Reasons To Be Cheerful · 10 hours ago

The 'Civic Hour' Is Reinventing Volunteering

When a French civil servant read that an elderly Parisian woman had lain dead in her apartment for four months before anyone noticed, he didn't look away - he asked what kind of society allows that to happen, and then quietly set about changing it. The result is l'Heure Civique, or Civic Hour, a growing movement across France that asks nothing more of its volunteers than an hour a month: delivering groceries, playing Scrabble with nursing home residents, walking schoolchildren to music class. Its founder, Atanase Périfan, built the program around a disarmingly simple premise - "There are 65 million people in France. If each person contributes just one hour - and who doesn't have an hour? - the potential is massive" - and 24,000 volunteers later, the math is proving him right. What the program reveals, quietly, is that the barrier to generosity is rarely the heart; it's the fear of obligation, the feeling that showing up once commits you forever. Pascal Guy, who first came to the program as someone who needed a free meal and now volunteers regularly, perhaps says it best: "Most of the time, it does me good to come here, to feel a bit useful."