“Here’s the real problem.  We have a potentially huge threat to community life on our doorstep.  No one knows.  No one is talking about it.  As it seems, no one cares.”  – Linda Graff

Linda L. Graff and Paul B. Reed are two Canadian experts on volunteering and caring.  They are telling us that something is happening in Canada that will have a serious impact on our way of life in this country.

In conversation, Linda and Paul paint a picture of a much-changed Canadian people and a much changed way of life in less than a generation’s time. 

The scale of the trends is enormous.

Citizens and community leaders alike – from local hockey coaches to civic leaders and municipal mayors to national corporate CEOs and nonprofit executives – need to listen to this engaging and disquieting analysis of a downward turn in the willingness of Canadians to offer their time in volunteering.

“We don’t focus on the numbers so much as on emerging trends and their likely impact on our way of life in this country,”  says Paul Reed, Carleton University professor and Senior Social Scientist at Statistics Canada.   “It’s the magnitude of what is at stake that is the critical message in the Who Cares? project. “The data are there for anyone who wants to delve deeper, but it’s the wide-angle picture we’ve assembled that individuals and communities need to see.”

These thoughtful conversations highlight the most critical elements of Canadian communities.  Civic involvement, compassion, and concern for others are treasured values in this country.  They define us internationally and they are, in part, what makes us Canadians.

They are in decline.

“It’s a paradox,” adds Linda Graff, noted author and nonprofit sector specialist.  “Every Canadian is deeply affected by the contributions of thousands of volunteers and yet the efforts going on all around us remain below our consciousness. Each of us might occasionally notice when a volunteer’s effort touches us directly, but we don’t add it all up to see the enormity of what volunteering provides to our way of life –  or the impact of what we will lose when volunteering declines over the next few years.”  Graff is deeply concerned.  “There is a fundamental shift on our horizon.  None of us will escape its impact.”

Individual and community awareness of what’s at stake is the all-important first step towards a remedy.  And Graff and Reed are clear: this is not an insurmountable problem, if we act now.  Reed cautions, “Without attention, however, we are looking at community life in Canada which will be fundamentally diminished and impoverished.”

NEXT: WHAT'S AT STAKE