Teri Munger, skilled in public relations, external affairs and media relations was picked by Mayor Kevin Johnson to lead Volunter Sacramento. 

Mayor Kevin Johnson leads call for 2.5 million volunteer hours in Sacramento in 2010
 

 By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place

SACRAMENTO, California — Mayor Kevin Johnson is well-known here as the former NBA star and the catalyst behind St. Hope.

The non-profit school, St. Hope, brought improvements to the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento through “holistic community development” and became an innovator in the “transformation high school” movement.

Johnson is the Oak Park kid who went away and starred in basketball at the University of California at Berkeley. It’s obvious, given contents of the white paper available online — Transformation High Schools: Lessons from Sacramento High — he gained valuable lessons in community programming and economic development as the CEO of St. HOPE.

Johnson founded St. HOPE as a non-profit to revitalize inner-city communities through public education, economic development, civic leadership and the arts.

The chief executive officer, Kevin Johnson, is a socio-economic change agent. In fall of 2008 he was elected mayor of Sacramento, taking office in December 2008. Since then, Johnson has embarked on strategies to “make the city a national leader in volunteerism.”

“Volunteerism and service is a passion of the Mayor” said Teri Munger, program coordinator for Volunteer Sacramento. “Service is very important to the Mayor. Immediately after taking office Mayor Johnson set a goal of 500,000 volunteer hours. He asked each citizen to volunteer ten hours in 2009.

“Mayor Johnson wanted to achieve the goal by the end of the year,” Munger said.

That mission was accomplished. Volunteer Sacramento logged 1.7 million hours of service in 2009, with an additional 600,000 volunteer hours from the County of Sacramento. This equates to an economic impact of $35.7M to the Sacramento community.

The Mayor’s office directed volunteers and their hours of service toward the environment, education and homelessness. The volunteer goal for 2010 is 2.5 million volunteer hours, with 80 percent directed toward the environment, public safety, education and homelessness, Munger said.

Sacramento was one of ten cities awarded a $200,000 grant to hire a Chief Service Officer to lead local efforts to develop and implement comprehensive service plans on behalf of their mayor. Sacramento was awarded one of these Rockefeller grants, which will be used over the next two years.

Munger, formerly the External Affairs and Media Relations Manager for Intel Corp. and Public Affairs manager for Hewlett-Packard, fills the Volunteer Sacramento lead position for Sacramento. A Chief Service Officer will be hired by the end of March.

A goal of the Cities of Service is for each founding mayor to bring three new mayors into the fold and those three each to bring in three new mayors. Johnson brought in mayors from Roseville, Davis and Placerville as Cities of Service, which has grown to 80 cities.

In September 2009, Johnson traveled to New York and became one of 17 founding mayors of Cities of Service, “a bi-partisan coalition of the mayors of large and small cities from across our country who will work together to engage citizens to address the great challenges of our time.”

Inspired by the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, Cities of Service encourages “finding new and innovative ways to harness the power of volunteers to help solve pressing local challenges.”

Founding Cities of Service mayors were Michael R. Bloomberg, New York; Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles; Richard Daley, Chicago; Adrian Fenty, Washington, D.C.; and Cory Booker, Newark, New Jersey, among others.

If there was ever a “Volunteer Hall of Fame” in Sacramento, Raynia Kinniston, 95, would be certain for enshrinement. At a public event in June 2009, Kinniston was recognized for volunteering more than 45,000 hours over 49 years at Mercy Hospital. Kinniston takes two city buses every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to open the hospital gift shop by 7:30 a.m.

“She doesn’t miss a day,” Munger said. “She represents the passion volunteers have for service. There are so many benefits of volunteering, individuals that volunteer, receive much more than they give.”

As part of Volunteer Sacramento, high schools in the city were challenged to compete with each other to engage students in service. Ten schools signed up to compete. To level the field of competition among schools, winners were selected in two categories:
• for most service hours
• highest percentage of students volunteering

Faith-based organizations and seniors also responded to the call to volunteer.

Honors were presented at the January Volunteer Sacramento Celebration event.

In March 2009, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was in Sacramento at the Thomas P. Raley Branch of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Sacramento to help Johnson launch Volunteer Sacramento.

“The Boys and Girls Clubs was a natural place to launch Volunteer Sacramento,” Munger said. “The Mayor spent many afternoons of his life in Boys and Girls Clubs. They have been important in his life. He has always felt a connection with the Boys and Girls Clubs.

“There is a Boys and Girls Club close to City Hall, the Mayor drops in when he can to stay connected with the children,” she said.

The Rev. Jackson’s remarks at the Boy and Girls Club launch of Volunteer Sacramento were recorded by the “Sacramento Bee.”

“The best of us who help the rest of us are the most blessed of us,” Jackson said. “We can’t all be well-known but we can all be great because we can serve.” He said, “. . . the divine rule of reciprocity — you cannot give without receiving; you cannot take without losing.”

Hands on Sacramento, a nonprofit that connects 16,500 volunteers a year with opportunities, helped the city match volunteer opportunities with volunteers’ interests.

Robert Banford is a team director who works with volunteers at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Sacramento’s Thomas P. Raley Branch.