| which society would benefit from a lot more of Definitely! I’ve spent a good amount of time volunteering with kids, teaching them to read and helping them with homework. But demographics are against us on this one. Children and elderly people are very much in the minority on any population distribution plot. I have personally been in situations where the number of adult volunteers greatly outnumbered the kids they were there to work with. It’s funny and a bit awkward but you get through it, usually by shifting over to board games and other large group activities. It would be a totally different story if everyone was looking to do this stuff. A hundred volunteers with half a dozen kids or elderly folks is just not going to work. Most will be sent home. I think it’s the same story with any group who might benefit from this. It could work if we doubled or tripled the number of people available to help out, but 10x or 20x (or more) would be unworkable. You might say that a large number of people already volunteer for this work, but a handful of hours per week. There’s no way we could absorb millions of new volunteers for 40 hours per week each, that would be excessive. The last thing I would add is that there are tons of people who are simply unsuitable for this kind of care work. They’re naturally disagreeable people. They may also be restless and easily bored. They would much rather be outside working or messing around. |