitter feed for more information—they are planning a kickoff event in May. If you’re interested in volunteering, email safewalknyc@gmail.com.

Noting that the nonprofit sector employs nearly 500,000 New Yorkers, the mayor said it was important to take what he called “concrete steps to strengthen the sector and make it thrive.”

These measures include an expansion of the city’s loan guarantee program for nonprofits, strategies for reducing costs through increased energy efficiency, and a program for nonprofits to group-purchase goods and services to save money.

How these moves will affect volunteers or organizations’ need for them — if at all — is something we will explore as we continue to document the volunteering scene in Brooklyn.

For information about resources offered by city agencies to help nonprofits, check out the city’s NYC Nonprofit Assistance website.

Books Through Bars volunteers Jess Ross and Natsumi Paxton at work on a recent Sunday.

In a tiny basement room on 4th Ave in Brooklyn, bibliophiles gather to sort and package books to send to prisons all over the country. This is the home of Books Through Bars, a non-profit, volunteer-run organization designed to provide books that incarcerated people can’t get in their limited or nonexistent libraries.

Jess Ross, a public librarian and Books Through Bars collective member,  said that prisoners learn about the service through a combination of family members, word of mouth, and lists that are passed around inside prisons such as the national Prisoners Resource List published by the books-to-prisoners group in Massachusetts.  Since most institutions don’t allow prisoners to receive books directly from individuals, Books Through Bars operates through Bluestockings Bookstore to provide materials. Ross said that nearly every third or fourth letter they get asks for a dictionary or reference book.

“When people are incarcerated, they tend to re-start their education,” Ross explained. “When they get locked up, they want to read and write. Often circumstances - bad schools, having to work, being on the street, caring for family members, or whatever - have prevented people from really engaging with their education before they get incarcerated, and it’s really ironic that inside correctional facilities where you have access to so few resources, there are so many people really motivated to develop their literacy, become educated, and read, but that’s what we’ve found.”

Ross says that people often want to research their personal heritage, requesting Black, Latin American and Native American history books. Those yearning for mental escape often ask for books about animals and wilderness. And Ross said that how-to books about art, math and science are hard to keep on the shelves.

Because of varying rules at facilities and limited storage space, Books Through Bars doesn’t collect or send training manuals, legal resources, or pulp or urban novels. But since the organization is a collective, Ross said there’s much discussion about the parameters. A stack of returned books sits on a chair in the basement headquarters; volunteers keep a running list of the returns to better understand the rules at those particular prisons.

BTB is funded through a grant from the Sonya Staff Foundation and operates under its fiscal sponsor ABC No Rio. There are books to prisoners groups in other states that communicate through an email listserv. The work appeals to the bookish set, and most of the volunteers seem to be archivists, writers, students and other book-related folk - but anyone can help out.

“You don’t have to commit more than one day, or you can stay for ten years,” said Ross. She sees new volunteers every week, doing everything from packing books to fundraising. They also organize information nights to address current issues. For information on volunteer days, events or how to donate books, visit their website.

Mechanic Dustin Wade works on a bike at Time's Up!'s Brooklyn space.

On March 1 the volunteer-run environmental action group opened a new space at 99 South Sixth St. in Williamsburg. Time’s Up! offers workshops to the public several days a week, for a small donation, at the new location and at 156 Rivington St. in Manhattan.

Click here for a calendar showing classes and open workshops at both locations — including Ladies’ Bicycle Repair Nights on Mondays — as well as organized bike rides.

If you bring your bike to one of the Time’s Up! locations, get ready to be hands-on. Rather than just fixing people’s bikes for them, the group’s volunteer mechanics aim to help bike owners become more self-sufficient.

“It’s all about skill building,” head mechanic Mark Simpson said. “The best workshops are the ones where I go home with clean hands.”

Time's Up! provides tools for bike owners who are willing to work.

Last Sunday at the Williamsburg space, bike owner Ashley (who declined to give her last name) said she came to Time’s Up! because the typical options for bike repair are not economical.

“That’s why this place is so important,” she said. “I don’t have to spend millions of dollars on tools or getting it fixed. It’s nice to have volunteers who can give you information and help you without asking too much in return.”

Time’s Up! founder and director Bill DiPaola said the organization has about 100 volunteers performing a range of jobs, and is always looking for more. He said that volunteers come up with most of the ideas for organized rides around the city promoted by Time’s Up!

Volunteer mechanic Max Schnuer tapes his own handlebars after helping other people with their bikes.

The group is well known for its association with the monthly Critical Mass rides, but its calendar for the next month also includes themed events such as an environmental tour of the South Bronx on April 11 and a peace ride on April 26.

As the Williamsburg space shut down for the day last Sunday, Mark Simpson said his four years of sharing knowledge about bike maintenance through Time’s Up! have been about finding and maintaining community.

“I learned everything that I know about bicycles from Time’s Up!, so I want to give back as much as I can to the community that fostered me,” he said.

Don Watkins, a writer for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, weighed in on President Obama’s calls for people to give back to their communities:

“When the government, instead of protecting individual rights, starts forcing us to cater to the needs of others, it sets us on a course at odds with freedom. But that’s exactly what the volunteerism movement calls for.”

Ayn Rand -- AP Images

The Center advocates the philosophy of writer Ayn Rand, who believed that society should be built on rational self-interest and unfettered capitalism.

Watkins explained why the Ayn Rand Center takes issue with the idea that volunteering is a virtue:

ChangesBrooklyn: What do you think about Barack Obama’s call for Americans to pursue volunteer service in their communities?

Don Watkins: Well, why are we being told to volunteer? Because, according to Obama, Americans have a moral duty to serve society. As he has said, “Individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action…” And Obama is not alone. John McCain, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton—all of them promoted volunteerism on the grounds of our supposed obligation to serve others. Indeed, virtually everyone today accepts the notion that we have a moral obligation to “give back” by sacrificing our time and money for the sake of others. They believe that there is something wrong with the individual who wants to pursue his own welfare, who is concerned with his own interests, with his own success and prosperity. These pursuits are treated as immoral or, at best, amoral.

Now, contrary to the apostles of volunteerism, I would argue that being concerned with your own interests, including your own material welfare, is the essence of a moral life. This is what Ayn Rand defends at length in her works, above all, in her novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

I would also argue that this view of man as society’s moral serf is totally inconsistent with the American political system as established by our Founding Fathers. For our Founders, the individual doesn’t exist to serve society—the government exists to serve the individual, to protect his rights so he can pursue his own happiness. And from the other perspective, every dictator in history has sold his program in the name of “serving society.” They have all stressed the individual’s obligation to subordinate his interests and his values to the group’s.

Let me add, there’s something particularly perverse about politicians calling for Americans to volunteer our time when forty percent of our income is drained away in taxes: you could say we already spend nearly half the year “volunteering.”

CB: How would you respond to people who say they gain something—emotionally or psychologically—from giving their time in the service of others?

Watkins: Volunteering can be a positive value when it supports an individual’s rational goals, when there is no sacrifice involved, when it benefits his life. For instance, volunteers regularly help out at the Ayn Rand Center, where I work. They don’t do it out of a sense of moral duty, and we don’t ask for it by appealing to the supposed glory of sacrificial service. Rather, it is a trade: They value our work and our mission, and so they exchange their time and effort to help us out.

More broadly, not every exchange of values between people has to involve money. For example, you might selfishly volunteer to help tutor children in math, because you enjoy the challenge or because you realize the benefit to you of living in a society full of educated individuals. By all means, give assistance to others—so long as you do it for selfish reasons.

But “selfish” doesn’t mean “anything that makes you feel good.” If someone says they feel good for volunteering at a soup kitchen because it’s their self-sacrificial duty to cater to the needy, that is a sacrifice. Your emotions aren’t the gauge of whether something is actually good for you. What Ayn Rand advocates is not indulging your emotions—whether by changing bedpans or robbing banks—but following reason. You should decide rationally what will make you happier and more successful, and pursue that with vigor.