Shrinking Social Services Inspire People To Do Extraordinary Things, Says Social Change Expert Allan Luks

Online, March 3, 2011 (Newswire.com) - While the economic recession has led to drastic cuts in many public services programs, social change expert Allan Luks is teaching students at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service how to identify and develop more effective, low, or no-cost ways to help the most vulnerable in our society. Luks is a visiting professor at Fordham whose course, Advocacy and Public Policy, is showing the next generation of social workers how to advocate for and create high-impact social programs on a limited budget.

Luks, who coined the popular expression "helper's high" to describe the real physical and emotional health benefits enjoyed by certain volunteers, is the author of "The Healing Power of Doing Good," former head of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City, a highly regarded leader in the nonprofit sector, and a nationally recognized champion for volunteering, mentoring and advocacy in the United States. At Fordham, Luks is also a founding member and the Executive Director of the Fordham Center for Nonprofit Leaders, which trains workers in the nonprofit sector how to become more effective administrators and leaders within their organizations, as well as launch their own nonprofit programs to achieve lifelong dreams of helping others.

"The recession has affected every area of our lives, and has placed a much heavier demand on individuals to fill in the gap left by shrinking government funding and services," says Luks, who calls today's economic meltdown, "the Great Recession." "I'm inspired everyday to discover that, rather than weighing people down with a feeling of hopelessness, this situation has motivated them to find creative, alternative ways of accomplishing their goals."

Luks is a living example of what he teaches. During his 30-year career in the nonprofit field, he has been a driving force behind numerous laws and national programs that have improved the lives of the needy and ill as well as strengthened communities that are served through volunteers. Crain's New York Business magazine voted him nonprofit leader of the year - over leaders of 19,000 other nonprofits in New York City.

He lobbied for the first and now-ubiquitous warning posters in bars and restaurants about the risks of birth defects from drinking while pregnant. He led the adoption of the New York City law that prevents discrimination against recovered alcoholics. Luks also organized and guided New York organizations to obtain passage of the Safe Mentoring Act. Signed in 2006, it is the first such law in the nation that requires mentoring agencies to inform parents of the types of background checks they perform on mentors.

Little Things Mean a Lot
At the Fordham course, second-year graduate students in Luks's course have identified many small public policy initiatives that can improve society at little cost. Among the concepts offered:

-A program for public TV and radio stations to regularly post a social index on how well or poorly society is solving its social ills - and invite public involvement where changes are most needed;
-Implementing regular mental health seminars in high schools to help students better identify warning signs in themselves and others to prevent potentially violent behavior;
-Developing affordable transportation for low-income cancer patients
-Creating procedures to stop users of Buprenorphine, a methadone-like drug, from selling their supply to get others high;
-Requiring that public housing conditions that cause asthma be fixed within a month rather than a year; and allowing pregnant women to avoid going through school metal detectors.

"The media tends to focus on our society's dire economic, political and social conditions. But social workers, nonprofit leaders, volunteers, and mentors in New York and throughout the country prove every day that the human drive to help others is very powerful, and can be a counter-weight in a meaningful way, and we are right to be optimistic about the future," says Luks.

For more information and to book Allan Luks as a guest speaker, call 212-616-1190, ext. 267, or log on to www.allanluks.com and www.helpershigh.com. Luks is also on Facebook/allanluks.

Media Contact:
Mario Almonte
212-616-1190, ext. 267
[email protected]