Northwest Arkansas Volunteers Help Community

More Than 600 People Donated Their Time

STAFF PHOTO DAVID GOTTSCHALK Maxine Phansiri, left, of Lowell tapes a banister as Kourtney Connell of Bentonville rolls paint Wednesday at the Seven Hills Walker Family Residential Community in Fayetteville. Phansiri and Connell were volunteers from Walmart's Global Emergency Management team participating in the United Way's Live United Day.

STAFF PHOTO DAVID GOTTSCHALK Maxine Phansiri, left, of Lowell tapes a banister as Kourtney Connell of Bentonville rolls paint Wednesday at the Seven Hills Walker Family Residential Community in Fayetteville. Phansiri and Connell were volunteers from Walmart's Global Emergency Management team participating in the United Way's Live United Day.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

More than 600 people volunteered at nonprofit organizations across Northwest Arkansas on Wednesday making their communities better places to live, organizers said.

The one-day initiative is called Live United Day, a program organized by United Way of Northwest Arkansas, said Julie Petree, manager of marketing and communication. The program takes place every year, and was created more than 20 years ago.

AT A GLANCE

Volunteering In The U.S.

September 2012 - September 2013

• The volunteer rate declined 1 percent to 25 percent.

• About 62 million people volunteered for an organization at least once.

• The volunteer rate for men was 22 percent.

• The volunteer rate for women was 28 percent.

• Volunteers spent a median of 50 hours volunteering.

• The organizations people volunteered for most were related to religion, education and youth services.

Source: bls.gov

BY THE NUMBERS

Live United Day 2013

• 685: Number of volunteers who participated.

• 3,028: Hours worked.

• $63,154: Value of time worked.

• 47: Number of agencies involved.

Source: unitedwaynwa.org

A group of volunteers from the emergency operations department at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville painted and cleaned a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. A family will move into the home Monday.

The apartment is in the Walker Community Center on Seven Hills Drive in Fayetteville, which is managed by Seven Hills Homeless Center, said Michael Drager, brand relations director. The community is used as transitional housing for needy individuals and families.

The halls, bedrooms and kitchen were filled with laughter, music and the smell of paint Wednesday as volunteers used brushes and rollers to smooth greenish-gray paint over the walls. Kourtney Connell, manager of enterprise business continuity at Walmart, painted a wall in the upstairs hall. She said it felt good to make the apartment look nice for the family who will live there.

"The goal is to get you healthy and back on your feet," Drager said.

Drager said cleaning and painting the home would have taken his staff one to two days, but only takes a group of volunteers two to three hours.

"It's the difference between getting something done and not getting it done," he said.

Mark Cooper, senior director over global emergency management at Walmart, said it's part of his job to help with large-scale disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy. He believes that "charity begins at home," and people should volunteer to help make their community a better place.

"For a lot of these families, this is their Hurricane Katrina," he said. "If we can even make a little difference by trying to help, we should do that."

Northwest Arkansas has a strong culture of volunteerism, Cooper said. Walmart encourages its employees to donate their time.

Other corporations have teams of volunteers as well, Petree said. Employees from Tyson Foods, Procter & Gamble and other companies volunteered Wednesday.

"It's really great to see a mix of people giving back," she said.

Volunteers also help nonprofit organizations save money, because they donate time and effort that the organization would otherwise have to pay for, Petree said. Organizations can put the money they saved toward their services.

Volunteers helped many organizations Wednesday in Washington, Benton and Madison counties and McDonald County, Mo., Petree said. The types of organizations varied. Volunteers spent time at Ozark Guidance in Springdale, Youth Bridge in Centerton, the Arkansas Country Doctor Museum in Lincoln, among others.

Petree said United Way hosts Live United Day every year to increase awareness of volunteer opportunities. The number of people who have volunteered for the program has increased over the years. Last year 685 people volunteered, according to the United Way. Officials didn't have a final count of volunteers for this year's program, but Petree said it's more than 600.

Local volunteerism may be increasing, but the national overall volunteer rate declined by 1.1 percent to 25.4 percent between September 2012 and September 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website. The rate was the lowest it's been since the bureau started reporting statistics about volunteers in 2002.

NW News on 03/13/2014