Our weekly program, Making Democracy Work, is a collaboration between KSMU Radio and the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri. It's hosted and produced by volunteers from the LWV, and it airs each Monday morning at 9:45 on KSMU.
In this episode, Lisa Langley speaks with Greg Burris, founder and executive director of Give Five and a longtime civic leader.
Langley: Give 5 is dedicated to engaging retired community members in volunteer opportunities, creating a lasting impact on communities. During the 2025-2026 academic year, this program was expanded to five area high schools called Give 5 Academy.
Give 5 started by focusing on retirees. What made you decide to expand the model into high schools, and why did you think students were the right audience for this kind of civic work?
Burris: Well, in short, it was Pam Hedgepeth. Pam used to be superintendent of public schools for Republic, and she retired. She joined and became the executive director of an organization called the Greater Ozarks Cooperating School Districts, which I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know anything about. They represent 107 school districts in 53 counties in southern Missouri and are just amazing rock star educators. And she said, “I love the Give 5 program, what you do with older adults. Could you do that with high school kids? And so, could you drop the Give 5 program in some form into high schools and see if we could kind of accomplish the same types of things? So, I said, 'give me some time. Let's think about it.' Cora Scott and I started rethinking Give 5 and what that could develop into. And we created the Give 5 Academy. Because of that, we were in five school districts last year, did a pilot project. We are getting ready to start our second year of the pilot project, may have more schools this year, but it was a resounding success. Even though we stubbed our toes in about seven different ways during the pilot project. I mean, it's education we're learning. You learn a lot along that path. But I'm really excited about this second year because I think we're going to take all those things that we learned and make the program even better. We got our first evaluation report from Stanford University researchers just recently, which gave me goose bumps. It's the kind of report that makes your day.
Langley: Yeah, talk about that. That's our next question. So, go ahead and talk about the results of that. They were amazing.
Burris: Yeah, it was incredible. We asked the teachers to do a pre-program survey of the students and then a post-program survey. And we didn't collect as much data in the post-program survey as we had hoped because end of semester craziness happens and some of the surveys didn't get completed. But overall, the researchers showed that there was a statistically significant impact on a couple of different things I think are really, really important. It lowered the levels of loneliness. It gave the students greater life satisfaction, that stronger feelings of belonging in their communities, and it increased the confidence in their ability to make a meaningful difference in their community in the future. They also saw a difference in their, you know, they were more likely to view helping others as a benefit, not only to the recipient, but also to the helper. And those kinds of things, in addition to improving their mental health and their social connections. And those are the researchers pointed out — those are two things that the youth really are struggling with right now are mental health and social connections.
Langley: As time runs out, I want to get to the question, how does this help democracy? When you focus on these kids at a younger age, how do you think that that helps make democracy work?
Burris: Let's go upstream just a little bit and think about things that help promote democracy. So, sense of belonging to your community, empathy, those kinds of things. And those are the kinds of things that we're measuring in the students. And what we're seeing is those needles are moving. And I think as we get better at the Give Five Academy and it's a little smoother process and the students are working sort of as consultants to these nonprofits. So, they're learning about their community. They're learning about the nonprofit sector. They're also doing real-life, real-world learning, and it is problem solving. And so, when you think about what are those upstream sort of foundational talents and skills that somebody needs to be a good citizen, those are the things you need. You need to be a problem solver. You need to have a sense of belonging and ownership of your community. You need to have empathy for others. Those are the kinds of things that this program seems to be impacting.
Langley: What's the future of this program look like? What do you want it to look like in another year or so?
Burris: World domination is always our goal (laughs). We think this program, if it's successful, not only could spread throughout Missouri, but, you know, beyond Missouri. We're working with another organization that's working kind of in a sort of similar space called Teach the Future that's about teaching futurism. And both of these programs really could go anywhere in the world and be effective.