Posted on: Sunday, September 2, 2001

Jerry Burris
Building community a key issue

By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor

If you haven't noticed it yet, you soon will: The Aloha United Way is back with its 2001 fund-raising campaign.

A "pacesetter" campaign has just wrapped up and the general campaign was launched on Thursday. This Wednesday, hundreds of volunteers will spread out (you are invited to join them) to sort food and clothes for the needy, clean parks and streams and offer other services in the annual United Way "Day of Caring."

All this is by way of generating interest and excitement as the United Way launches its drive to raise $13.6 million for a broad array of community services.

What may be less obvious is the thinking behind the Aloha United Way and its efforts. Most people look at the United Way primarily as an efficient way to get their contributions into the hands of worthy charities. And it is.

But it goes far deeper than that. As Irv Lauber, the president of Aloha United Way explains it, his agency isn't in the giving business, it is in the community-building business. It is not simply seeking to support worthy organizations; rather, it is trying to use its dollars to build a stronger, healthier and happier community.

This is a profoundly different way of thinking. How do you measure it? And who gave the United Way the franchise to decide what makes our community stronger?

These are legitimate questions, Lauber says, and difficult ones to answer. It is possible to make an argument that virtually everything from environmental programs to child care is the key to insuring a strong community.

So what you end up doing is measuring the agencies, not by their efficiency or by their popularity, but by their outcomes. That is, are they producing results that affect the community in a positive way?

The interesting thing about all this is the strength of agreement that organizations such as United Way should be engaged in community-building.

The traditional role for charities was to help those who cannot help themselves. Community-building in the broadest sense was the responsibility of government and the political world.

That was surely true in Hawai'i in the years following statehood. We were building a new, island-style, tropical, multi-ethnic community, and it was the job of politicians and government to get it done. Today, things are different. Groups of business people see themselves as civic entrepreneurs; activists ranging from environmentalists to those pushing Hawaiian self-determination have their own vision of what kind of community we should build.

And groups such as the United Way are developing their own approach toward increasing the amount of "social capital" within the community. Social capital simply means healthy, contributing, engaged citizens with a strong sense of social trust and civic engagement.

As we head into the big 2002 election year, one of the first questions candidates should ask themselves is whether they still matter in this new world of community-building. If they tell themselves yes, they have an obligation to be clear about what it is they have to contribute.

Jerry Burris is editor of the editorial pages of The Advertiser. You can reach him through letters@honoluluadvertiser.com.