Miami Herald

Posted on Sun, Oct. 02, 2011

Want a Job? Start your search by helping your neighbors.

BY BOB GRAHAM

AND MICHAEL WEISER

MCT / MCT

Want a Job? You might just start your search by helping your neighbors.

Striking new research suggests that there’s an unmistakable connection between the civic health of a community and how well it is able to cope in a recession. In other words, volunteering and working with neighbors to solve problems may actually help predict whether a city or state will be able to weather tough economic times.

According to the new report, released by the National Conference on Citizenship, “Civic Health and Unemployment: Can Engagement Strengthen the Economy?” (ncoc.net/unemployment), states and communities with strong social capital have witnessed smaller increases in unemployment over the past few years. For example, eight of the 11 states with the highest volunteering rates at the outset of the financial crisis — Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota and Vermont — experienced among the smallest increases in unemployment in the years afterward. Meanwhile, seven of the 10 states with the lowest volunteering rates — Arizona, California, Alabama, Nevada, Rhode Island, Delaware, and, yes, Florida — experienced among the highest increases.

The report finds that communities with strong civic health foster an environment of trust and a social network that attracts investment. Nearly 60 percent of volunteers believe that community service increases their odds of finding a job. It appears that when citizens spend time with their neighbors they start to contribute to an environment that helps foster the essential networks needed to find and secure employment.

Why does this happen?

Perhaps it’s that people who volunteer learn marketable skills and strengthen their professional networks, which in turn helps them find jobs. It could also be that civic engagement encourages people to feel more attached to their communities, and that caring deeply about where you live increases the odds that you will invest, spend, and hire within that community. It could be that communities with high civic health are also seen by prospective investors as more stable, reliable, and as having better and more credible public and private institutions.

These findings, while preliminary, offer a completely new way of discussing what’s going on with our economy and create a new sense of urgency for communities to take steps to improve their civic health.

We all know that getting out there and attending a neighborhood meeting, registering to vote, or simply discussing the day’s political happenings with your family is a good thing to do. But now, it appears that an active level of civic engagement is also an important social and economic asset. When we get engaged, we help improve the economic prospects of our community.

When we examine our great state of Florida, we can see that we have work to do to improve civic engagement. Our state ranked 49th in volunteering, with just 21.3 percent of respondents in this year’s Civic Life in America survey (civic.serve.gov) responding that they volunteered. Here in Miami, we ranked 51st among the 51 metropolitan areas ranked by the Civic Life in America survey, with just 15.2 percent of respondents saying they volunteered during the past year.

Fortunately, Florida has a starting point for identifying ways in which we can turn things around. The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida was established in 2008 to build a community of students, scholars and citizens to stimulate public engagement, and train the next generation of civic leaders. In 2010, the Center in collaboration with the Lou Frey Institute at the University of Central Florida was instrumental in the passage of a sweeping new civics curriculum for middle and high school students, the Sandra Day O’Connor Civics Education Act. The O’Connor Act established some of the highest civic standards for students in the nation.

We call on Florida’s thought leaders and concerned citizens to join us — review this new report and this year’s Civic Life in America survey (which tracks volunteerism, voter participation and other key measures of participation) and let’s take a long, hard look at the state of our state’s civic health. Civic participation rates serve as an important indicator of the economic strength of our community. It makes sense: strong communities make for strong economies.

Bob Graham is a former Florida governor and senator. Michael Weiser chairs the National Conference on Citizenship, chartered by Congress to strengthen the power citizens have to make a difference in their communities.

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