Service Clubs Research Articles

A Charity/Justice Partnership for US. Food Security

The first time I can remember thinking about hunger was in Sunday school in the First Methodist Church in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. I was eight or nine years old. I was asked to bring a can of food to church the next week for the orphans in the Methodist Children's Home. I remember selecting a dusty can of sauerkraut from our pantry and wrapping it in white tissue paper. I remember placing it proudly on the altar during the worship service. Over the next few years I suppose my mother told me numerous times to clean up my plate and think about the starving children in China. I am sure that I and my five sisters must have offered--in voices just low enough that our mother couldn't hear us--to send to the Chinese children whatever food had not caught our fancy. It wasn't until Christmas 1962 that I began to have any understanding of what hunger meant to real people. That December I visited Southside Settlement in Columbus, Ohio. As it turned out, I eventually worked in that social services agency for more than 10 years. But that Christmas I was just a visitor. The settlement was busy preparing Christmas baskets for poor people, and I was pressed into service. One of my jobs was to strip Christmas wrappings off several hundred cans of food and group the cans according to contents so we could pack something resembling a meal into each basket of food we would distribute. It's depressing to try to create Christmas dinner out of corn, peas, pumpkin, hominy, and six kinds of beans. I began to think in a new light about the charitable can of sauerkraut I had donated with such self-satisfaction as a child. Over the years I worked at the Settlement House, I grew to understand the shame felt by people who were forced to feed their kids with food discarded from the pantries of others. I saw the pain on the faces of the unemployed fathers standing in line three days before Christmas to sign up for charity. I began to understand why poor people themselves donated to the Christmas basket program. Sometimes, they donated cans of surplus government food gaily wrapped to disguise the contents--and their own poverty. In a season when we expect happiness and peace, I saw mothers fight over the single turkey or the few canned hams to be shared among 200 families. Gradually, Christmas charity at the settlement became a little less painful. Cans were replaced by cash. Parents could buy the ingredients of a Christmas dinner at the grocery store like anyone else. But in spite of every effort of the Settlement House to make its charity more humane, the people who needed help still saw themselves as beggars. The pain of being reduced to seeking charity to feed one's children was very real. Too often, justice was the ingredient missing from the Christmas meal. I am convinced that we can--and that we must--end hunger in the United States. This is just one piece of the puzzle, of course. The problems of Kurdish refugees in Iraq and Iran, recurring disasters in Bangladesh, and persistence of war- and drought-related food shortages in the Horn of Africa also deserve our attention. I believe we must take a global perspective. Fortunately, there are people around the globe willing and able to meet the challenge. Charity and Justice In our society, our first response to hunger tends to be to provide charity. We are a generous people who believe everybody should be able to eat. Our farms yield enormous surpluses. We share our individual cans and our agricultural bounty with those less fortunate. During the past decade, there has been an unprecedented outpouring of community-based and church- and synagogue-supported charity in towns and cities across America aimed at helping hungry children and their families. Periodically our newspapers are filled with accounts of scouts, school children, and service clubs collecting food for needy people. We might even read about a restaurant or two that open their doors on Thanksgiving Day to provide free turkey dinners to some of our hungry neighbors. …

Service Over Secrecy: How Lodge‐Style Fraternalism Yielded Popularity to Men's Service Clubs

Service Over Secrecy: How Lodge‐Style Fraternalism Yielded Popularity to Men's Service Clubs

ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDIES IN CALIFORNIA: FINDINGS AND IMPORTANCE

Community colleges function as major business enterprises. Colleges, in this role, are employers, consumers of goods and services, investors, landowners, and builders. Colleges create jobs, create income for district residents, and increase funds available to district financial institutions for loans to area residents and businesses. This investigation identified the results of economic impact studies conducted for 26 California community college districts and the uses of these studies. These college districts demonstrated sizable economic impacts. The median for income generation was $32 million. Full‐time jobs created within districts ranged from 237 to almost 166,000, with a median of 2,162 new jobs. The credit base of the 26 communities was expanded by a median figure of $1.6 million. Economic impact studies typically were presented to the public by the district chief executive officer (CEO) at service club meetings, community organizations, and Chamber of Commerce meetings. Usually several presentations were made to different community groups. The average number of presentations made was five. Ninety‐four percent of the district respondents reported that the community's reaction to the economic impact study was favorable (79%) or highly favorable (16%). The majority of respondents (53%) indicated some positive change in the community's attitude toward the college. A significant difference in positive community response was based on the mix of local revenues to state revenues received by the college. There were no differences based on enrollment, size of operating budget, or the manner in which the study results were presented.

Fifty Hours for the Poor-Reply

In Reply. — Dr Evans will be interested to know that 100 000 lawyers participate each year in some 500 organized pro bono programs for the poor in this country. This does not include private, nonreported pro bono work for the local church, art center, or service club. Since August 1988 — 7 months after the editorial was first published in the ABA Journal and JAMA — it has been the official policy of the American Bar Association that lawyers should devote at least 50 hours of their time to the poor each year. Dr Haynes misses the point. I believe that the moral price for holding a license to practice a profession of specialized knowledge is devotion of some of one's skills at no charge to the needy. The country cannot afford otherwise. Dr Tauber is wrong. The duty to devote time to the poor arises not from the

Women's life and leisure in an Australian rural community

In this paper it is shown that men living in an Australian rural community use their superior power to exclude women from much of their work and leisure activity. The activities examined include organized sport, drinking, friendship and service club activity. Women are expected to use their domestic skills both privately and publicly to facilitate men's pursuit of glory and community status and to applaud their achievements. The study confirms the research of Deem, Green, Woodward, Hebron, Dixey and Talbot in showing that men's leisure is often achieved at the expense of women's. In the second part of the paper the sources of men's ability to exclude and oppress women are examined. Their superior power is related to their advantageous position in the market labour force, women's economic dependence and a community belief system which stereotypes women as inferior, advocates that women's proper place is in the home, and argues that men are entitled to greater freedom than women to pursue their own leisure ...

Issues in developing a community medication collection: An overview of medidump projects*

Abstract: Each year hundreds of people are admitted to hospitals as a result of inappropriate ingestion of medications. Non‐compliance with prescription directions is a particular problem among the elderly. Young children are also at risk for accidental poisoning, especially when unused and out‐of‐date medications are not stored safely in the home. Many campaigns encouraging the public to dispose of old medications have been run by service clubs, government agencies and pharmacies. However, few Australian groups have documented their projects in any detail and most show little appreciation of the legal and ethical implications of such programs. This paper draws attention to some of the relevant issues involved and offers guidelines for conducting medication collections in the community.

Partnerships: What is Our Contribution?

Much self-satisfied clucking was recently heard in Washington over the success of educational partnerships between the schools and the private sector. A November 16, 1988, press release from the Department of Education, accompanying a report to the President on partnerships (America's Schools: Everybody's Business), quotes Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos to the effect that partnerships truly a national movement permeating the entire education system. Permeating may be putting it a bit too positively, but the report offers some reasonably impressive numbers to back up the Secretary's assertion (all drawn from 1987-88 school year statistics): There are some 140,800 partnerships out there, involving about 17% of the nation's schools and nearly a quarter of the nation's students (some 9 million students), about 52% of which are sponsored by business concerns. (Civic service clubs, individuals, colleges and universities, business organizations, and others sponsor the rest.) More than half the partnership sponsors provide goods and services, as opposed to one or the other. While not overwhelming, these figures outline a development that is, in fact, all to the good. But there is no reason to get overly rhapsodic about it. These numbers do, indeed, reflect the fact that the private sector has seen the value of supporting public education and has responded with energy and conviction. Corporate initiatives such as the Invent America Program, MATHCOUNTS, and Book It!, as well as scholarship programs sponsored by professional athletes and teams, provide high visibility for educational aims and much needed support for disadvantaged youth. But not all partnerships work, too few work well, and many are superficial, both in their conception and execution. All too many, like the plant of the biblical prophet Jonah, come into being in a night and perish in a night. We do well to ask if there are any distinguishing characteristics for those that have staying power and that do seem able to produce educational results that last longer than the enthusiastic article in last Sunday's paper. As it turns out, there are. A closer examination of successful and unsuccessful partnerships reveals that the single factor most likely to ensure a partnership's success is that the private sector entity involved gain some business or community relations advantage from it. That may not be very comforting (1, too, would have preferred a closer correlation with some pedagogical principle, but that seems not to be the case). In fact, private sector support for educational efforts seems to be pedagogically neutral; the concerns of teaching and learning, other than they be done under recognized and publicized auspices, are not paramount. Success in partnership programs does correlate very highly with the extent to which the private sector partner can attract widespread community support (political, parent, civic, and other community groups) to the idea of the program itself. What happens by way of teaching and learning is, by and large, a spin-off of the program, not necessarily its justification. Many educators turn their nose up at this kind of motivation as a kind of contaminating commercialism that is unworthy of our schools and ultimately dangerous to our children. A case in point happened several years ago when I was involved in a large-scale partnership effort involving the largest corporate entity in the community, a major soft drink corporation. The company had invested a lot of money in developing a science kit that was offered for use-free-throughout the schools, and I wanted it for my special education program. When the kit came out, however, it was discovered that the two pencils accompanying each kit had the name of the company stamped on them. The superintendent said No, and dug in his heels. A great brouhaha ensued, and he was finally prevailed upon to allow the kits to make their way to the students, but only after all the pencils had been removed and the offending corporate logo blacked out. …

Changes in perceived attitudes toward the goals for science instruction in schools

AbstractFour goal areas were identified by the Project Synthesis research team, including science for affecting daily living, science for resolving societal issues, career awareness in science/technology, and science necessary for further study. In 1976 15 science educators across the U.S. agreed to administer a short, one‐page assessment form to at least 50 members of service clubs or community groups in their respective communities. This survey asked the respondents about the relative importance for the four goal areas across the K‐12 curriculum (K‐3, 4–6, 7–9, and 10–12). The 1976 survey was repeated with similar respondents during 1980, 1984, and 1986. The results indicate that the view of the importance of science as preparation for studying science further is perceived as a most important goal which changes little across grade levels or time. During the 1976–86 period respondents rated the importance of science for improvement of daily living as significantly more important; in fact, its importance was perceived almost as great as academic preparation. Similarly, science for the resolution of societal issues and for meeting career‐awareness goals were viewed as significantly more important in 1986 than was the case in 1976. The respondents survey in 1984 and 1986 ranked science goals for resolving societal issues as more important than those associated with information useful in daily living. There is no way of determining how much of this change of perception is caused by professionals and/or forces at work at a given point in time. Nor is it clear how the information can or should be used to plan school programs.

Nondestructive testing of offshore structures

An overview of the major NDT requirements of the offshore industry is presented, and those areas where the development of new techniques is underway are highlighted. A review of the projects undertaken by Harwell's Offshore Inspection R&D Service Club is given and one of these, subsea node joint crack sizing using time-of-flight diffraction (TOFD), is described. Finally, a view is given on where the emphasis of future development should be placed.

A community-wide volunteer-intensive hospice program.

Hospice of Frederick County has developed a volunteer-intensive community-model hospice program that is in many ways different from hospice programs that see themselves as a new specialty within the health care system. The intention of the program is to keep the patient and family in control of decisions and to work closely with existing health care providers selected by the family. Hospice of Frederick County believes hospice care is far more than professional health care. "The Board of Directors believes that hospice is a community concern. The compassion and caring which characterizes hospice belongs in the churches, neighborhoods, schools, workplace, service clubs...in all areas of community life. Hospice volunteers are people from the community who care so much that they are willing to receive special training and supervision to be friends to the dying, their families and their loved ones".

Two Personality Characteristics in Adult Pet-Owners and Non-Owners

Despite an increased interest in animal/human bonding within the last decade, a review ( 3 ) of the many studies yielded only two (1, 2 ) which reported negative effects of pet ownership. Others demonstrated positive effects, e.g., ipcreased physical and mental well-being, on humans. When older people and children were given pets, self-esteem increased and adults with pers were better adjusted emotionally than those without pets. Most studies, however, measured self-esteem before and after pet acquisition or concerned owners already deeply involved with their pets, subjects often being selected by veterinarians or at pet shows. As most owners do not show their pets or even take them to veterinarians ( 5 ) , the present study investigated the more casual pet ownership of those who are less intensely involved or concerned with their animals than the subjects of previous studies. Based on the literature, adult animal-owners were expected to score higher in both self-esteem and feelings of well-being than non-owners. Ninety-nine subjects, ranging in age from 18 to 65 yr. ( 17 male, 18 female nonowners; 33 male, 31 female pet-owners), completed the Well-being and Self-acceptance Scales of the California Psychological Inventory which the examiners scored using the keys. Analysis of the data compared adult owners and non-owners, female owners with female non-owners, male owners with male non-owners, and cat-owners with dog-owners. No significant differences were found between any two groups on the Self-acceptance Scale. On the Well-being Scale, a significant difference was found between male owners and male non-owners, the latter scoring significantly higher ($40 = 2.25, p < .05). This result can probably be accounted for by the fact that half of the male non-owners and only one-fourth of the male pet-owners were members of a multipurpose service club characterized by close humao/human bonds. These members tended to score higher on the Well-being Scale than did non-members (t40 = 1.47, p < . l o ) . When club members were removed and the t test re-run, the difference between male owners and male non-owners disappeared ( tn = 1.07). Results neither support the hypothesis nor agree with any previous studies, possibly because types of subjects differed in the present and previous studies. Present subjects were adults engaged in productive work, the majority being professionally employed or business owners or managers. The animal/human bond fills the needs for companion, friend, servant, scapegoat, team-mate, confidant, defender ( 4 ) , and, in productively employed, upper middle-class adults, these needs may already be satisfied by human/human bonds. Pet ownership would be less beneficial than it is to other groups and, in some cases, a liability, subtracting time and energy from human interactions. But this study does point to difficulty in generalizing about the animal/human bond and to a need for research into the variables which alter the value of and need for pet ownership.

What's Going On…

Great falls schools go metric. The Great Falls Public School System has launched a metric education program to train teachers and members of the community in the metric system through a hands-on approach. The program used seven portal leaders trained at the University of Wyoming to provide inservice work for teachers. Selected teachers then develop curricular mater ials and testing instruments, and act as in-school contacts. Portal leaders also speak to community groups such as PTAs and service clubs. For more information contact Alice Hemphill, Curriculum Coordinator, Great Falls Public Schools, P.O. Box 2428, Great Falls, MT 59403.

Termination Locus of Palmar Main Line a of the Left Hand in Relation to Mental Pathology

A ridge originating at digital triradius point a (palmar main line A) was measured from photographs in three groups of Ss, each composed of 36 males: 1) chronic, hospitalized schizophrenics; 2) chronic, hospitalized patients classified as nonpsychotic; 3) business and professional men who were members of a service club. Seven naive judges measured the point of exit of main line A at the ulnar edge of the left palm in each of the 108 SS. Results were as follows: (a) Range of scores in units used was 5.00 to 7.75; total variance, .26 (N = 756). (b) Means of the two control groups were identical, but schizophrenic and control group difference failed to meet the .05 level of significance. (c) Very significant differences were found among judges' means. (d) Median interjudge r = about + .69.

Is the Audience the Message? A Note on LBJ's Vietnam Statements

Do still tailor their messages for specific audiences, or has mass media coverage led them to homogenize their messages? Content analysis of 77 of Lyndon B. Johnson's public statements about Vietnam showed that, depending on the audience, he did vary the content-which suggests that to some extent-the audience is the message. Lawrence W. Miller is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Pan American University, Edinburg, Texas. Lee Sigelman is Associate Professor of Political Science, Texas Tech University. The authors wish to thank James Clotfelter for useful comments, and especially Dixie Mercer McNeil for her work on this project. Public Opinion Quarterly ? 1978 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/78/0042-0071/$01.25 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.198 on Fri, 17 Jun 2016 06:19:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 72 MILLER AND SIGELMAN Thus, Doris Graber (1976b:181) states flatly that politicians tailor their rhetoric to a particular audience or audiences in order to achieve predetermined purposes and avoid undesirable consequences. According to this view, it is likely to be the exceptionally naive or idealistic politician who does not vary his policy pronouncements according to the political predilections of his audience. Barry Goldwater's stubborn insistence on lambasting TVA in Tennessee, Social Security in Florida, and welfare in New York, for example, was widely seen as a contributing factor in the 1964 Republican debacle. Somewhat cynically, we have come to expect campaigners to praise free enterprise and blast labor unions in a speech to a local service club, to be much more pro-labor in a talk to a union local, and to pursue something of a middle course in an address aimed at a more undifferentiated audience. John Mueller (1969:189) observes that speeches by statesmen to congregations of their own countrymen tend to differ from those delivered to foreigners, just as the views of American on civil rights tend to be different when they are voiced in Mississippi rather than Michigan. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, then, conventional wisdom holds that the audience is the messagethat the content of a political statement is largely shaped by the audience for the statement. On the other hand, the actual evidence supporting this conventional wisdom is entirely anecdotal. Moreover, as is so often the case, a second bit of conventional wisdom contradicts the first. According to this second train of thought, the national media coverage accorded to high-ranking government officials and candidates for office homogenizes political rhetoric, and thereby militates against the tailoring of messages for specific audiences. Because have become acutely aware of the political uses of the media, the audience for any public statement extends far beyond those who are in the physical presence of the speaker. Thus, as Katherine Ludington, an early student of mass communication, contended, the political speaker in an era of mass communication must find arguments suited to a farmer or to a city dweller, to a Southerner equally with a New Englander or a Westerner, for if the hookup is wide enough, all will be there (quoted by Chester, 1969:285). Rather than tailoring or targeting his messages, the politician may accordingly be well advised to speak in platitudes, to attempt to project a favorable personal image, and to avoid alienating segments of his heterogeneous, mass-mediated audience. I The fact that presidential statements (the focus of the present research) are often used to communicate signals to foreign governments, friendly and otherwise, and to provide guidance to American officials at home I The best documentation of these tactics remains McGinniss' (1969) inside view of the 1968 Nixon campaign. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.198 on Fri, 17 Jun 2016 06:19:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms IS THE AUDIENCE THE MESSAGE? 73 and abroad (Singer and Small, 1974:277) could also offset the tendency to tailor messages for specific audiences. Is tailoring messages for specific audiences a thing of the past, rendered obsolete by media coverage and the attendant expansion of audiences beyond those who are in the physical presence of the speaker? Or do political tactics remain essentially unchanged from the time when politics was a more localized affair? In order to address these questions, we undertook a content analysis of the public pronouncements of a recent American President, Lyndon B. Johnson, on a pressing policy issue, the American involvement in Vietnam. Because we were focusing on the highly publicized statements of an extremely visible politician with a nationwide constituency concerning an issue of unquestioned salience, we considered this to be something of a hard test of the message-tailoring hypothesis; each of these factors-publicity, visibility, a national constituency, and salienceought to make message-tailoring less likely.

Changing Attitudes toward Blindness: A Role-Playing Demonstration for Service Clubs

A short program to improve attitudes toward blind persons and to correct misinformation was designed and presented to 13 Lions and Rotary Clubs. A role-playing demonstration (fully described) with blindfolded members of the audience was followed by a discussion period. Through the administration of a questionnaire before the program and one to two months after, it was found that significant improvements occurred in those attitudes in which blind people are viewed as helpless, inferior, and dependent. Improvements in the participants’ knowledge about blind people did not occur to the extent expected.

Mail-Order Medicine

Of the 625 rural communities that originally applied to the Sears Roebuck Foundation's Community Medical Assistance Program, 253 were accepted. One hundred sixty-three went on to build clinics, and 132 had physicians at the time of follow-up. From the standpoint of physician coverage of the community once a clinic had been built, the rate of physician availability was 78%. The communities' success in recruiting and retaining physicians was compared against 13 variables; none was significantly related to the recruitment, and only two—numbers of service clubs and distance to nearest physician—were related to retention. (<i>JAMA</i>232:1023-1027, 1975)

Mail-order medicine; An analysis of the Sears Roebuck Foundation's Community Medical Assistance Program.

Of the 625 rural communities that originally applied to the Sears Roebuck Foundation's Community Medical Assistance Program, 253 were accepted. One hundred sixty-three went on to build clinics, and 132 had physicians at the time of follow-up. From the standpoint of physician coverage of the community once a clinic had been built, the rate of physician availability was 78 percent, The communities' success in recruiting and retaining physicians was compared against 13 variables; none was significantly related to the recruitment, and only two--numbers of service clubs and distance to nearest physician--were related to retention.

Democratic organization: A preliminary mathematical model

This paper constitutes a first attempt to examine the decision-making process of the charitable, professional, athletic, social and other organizations (nonpolitical) that are found throughout American society. This exposition may elucidate the fundamental reasons for the success of some and the failures of others. For any organization to continue in operation an objective criterion must be met: the group must satisfy its members and must be more competent, in the long run, than competing or inimical groups. Groups can be directed by one man, by a committee appointed by some outsider, by self-perpetuating committees, by single individuals elected by the vote of the entire membership, by individuals elected by a qualified fraction of the membership, or by some combination of these methods. The idealized mathematical model proposed below applies solely to groups whose members associate voluntarily. Thus it is assumed that the failure to obtain favorable results will end in the dissolution, or demise, of the organization because the members will drop out. Such groups might include technical and professional organizations, P-TAs, social fraternities, service clubs, credit unions and fraternal organizations. Not included are labor unions that rely on compulsory membership, based on Federal or State laws, and coercive picket lines to gain and hold members (Olson, 1965, p. 75).

The service club project for advanced public speaking

The service club project for advanced public speaking

The Woodland "Hershey" Opera House: The End of an Era in California Theatre

The idea of an Opera House in Woodland is not congruent with the mid-twentieth century image of the seat of Yolo County. Yet, there it is: locked, boarded, decaying, on the west side of Second Street between Main and Dead Cat Alley, half-hiding behind the Elliot Building on the corner, as though ashamed of its present circumstance. The authors knew of its existence, and repeatedly inquired into the possibility of visiting this Opera House (built in 1896 and unused since 1913) as part of a research project that would lead to its restor ation. Although curious drama students as well as adventurous teenagers had penetrated its interior, the legal road remained closed to us; we received no encouragement during four years of gentle questioning. In November, 1967, we began a more energetic attempt to solve the mystery of the Woodland Opera House. We were gratified by the support we then received from the Yolo County Historical Society, the Yolo County Department of Parks and Recreation, the government of the city of Woodland, various service clubs, and numerous private citizens. But the greatest debt is owed to our students who for four years kept arousing our interest, and some of whom have advanced our search and restore operation greatly.1 This paper is a continuation of this effort, which is motivated by our understanding that the Woodland Opera House is not simply a local curiosity, but that it represents the end of the richest era in American theatrical history. After 1820 theatre in America began expanding at an unprecedented rate. Never had there been so much territory to be pioneered, and the theatre followed the westward surge of emigration. The subsequent expansion of the railroads made it easier for the theatrical productions to travel from theatre