Essayist: My Generation Has Warped Idea of Volunteering

When a reader asked for advice on how one person could make a difference on homelessness, Rachel M. Cohen of Vox initially defaulted to big-picture ideas that might bring about systemic change—like helping get the right candidates in office or lobbying for new laws. When she called around to experts, however, they suggested smaller-scale ideas such as handing out socks or donating a sleeping bag to a shelter. It was a revelation, writes Cox in her essay. "Why did I think only about structural change and disregard more immediate help?" she wondered. "And why don't I do more of those day-to-day charitable things, or know many people who do, either?"

As a girl, Cox volunteered in the smaller-scale stuff such as bagging food at pantries. But she came of age in the 2010s amid an era of movements such as Occupy Wall Street. Her generation absorbed the message that "real social change would come only from mass protest and collective pressure on governments and corporations," she writes. Volunteering and donating? They were seen as naive and useless—"harmful distractions from the change we really need." Cohen, though, is now rethinking this whole mindset, arguing that her generation has lost out in meaningful ways by focusing only on the macro side of social change. (Read her full essay, in which Cohen lays out changes she is making in her own life to remedy this.)