The Warwick Center for the Arts was packed Saturday night. A huge display of fruits, cheeses, meats, crackers and hot hors d’oeuvres  that were being replenished from the kitchen downstairs held a commanding presence in the center of the room. Members of the School Committee, City Council, teachers, school administrators and most important of all, volunteers, rotated around the room dropping raffle tickets into bags in front of 40 baskets wrapped in glistening cellophane. Others gathered in groups around round tables sipping wine and chatting.

I wanted to be there as much as to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Volunteers of Warwick Schools as to understand how the organization formed and what fueled a renaissance of nonprofits in the 1970s and  ’80s.

 Think of it. This Saturday, the Warwick Center for the Arts, which started off as the Warwick Museum at the Pontiac Mills, will celebrate its 50^th. Joyce Almeida, then president of the Warwick Junior Women’s Club, spearheaded the museum project. Linda Sullivan, who went on to serve on the City Council, was president of the club when, with Judy Earle, it founded the Elizabeth Buffum Chace House.

It was an era of building the infrastructure of community services that are so much a part of Warwick today.

The Warwick Boys Club, which had its start in the Kentish Guard Armory, now the Center for the Arts, mounted a campaign to build a clubhouse in Oakland Beach in the 1970s. From there it grew to open a branch in the former Norwood Volunteer Fire Station and then more recently in the Lloyd Cooper Armory on Sandy Lane.

The House of Hope, with its focus on the homeless and disadvantaged, has a similar history of growing to meet the needs of the homeless and disadvantaged, not only in Warwick but statewide.

Then there was the Geriatric Day Care Center that evolved into Cornerstone Adult Day Care and is now a Saint Elizabeth Community.

Yet another organization, Mentor RI, was born in that era when it seemed we could all work together to make this a better place. Mentor RI was spawned by the Warwick Education Foundation, a branch of the Warwick Chamber of Commerce.

What I found at the VOWS celebration is that the passion to help and to volunteer is very much alive … and that some who had the vision and the drive decades ago are still at it today. Clarice Gothberg, an activist of the era, was one of the board members in the early days of VOWS, when Sallie Peck was the director. I find it remarkable how school roots run wide. Clarice’s son Stephen is director of school construction, a job he took on because he grew up here and wants to see Warwick succeed.

Long before she became secretary to the superintendent, Cathy Bonang joined VOWS when her daughter Jen, now a teacher at Pilgrim, was a third-grader in John Greene. Cathy is on the VOWS board and was in the thick of putting together the anniversary celebration.

Mary Townsend’s tenure with the organization predates Cathy’s. Mary is the VOWS president and said the focus is on “what can we do for the children.” Also a VOWS veteran, Deborah Place, widow of the late City Council President Bruce Place, is a VOWS energizer. She assembled the 40 raffle baskets and was about to tell me all that VOWS does when she was called away. She emailed me a list that included Child Outreach Screening for all students entering kindergarten, an anti-bullying program for every second-grader, a reading week program and more.

Nicole Spirito, who came aboard as VOWS director about five years ago, told me how she grew up in the Warwick Boys and Girls Clubs and found her passion for working with kids: “You have to be patient and nurturing.”  She said there are approximately 70 volunteers who can put as little or as much time they want in a school of their choice (most volunteers are in elementary schools). They also get to choose how they can help from assisting a teacher to watching kids during recess. Coordinated by Leslie Baxter, running the pre-school screening clinics is the VOWS heavy lift.

VOWS operates on a $125,000 budget that depends heavily on city and school appropriations plus donations and grants. When you consider the work it does, it would cost a multiple of that budget to replace.

That still left me wondering why there was this surge of human-service nonprofits in the 70s and 80s that carry forward their work today.

I asked board member Danielle Warren. She and her ex-husband Timothy were introduced to VOWS soon after he opened his chiropractic office in Greenwood years ago.

There was no mystery to her answer.

“There’s a need, and people care.”

It’s incredible what that has done for Warwick.