Volunteers Luncheon

Many Thanks

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an honor to be here this morning for my first Baltimore County Volunteers Luncheon as Baltimore County Executive. Thanks to Joanne Williams and the Baltimore County Department of Aging for organizing today’s luncheon. Thanks also to Martins West for being such wonderful hosts.

Today, we live in a society that often prizes personal gain and personal profit above all else. Questions like “How much will I make?” and “What have you done for me lately?” far too often drown out the kind of questions that we should be asking, like “Is this the right thing to do?,” “How will this affect them?,” and most importantly, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Its important to look after ourselves, but I believe that communities only flourish when they are full of people who put others before themselves, people who ask the right kind of questions. I consider myself fortunate to not only live in a community full of those people, but to represent them. And today, I consider myself particularly fortunate to be in a room full people who know it’s about we and not about me.

Vast Volunteers Enrich Community and County

Volunteers like you have enriched every single community of Baltimore County and made this a better place to live for all of its residents. Last year, 2,215 registered volunteers donated almost 303,000 hours of their time to help their neighbors. Working through Baltimore County Volunteers and in partnership with the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, everyone in this room has contributed at least 100 hours of volunteer services and some of you have contributed as many as 1,000 or 4,000 hours throughout their lives. If you use the federal dollar value assigned to volunteer hours, volunteers have given $6.8 million worth of service to community service efforts in Baltimore County during 2011.

The sheer diversity of your volunteer efforts is staggering and the difference you have made can’t be measured in mere dollars. Some have assisted teachers in kindergarten classrooms, where 88 percent of the students they assisted improved to the next developmental level cognitively and socially. Other volunteers fought hunger by providing bags of groceries to 4,500 individuals who needed it most. Some volunteers assisted more than 700 seniors with transportation, errands, visits, and house repairs, to help them to continue to live independently in their homes. And still more gave almost 4,200 seniors assistance in better understanding their Medicare coverage.

This is only a small sample of what these volunteers have accomplished, but even a full listing of who they have helped and what they have accomplished wouldn’t do justice to the contributions they have made to this County.

What you accomplish while you are volunteering undoubtedly improves all of our neighborhoods, but what is just as important is the example you set for your neighbors. You are an inspiration that drives all of our citizens to be more generous and work a little harder for those around them. On behalf of all the people of Baltimore County, I thank you for your dedication and your energy and I am honored to participate in today’s recognition of your efforts.