Democratic Vistas

One part of the legislative college called the War on Poverty is a plan for VISTA, the Volunteers in Service to America. Administered by the new Office of Economic. Opportunity, VISTA, a domestic peace corps, will recruit, train, and support volunteer welfare workers, placing them in anti-poverty activities wherever their services are requested--at hospitals, schools, community action projects, and Indian reservations. About half of the 5000 volunteers anticipated during VISTA's first year will be assigned to state and local organizations. The rest will serve in existing Federal programs, or in Job Corps conservation camps and training centers set up under Title I of the Economic Opportunity Act.

If VISTA matures as successfully as the Peace Corps, it should become one of the most powerful weapons in the War on Poverty. Through it the Office of Economic Opportunity can harness some of the crusading energies that individual Americans usually save for their political campaigns. But VISTA will not be pampered; the Volunteers will have to be reafed on a relatively frugal budget estimated at five million dollars. And in many ways the program's potentialities have been slighted.

One of the purposes of VISTA is to furnish an alternative to the Peace Corps for citizens who cannot afford to serve a two-year tour or who prefer to stay in this country. Accordingly, the standard term of enlistment in VISTA will be one year, including a month of training. But for people who can only (or would rather) volunteer for part-time work, neither the Peace Corps nor VISTA has anything to offer.

To date this new agency has not considered sponsoring part-time workers or volunteers who can work full-time for only a few months. It should do so in the future, permitting more diversified kinds of volunteer participation than is now planned.

A two-year hitch makes good sense in the Peace Corps, which needs to train volunteers intensively for sensitive missions in alien cultures. But a long enlistment period is not as necessary for VISTA. The cultural conditions of American poverty are not so unfamiliar as those of Nigeria or Peru. Assuming that he were given less responsible jobs than regular volunteers, a part-time VISTA worker, contributing 10 or 15 hours a week to a local project, could be prepared to do constructive tasks in a matter of days.

By sponsoring part-time unpaid workers in addition to its regular volunteers, VISTA could claim an enormous cache of willing manpower for the OEO's integrated assault on poverty, while generating a spirit of national cooperation in the War on Poverty. (Political activity need not be the only kind of practical public service for adults in and out of college.) In so doing, VISTA would not replace organizations like Philips Brooks, any more than it would replace the Boys' Club or the Salvation Army. Instead it would collaborate with them, and strengthen them. Affiliation with a national program like VISTA would almost certainly help local charity groups and community action programs to attract volunteers and support.

If VISTA continues to require a full year of service or none at all, it will waste immense amounts of manpower and enthusiasm that might be brought to bear on local poverty problems. The War on Poverty will not become a real cause in America until the OEO allows as many people to take part in its work as there are jobs to do. Once VISTA outgrows its experimental stages, it should back up its regular troops with a reserve army of part-time volunteers.