Maria Shriver Hearts California Volunteers
California’s voice for volunterism
By Laura Svienty

Mar 4 | archive | subscribe


“If you do it one time, you get hooked,” California first lady Maria Shriver says of volunteering. “If you build one playground, you’ll want to come back and do it again. If you volunteer in one soup kitchen where you get to cook with your kids and see the food make a difference in someone’s life, you’ll want to come back and do that again.”

As honorary chair of California Volunteers—which matches eager workers with opportunities—Shriver is asking every Californian to do as she does: serve the collective we of California. “No one is too young or too old to serve. If you can’t speak English, you can still serve. It doesn’t matter where you come from,” says Shriver. “It only matters that you give.”

Wanting to give is one thing. Knowing how to give is another. California Volunteers makes the logistics a breeze with the largest online statewide volunteer matching network in the country.

Just type your zip code into its web site (see sidebar) and click on your area of interest (animals & environment; arts & culture; education & technology; hunger, homelessness & human services; public safety & disaster; health; and so on). A host of local opportunities will appear. Narrow your search by choosing among one time, ongoing, full time, and from home options.
 
Giving Comes Naturally

“Thank you guys so much for being here,” Shriver says to an overflowing roomful of families at a recent family day held at the Tenderloin Community School. Vibrant, focused, and constantly smiling, Shriver is a forward-moving force who manages to make a little time for everybody.

“Hi, honey, how are you?” she asks a beribboned girl at the healthy snacks table. “That’s a nice collared shirt you’ve got on,” she tells a boy who shyly asks her to pose for a picture with him. As she winds her way through five floors filled with hundreds of excited families, Shriver listens, laughs, exclaims, and kneels to say, “It’s so nice to see you here,” to the smallest of students.

The jeans-clad Shriver, who hails from one of the most storied public service families in America, possesses a grace that puts people at ease and makes them want to emulate her. San Francisco fourth grader Priyanki Vora says of Shriver, “She’s nice and likes kids and helps people help. I want to help because some people need food and love and homes—warm clothes and medicine, too.” Priyanki’s twin sister, Priya, says, “I would like to help Maria Shriver help older people—maybe by selling lemonade or having food sales.”

“Maria is very upfront, hands-on, honest, courageous, and real,” says Janice Mirikitani, founding president of the Glide Foundation and winner of a Minerva Award for her social activism. “She can talk about sensitive subjects. She genuinely cares.”

Created by Shriver in 2004 to honor women doing inspiring work in California, the Minerva Awards are named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and justice, who graces the California state seal. “Every kid who studies California history should know who is on the state seal and why. Minerva should be as famous as Steve Jobs or John Wayne or Ronald Reagan,” says Shriver. “My hope is to educate people on Minerva—to let young women see themselves as capable of being both warriors and also people capable of compassion and acts of gentleness.”

Shriver has great admiration for “people who conduct themselves in a kind and gentle way in the society we live in. We’re all capable of creating legacies. They don’t just belong to famous and powerful families—they belong to each of us. We can all be heroes. We always think it has to be a war hero or some big political hero but I think you can be a hero in your child’s eyes. You can be a hero in a sick person’s eyes.”

She says, “As I say to my kids, when someone screams out in road rage, you can either be a hero by reacting in a civilized manner—or you can perpetuate the insanity that exists out there.”
 
Creating a Better World

It is Shriver’s contention that much madness and malaise could be assuaged by an increase in we thinking. “Young people often think about me-me-me. They should understand that their future—all of our futures—depend on whether we’re a we or not. If you’re in a disaster and you’re only thinking about me, you won’t survive and no one else around you will, either. If you only think about how you get ahead, I think you’ll find yourself to be an unhappy person,” says Shriver.

“We spend so much time in language that divides people,” laments Shriver, who has just returned from the Special Olympics in Shanghai. “I was at a board meeting where Loretta Claiborne—who is a Special Olympics athlete—said at the table that the most powerful weapon on the planet is your mouth, which I thought was a great line.”

Having given the line some thought during her trans-Pacific flight back to Sacramento, Shriver observes, “How you use your mouth can affect another person’s life—for the rest of their life. You can use it to encourage and promote common ground—or you can use it to create divisiveness. Words matter. Intention matters. Vision matters. No country or collective people gets ahead by just using the word I.”

Shriver’s quintessential we-ness began when she found herself standing at a revolving door in Chicago during the winter of 1960, handing out leaflets for her uncle John Kennedy’s presidential campaign. “I think the more a president can mention service, the better,” says Shriver, noting that after Kennedy was sworn in, more people applied for the Peace Corps than for any other department in the U.S. government.

“That was a call to service from the highest level. If a governor makes a call to service, that sets an example. If the White House hires a person with disabilities, like we have here in the Governor’s office, that’s leadership. That’s a way of serving: leading by example.”

“I would love to see a federal Secretary of Service,” says Shriver. “It would be a place for all of these NGOs or nonprofits who need volunteers to come together and reach out and let people know that they can have careers in their organizations. A lot of it is marketing—just elevating the concept of service.” And that’s something that Shriver is doing daily with California Volunteers.

“Building playgrounds, being a community emergency response team volunteer, being an AmeriCorps volunteer—volunteering brings the state and the people of the state together,” says Shriver. “Regardless of political affiliation or nationality or how you got here, we’re all here and there’s something we can all do together—which is to work to help California.”