Student Volunteers of PBHA Have Profound Effect

Are the student volunteers of Phillips Brooks House Association having a positive effect? Ask the 300 homeless men, women and children who get their meals every week from the PBHA soup kitchen program. Ask the folks who have a roof over their heads and a dry place to sleep because of the volunteers at PBHA's University Lutheran Church Shelter. Ask the kids of the Mission Hill After School Program who have a safe alternative place to go after school--other than the inner city streets. Ask the more than 10,000 men, women and children of PBHA's 50 different programs who learn to speak English, are inspired in school, and are inspired in life because there are PBHA volunteers who let them know that they are important enough to care about.

What do students get out of the volunteer experience? Well, there's laughter shared, lessons learned and lifelong friends made. I've come to know a homeless gentlemen through the soup kitchen program that I run who has taught me more over the past four years than any of my Harvard professors. One night he said to me, "You know when you live out on the streets, it's easy to want to give up on the world. But then when I see you kids at the kitchen every week, I can't give up on that world." That's the value of volunteering.

Sure, there are always going to be problems in this world we live in--many of which we will never be able to change as student volunteers. But is that a reason to quit trying to do what we can to make our communities a better place to live? I sure as hell am not going to give up trying. And I'm certain that you'll find that there are 1,700 Harvard PBHA Volunteers who won't give up either. --Dan Adam '97, PBHA Board of Directors, 1995 and 1996