By LYNDA ZIMMER
©2004 The News-Gazette
CHAMPAIGN – Ten years ago, questions from a Romanian couple turned Debra Schweiger’s life in another direction.
Dan and Alexandra Petrescu had been asking about a possible decline in volunteerism in the United States. The subject piqued Schweiger’s interest and sent her on a 10,000-mile, eight-year fact-finding odyssey. And now it has made her into an author.
The Petrescus, who at the time were in the United States, had been a part of the grass-roots overthrow of Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, and they wanted to teach the principles of American democracy when they got back home.
But a Harvard University study titled “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” made them question their view of the United States as a civic role model. The study said Americans’ interest in their communities was waning and that membership in service organizations was falling.
Schweiger decided to learn more about Americans’ attitude toward their communities.
Living in St. Paul, Minn., at the time, she moved back to Champaign to look after her ailing mother, Jean Wright, who since has died, and do some research regarding service organizations.
“A few innocent conversations led me to some obscure, yet highly successful, community organizations,” Schweiger wrote in Chapter 1 of her book “The Power of One: Heroes Forging America’s Civic Reawakening from Sea to Shining Sea.”
“Their missions went beyond relatively simple service club work, with the men and women driving them motivated to solve specific community social problems surrounding poverty, housing shortages, youth, crime or neighborhood decay,” she wrote.
“People were just wonderful,” she says now, looking back on her interviews with the founders of those organizations. “No one turned me down for an interview.
She said she decided to do a book and to highlight the people involved because she thought readers would focus better on people than on ideas.
“Some of these founders are in their 70s, but they’re so active and enthused,” she said. “They seemingly get younger as the years go on. ... They work one-on-one with people and have a 24/7 attitude. The results are fabulous.”
She made up a help-wanted ad, in her book, for those kinds of people:
“Wanted: Altruistic problem-solver passionate for the cause of helping the indigent, disadvantaged, and those in transition to lead independent and fulfilling lives. Character traits: inventive, tenacious, driven, and courageous. Salary non-commensurate with experience or earnings. Flexible hours, generally 12-16 per day.”
Schweiger talked with more than 100 founders of organizations, but only 26 made it into her 374-page book. She ended up using organizations in various parts of the countries whose ideas had been replicated in other cities. The ideas spread through what she calls “civic franchising” as well as sharing over the Internet.
Included in the book are Rantoul’s Generations of Hope, which pairs foster children with volunteer grandparents, and Champaign’s Matthew House, which uses volunteers to teach after-school lessons – both academic and moral – to at-risk children. Empty Tomb, another nonprofit that helps the poor, was mentioned in the finance chapter.
In the Rantoul program, Schweiger credits founder Brenda Krause Eheart with solving the problems of isolated senior citizens; unadoptable foster children; and an empty, decommissioned military base. The book says Eheart paired the wisdom, insight and love of active senior citizens with love-starved foster kids and housed them all economically at the former Chanute Air Force Base.
In the Matthew House program, Schweiger wrote that children from 9 through the early teen years attend after-school programs and are guided by godparents.
Founder Tamara Cibis started a Candles for Peace program that puts candles and sand in canning jars, then teaches the children to burn their anger issues in the flame. Cibis has retired to New Mexico, and Catholic Charities has taken over the program.
Other Illinois organizations in the book include:
– House of Hope (St. Martin de Porres), Chicago, which teaches women to break second- and third-generation cycles of welfare dependence and substance abuse.
– Sharing Connections, Downers Grove, which matches requests of Chicago-area social service agencies with surplus goods from area businesses.
– The Time is Now, Itasca, which locates needy children and elderly and disabled adults and helps provide suitable living conditions.
In Champaign-Urbana, Schweiger also talked to founders of Restoration Urban Ministries and the Center for Women in Transition, but those will have to wait for another book.
Schweiger emotionally felt the impact of the groups she spoke with because of her own personal experiences.
“When you’re on top of the world and have the rug pulled out from under you like I did once in my life, you feel the passion of these groups,” she said. “People don’t realize that some of these downturns are not your fault.”
Schweiger, who had owned a marketing company, was referring to her divorce: “It impacted my business, family, finances and emotions. You just never think it will happen to you.”
“Ninety percent of those seeking help ... never were on welfare,” Schweiger said. “There is a lot of stereotyping out there, a lot of presumptions people make about people going through hard times and they’re not true.”
For example, John DeGuire, who with his wife, Carol, started Feed My People in St. Louis, told Schweiger that he could drive by a section of homes costing $300,000 to $400,000 and identify a family in any two-block area that has been helped by his organization.
When he speaks to groups he tells them: “It’s possible to live next door to someone and not know that they’re so desperate financially that they can’t afford to eat. ... Ninety percent of those coming to Feed My People are not or never have been on welfare.”
DeGuire pointed out that layoffs at a major corporation can tip the scales for thousands of area workers living from paycheck to paycheck. A hundred local companies “cough when Chrysler sneezes,” he says.
His organization is now the largest food pantry in Missouri, providing more than $1 million in food assistance annually. It also provides household goods and job counseling.
Help, with dignity
Schweiger also writes about a Bloomington, Minn., organization called Bridging, which maintains a “furniture bank.” Its founder, Fran Heitzman, told her, “We help them get their dignity back. ... We allow them to pick the color of their couch, not just ‘Here’s a couch.’”
Heitzman gets some of his like-new furniture from local businesses that save $350,000 annually on dumping fees.
The book goes on to tell the story of the Rev. Herbert Lusk II, who quit professional football to become a minister and start People For People in Philadelphia. The organization focuses on financial self-sufficiency for people on welfare.
As Schweiger looks back on the organizations featured in her book, she pegs WiredSafety.org as perhaps the most successful venture.
“It has a national budget of less than $100,000 and 10,000 volunteers,” she said. “It was started by a New Jersey Internet attorney who saw pictures on a Web site of a 3-year-old being raped. And it changed her for life.”
The attorney, Parry Aftab, took over the Cyberangels Web site and gave up her law practice three years ago to work as the new WiredSafety executive director. It helps victims of stalkers, identity theft and other cyber crimes.
The organization that impressed Schweiger the most was the Amber Plan “because it spread to all 50 states within seven years.”
Named for 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996, Amber Alerts get the word out quickly to radio stations about kidnapped children.
Specifics of the idea came from a listener of KDMX-FM radio, Diane Simone, in Addison, Texas. Simone wrote out her idea in a letter, which is published for the first time in Schweiger’s book.
Schweiger already has talked to a group of City of Champaign administrators and is available to speak to other groups about how they can revitalize their communities by supporting grass-roots help organizations.
She points out that civic improvement organizations do not require tax money, yet they help thousands of people with small budgets and volunteers.
“Initiatives ... far surpass what the majority of Americans think of as ‘little neighborhood projects.’ Instead, they’ve become well-orchestrated operations that attract large numbers of volunteers and save millions of taxpayer dollars,” Schweiger wrote.
She has concluded that civic democracy is not dead, and volunteering and civil entrepreneurship are rising.
“Even if you don’t have an idea or the time to start a group of your own, get to know what these organizations are in your community and support them,” Schweiger urges.
Schweiger self-published her book with Trafford Press of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It is available, for $27, through her Web site, www.powerone.org; at Pages For All Ages, Savoy; and at Borders Bookstore, Champaign.
You can reach Lynda Zimmer at (217) 351-5224 or via e-mail at zimmer@news-gazette.com.
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