THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 3, 1995 TAG: 9505030437
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: By the People: An occasional series on citizens taking steps to build
better communities\
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
For $13 and two hours of volunteer time you can get more than a $30 box of groceries.
Andy Morikawa says you can get to be part of the solution.
The solution, that is, to neighborhood youth problems, drugs, violent crime, and even to the type of madness that blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Morikawa, 51, is president of World SHARE, a nonprofit group best known for helping people buy groceries at steep discounts in exchange for volunteer service.
Less known is SHARE's potential for building self-help networks between people, relationships that help restore decaying neighborhoods and strengthen communities.
Morikawa, who is based in San Diego, was here Tuesday to promote the idea that SHARE builds communities as well as helps feed them.
He dined with about 100 of the 6,500 volunteers in the SHARE Mid-Atlantic region, based in Norfolk, and urged that they consider themselves as potential leaders who help solve community problems.
SHARE volunteer hours can have a greater impact if they are better coordinated on a few leading problems, Morikawa said.
In anticipation of Morikawa's visit, SHARE surveyed its Mid-Atlantic volunteers. It found most believed that the most urgent issues were youth problems, drugs, violent crime, joblessness and low levels of education.
As a result, the SHARE staff will help link the volunteers with existing organizations, such as anti-crime block watches, said Donald R. Lam, Mid-Atlantic director.
The tighter focus, Lam said, not only will have a greater impact but foster the potential for even more networking among volunteers.
Lam compared the networking to creating new conversations among people with similar goals of improving their neighborhoods.
``We could make a real difference in the community,'' he said. ``And our relationships will get stronger by each and every day working together to solve problems.''
The link with existing problem-solving organizations will begin this summer, he said.
The new emphasis in SHARE is part of some larger trends emerging in many communities nationwide: that citizens can solve many problems without government intervention and that citizenship involves more than voting.
``Many, if not most people, who participate in our program have very little experience participating in the civic life of our communities. They are used to being spectators,'' Morikawa said.
``We believe that SHARE actually strikes at some of the root causes'' of poverty and community breakdown, Morikawa said, by showing people how they contribute to society. In turn, the volunteers feel more invigorated and develop greater abilities to transform their lives, he said.
Morikawa noted examples from other communities, such as a low-income neighborhood in California that came together initially through the SHARE program but eventually developed its own park.
He recommended that volunteers could brainstorm and launch projects over unifying gatherings as simple as pot-luck suppers.
``We're not re-inventing anything but taking another cut at democracy, deepening it and transforming it,'' Morikawa said.
His message to the local SHARE volunteers seemed to take hold.
Emmerell Williams and her friend, Gwendolyn Lovick of Larrymore Lawns in Norfolk, SHARE volunteers for several years, said they began to understand the program as having a bigger role than they thought.
``It's not only dealing with food, it's dealing with the bigger problems in the community,'' Williams said.
Lovick added: ``It's one person working with another.'' MEMO: ABOUT SHARE
SHARE, or Self Help and Resource Exchange, is a nonprofit community
network that helps people get groceries at steep discounts through
volunteer service. It's affiliated with the Foodbank of Southeastern
Virginia. Other facts:
Founded in 1983.
Headquartered in San Diego.
27 U.S. affiliates
International affiliates in Mexico and Guatemala.
Distributes 5,400 tons of food monthly in the United States at a 50
percent savings.
Distributes 97.5 tons of food monthly in the Mid-Atlantic region
(Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland).
For more information, call 657-6599, or write SHARE at 1115 Tabb St.,
Norfolk, Va. 23504 ILLUSTRATION: Photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON, Staff
Andy Morikawa, president of World SHARE, spoke to 100 of its
Mid-Atlantic volunteers Tuesday at Church of the Good Shepherd in
Norfolk.
by CNB