Volunteers of America
General Information
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Branching off from the original Salvation Army based in England, the
Volunteers of America became the first religious - social - welfare
organization devoted to aiding the needy in the United States.
Founded in 1896 in New York City's Bowery section by Ballington
Booth (a son of the Salvation Army's founder, William Booth) and
his wife, Maud, it now serves nearly 1 million people each year
through its more than 400 programs in about 200 US communities.
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The Volunteers of America offers both spiritual and material
help through individual counseling, group religious activities,
and its social - service organizations. Assistance is provided to
the homeless and the hungry, to prisoners in prerelease centers
and halfway houses, to alcohol and drug abusers in residential
homes and out - patient clinics, and to the mentally and physically
handicapped in group homes. For the young and elderly, the
organization operates day - care centers and nursing and retirement
homes, and provides job - search assistance and home - feeding
programs. The Volunteers of America is governed by a national
board of directors elected by its commissioned ministers.
Henry Warner Bowden
Bibliography
J P McMahon, The Volunteers of America
(1971); S E Welty, Look Up and Hope! (1961).
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The BELIEVE Religious Information Source web site is not
connected with the organization described in this presentation.
This happens to be ONE of the 1,000 religious subjects which are
included in BELIEVE.
Our small Protestant Christian Church, which created and maintains
the BELIEVE site, has no contact with the organization described here,
so we cannot help in providing contacts or addresses.
In addition, since BELIEVE does not "sell" anything,
we cannot help in finding books, icons or souvenirs.
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