Love

Love may not be the most appropriate word for this section, but there is something almost noble about, "working for love," that those who actually work for the word that I'm looking for would appreciate. In any case, by "love" I refer to those inner drives, those push-type motivators, that move people to give hours and days of their own time away to others. In my experience, volunteer workers and the like are very passionate about the jobs they do. And since, in most cases, they get very little in the worldly sense in return, there must be something that is somehow better or stronger about that which motivates them.

To get more insight into this I turned to perhaps one of the largest high school volunteer/charity events in the nation. Every year in the middle of February, my high school hosts a carnival to raise money for financial aid students. The actual carnival only takes place over a single weekend, but all of the work and preparation takes up the entire year round. Since its humble beginnings in 1932, the carnival has become a statewide tradition that grosses over one million dollars with each year outdoing the one before. The 1999 carnival, for example, produced in excess of $1.4 million. As one can imagine, pulling this off requires a great deal of organization and hundreds of volunteers. The one I looked to for answers was the parent chair of last year's carnival (1999). The parent chair is basically the head volunteer, responsible for the higher-level creative aspects of the carnival, such as working with the students to develop a theme. For all practical purposes, the chair is in charge; it is her carnival.

The carnival chair does the most work for the least compensation, so if anyone knows anything about push-type motivators it would be her. Throughout our talk, she kept coming back to two general concepts: people and stress. While these are both external sources of motivation, they only supplemented the more deep-seated feelings of accomplishment, pride, and gratification that come with working on a project of this magnitude.

The students and parents that she worked with made the hundreds of hours go by so quickly she couldn't help but miss them. Everyone was a volunteer, so they all wanted to be there. And while some of the student labor were only there because they were required to work a few hours, the light-hearted attitudes of the rest were more than contagious enough. They created a welcoming environment that facilitated good work no matter where or what the job happened to be. The White Elephant division, for example, raises money by selling used donated items. A large tent is dedicated to this area during the carnival, but the rest of the year, it functions out of a bomb shelter just off campus where anyone can go two days of the week to buy and donate items. As a place to work, the "Tank", as the bomb shelter is called, is hardly ideal. Allergies act up, humidity can be a problem, and the ceiling leaks in many places. But the women who have been maintaining the facility for years now are so dedicated that running the cashier or sorting and pricing a new load of donated items can be the most enjoyable way to spend a Wednesday or Saturday afternoon.

Another aspect of her motivation is stress, or rather the avoidance of it. Traditionally, the amount of money a carnival makes measures how successful it was. Thus, every year tries its hardest to put on the best carnival ever. The job of the carnival chair, then, has always been seen as a high stress job involving difficult decision making and resource management. My interviewee, however, avoided most of this by simply deciding that she didn't care whether or not her carnival beat the year before. She decided that that wasn't what carnival was all about. The major money making occurs for two days, but the real carnival experience happens during all 363 days surrounding them as well. Besides, her decisions would probably only marginally affect the final total, so there was very little reason to feel pressured. The result was an experience that, looking back, was stressful at times, but was always fun and engaging.

I have never seen any high school volunteer event that is quite as involved and locally well-known as this. So to be in charge of it is nothing short of mind-boggling in my eyes. Yet, whether the job is as meaningful as electing student division heads or spending hours peeling and chipping buckets of mangoes, every volunteer meets the challenges willingly and happily. And as for the carnival chair, hers is the kind of endurance that few will ever have. In any demanding endeavor, mentality is just as if not more important than any physical ability. For the body will refuse if the mind is unwilling.