Kind Pointers to Info Streams

Volunteering — coming together as a community, and helping your local needy. It’s a lot simpler to get involved when someone else has planned the event. Keep in mind that you’ll have more fun volunteering with your co-workers getting involved right along with you!

The obvious step, then, is for companies to look to the example of firms like Connecticut’s Adaptive Marketing LLC. As well as financial and shopping benefits programs such as Passport to Fun (MVQ*PASSPRT2FUN) created for the benefit of consumers, Adaptive Marketing tackles the organizational necessities to give its employees the time to give back to the local community.

Luckily, company-supported volunteer work now goes beyond annual charitable giving. Looking at a specific company, Adaptive Marketing has provided its staff members with opportunities to take part in everything from tennis shoe recycling efforts to local tree-planting weekends. Once all the pertinent information — location, time, date, specifics, etc — had been clearly displayed it is a simple matter for employees to set aside the time they’d volunteer and how they’d be using it.

It is essential to let volunteers choose programs according to their own interests. At Adaptive Marketing, the people who brought you Passport to Fun (MVQ*PASSPRT2FUN), employees are given the chance to choose from a diverse list of drives. Prior projects have ranged between a wide variety of areas including help and support for children and young adults, environmental awareness activities, and events related to performance art. A volunteer who has fun is an effective volunteer, and as a result through offering so many initiatives Adaptive Marketing can be certain that progress will be made in as many projects as possible. Usually a company-supported charity program — getting involved with a local school, for example, or assisting at a homeless shelter — is either done on a regular schedule or as a one-off event. Staff members may well contend — and even believe — that they don’t have any free time, though one would be surprised if they honestly cannot find enough resources to help at some smaller one-day event.

Business history is full of tales of companies supporting the people who live around them. Goodwill builds from the actions of Adaptive Marketing’s staffers over the course of company sponsored programs like the ones outlined earlier. The truth is, one of the benefits of volunteer work is feeling better about yourself — an upbeat feeling that improves the entire business. It’s our hope that by now the rewards of a company sponsored volunteer initiative for everyone involved are are self-evident for everyone.

We all know that volunteering is a great way to help build stronger communities and in the same stride assist the needy. The obvious problem is that freeing up the time to volunteer may consume some of that very same free time. Accordingly, firms have begun making themselves into organizing points encouraging their employees to support the community through volunteer activities. One of the more significant examples is Adaptive Marketing LLC of Connecticut who developed shopping and financial benefits programs like Shopping Essentials to consumers. When you think about company supported charitable effort, you probably think of giving blood, perhaps a Christmas call for donations, but that’s simply not true in the modern day. The staff of Adaptive Marketing are regularly provided with the chance to get involved in community initiatives. In cases like these, the dates, times and locations of the events were announced, ensuring that staff members knew what to expect, and the exact amount of time a given event might actually require. It’s important to let volunteers find activities according to their own preferences. Employees of Adaptive Marketing, the firm who offers the shopping program Shopping Essentials, can select from a great many volunteer drives. Once you start looking for things to do you see so many, after all; working with children, assisting with green programs, or improving the area’s aesthetic through performance art among others. In many cases, the more the volunteer enjoys it, the more gets done, so by providing such a variety of projects Adaptive Marketing guarantee that their staff will make progress on as many as possible. If companies urge their staffers to get involved at local schools, it tends to be in support of an individual event or a regular task. So if you’ve merely got enough time available to assist at the public library’s used book sale or a Saturday morning spent litter picking in the park, you still have a chance to help.

Extending a helping hand has long been a tradition at many commercial enterprises. A sense of community goodwill comes from the volunteer work carried out by Adaptive Marketing’s staff, and the staff of companies like it, over the course of these projects. Helping around your hometown makes you feel better about yourself - just the sort of thing to motivate members of staff in both their daily work and their volunteer activities.

The idea that the majority shows the will of the people is a pretty good fix for now but it is not without its faults and weaknesses. That everyone decides to do something with one will is not now nor has ever been the promise of a perfect decision, direction or choice of any kind.

Looking way back in time we might start with the ancient Israelites who grew restless while roaming the wilderness. Moses took a bit more time than they expected to go up the mount to see God, and with a majority voice they decided to make a new God. Yeah, the old golden calf god, you remember. Moses returned and heads flew because of this little majority rule blunder.

The picture of people collectively exercising their will to their own hurt is repeated many times across the historical panorama. We could peruse many but let us note just a few of the more familiar ones. Getting a good leader with a whole new way of viewing things was one of the ideas of the German people not that long ago, enter Hitler. A wave of popular ascent swept Chinas youth not that long ago and the world watched in amazement as they tore every established institution to shreds and murdered and removed all those who didn’t get into the sweep of Chairman Mao.

We pride ourselves in America with the safety measures we have in place to ensure that these kinds of mass hysteria won’t fly in and wreck our system of government. Specific length of terms for public officials is one example. That leaves only one question, how has it been working?

Between 1880 and 1920 America went into a lynch mob mentality. Crowds of vigilante citizens managed to hang people as if they were mere Christmas ornaments on trees throughout this land. More people were lynched here in that short period than in all the lynching throughout the rest of the world combined, at any time in history. Churches were established in many of the places where these hangings took place. Apparently, the Bible teaching about not following a crowd to do an evil thing was not preached too very often. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment, Ex 23:2. The will of the majority was no threat to our government in these lynchings, but it became a very real threat to many people right under the shadow of the government.

For a much broader example of the failings of the will of the majority we can jump ahead to the nineteen seventies and something more familiar. In one moment a confident and eager majority voted for Mr. Richard Nixon on his second term as President. In a landslide victory unparalleled in our history Mr. Nixon sailed into his second term. Only a few short years later, the same majority angered and fed up, wanted to give Mr. Nixon his walking papers via the good old American boot in the… impeachment. This majority may have been the best example in our history of how wrong a whopping big majority can be.

Twin - public opinion has its history as well. As a lad, I recall sitting in front of a small black and white television as newsmen revealed the shocking result of a recent opinion poll. Public polling, so new that they had to explain to viewers how they had calculated the result. They said that the people were asked, who are the three people they trusted the most in their lives? The shock was that only a few years earlier the answers were almost totally contraverted. The poll concluded that the three people Americans trusted the most were first, some close family member, then their doctors and lastly their ministers or priests. Previous polls had the order in reverse. I can remember the lingering doubt this poll left with me, were Americans more fickle feathered than firmly founded?

Next to the right to vote, Americans pride themselves with their right to voice their opinion. In fact sometimes people use their right to vote to express their opinion. Who has not heard someone say that they cast their votes for former presidential candidate Ross Perot knowing he had no chance to win. The reason for this wasted ballot many said was to… state their opinion or its little pal…to make a statement.

Enter the computer, now we can cast our opinion around instantly at nearly the speed of light. Daily news shows are calling for our votes on everything from noted trials to whether we support euthanizing someone. All too often our opinions are far removed from the trend or the actual event, but that seems to have no effect on the outcome. One example would be our opinions on, Roe V Wade. Americans have been casting their opinions on this rumbling volcano for decades; the numbers have been crunched repeatedly in favor of pro life. Like war wounded, these opinions lie tattered and defeated in the trenches of indifference. Twins, majority rule and public opinion die a tragic death alone as liberals ride off to the victory party.

The only thing worse than having an unlearned, prejudiced or heavily biased opinion is to let our opinion be tainted by…public opinion! It happens regularly. Go with the flow opinions as are common to our countrymen as are pop culture trends that burn for a time and fizzle out just before the fashions and accessories for each have flooded the market. If a war doesn’t seem popular anymore we start nay saying before the dust has settled only because the dust being kicked up at home is rising faster than the dust of our uncompleted battles. The offences cited, or the reasons for our battles notwithstanding.

Public opinion also fails to see the larger answer because it is often not asked the larger question. As an example consider how many cast their negative opinions on the heap against George Bush because, hey, where are those weapons of mass destruction? Little did we notice that right under our noses our forces had isolated, captured and detained one of the most deadly weapons of mass destruction to ever plague or threaten any people. That weapon of mass destruction is…Saddam Hussein.

Now we are being polled as to whether we think prayer should be allowed to open a session of congress or a sports event. Here is my opinion. Let’s not stop praying about anything at anytime. We need all the prayer we can get in this country and at this time. Oh, and lets not forget to pray for the twins.

Rev Bresciani is the leader of a non-denominational ministry in the New Orleans area. He has written many articles over the past thirty years in such periodicals as Guideposts and Catholic Digest. He is the author of two books available on Amazon.com, Alibris, Barnes and Noble and many other places. Rev Bresciani wrote, Hook Line and Sinker or What has Your Church Been Teaching You, published by PublishAmerica of Baltimore MD. He also wrote a book recently released by Xulon Press entitled An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ. Rev Bresciani has his own website at http://americanprophet.org