New Zealand

It all began when people with intellectual disability told us they wanted their own friends: friends who were not part of their own family or paid to spend time with them. At IHC we listened, and that premise became the foundation that IHC Volunteer Friendship Programme is based on: One person with intellectual disability is matched with one volunteer, and both decide together what they want to do out in their communities. — Sue Kobar

IHC is New Zealand’s largest provider of services to people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Its one-to-one, Volunteer Friendship Programme has been very successful. As author Sue Kobar explains in this feature story, IHC’s desire to attract younger volunteers has now expanded the concept of what the friends do together to include opportunities for much shorter, focused, and task-specific volunteering. While maintaining the same one-to-one premise, IHC implemented skill-based volunteering to support a person with intellectual disability as he or she sets out to learn a new skill (like using public transportation, for instance) or to achieve a personal goal (say, attend a Zumba class). 

As Kobar explains, these shorter-term assignments are a win-win for all involved. Such opportunities, which allow volunteers to set the time commitment to fit the project, have attracted younger volunteers to IHC who may very well be on the road to long-term volunteering. And along the way, the people supported by IHC learn new life skills. 

When it comes to workshops for managers of volunteers, the regular training topics that we too often wheel out represent a continuous cycle: a repetition of recruitment, policies, procedures, regulatory environment, support and recognition for volunteers, and maybe something on impact measurement. 

What’s typically missing is attention to the philosophy of volunteering and to our understanding of organizations, how they work, and how to help them more fully engage with their stakeholders. In short, volunteer managers need to know and understand volunteering infrastructure.

In this feature article, long-time volunteerism advocate Sue Hine elaborates on this claim by illustrating why these missing infrastructure pieces are so important. Readers will soon realize how a greater understanding of these missing pieces can contribute to the scope of volunteer program management, and to the status and respect for volunteering.

When massive earthquakes hit Christchurch, New Zealand in February 2011, university students wanted to help in the clean-up. But established first response agencies were wary of these young volunteers and too harried to work with them, so they turned them away. Sam Johnson, a student leader, would not take "no" for an answer. He turned to Facebook and put out a call to his friends. Within hours, Johnson had recruited a team of workers and borrowed enough loaned equipment to go out and simply start “mucking out.” Over the next several days, as his social network spread the word, hundreds and then thousands of students stepped forward. They called themselves the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) and eventually numbered 9,000 volunteers, earning the respect and support of the local authorities along the way. The story of Johnson and the Student Volunteer Army eventually drew headlines around the world, and attracted the attention and praise of everyone from Prince William of England to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the United States.  Because of the media attention SVA received, the student volunteers were invited to Japan after the tsunami hit to work with a like-minded team of students. And Johnson recently returned from the World Summit for Youth Volunteering in Colombia, South America, where he presented on the role of Youth in Disaster.

Today, SVA continues its work as the Christchurch area experiences aftershocks and further quakes. In this e-Volunteerism feature, Johnson shares what it’s like to be at the center of the growing emergency response momentum. He allows that he instantly had to learn volunteer management skills, describes how he successfully used social media tools, and reviews how others can connect to young people through online networks. And he explains his strong vision for “the positive change that can occur if technology at our fingertips is harnessed by Generation Y to build stronger community relationships.”  

Surveys in different countries show that people often choose to volunteer in the sport and recreation field.  During 2006, Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) commissioned research to look at how to motivate and recruit more volunteers, and successive SPARC studies show how important volunteers are to sport in New Zealand. This edition of Research to Practice considers how this detailed research can be applied across all volunteer-involving organisations.

Māori volunteerism, which has become embedded within the fabric of Māori communities, is a culture that derived from voluntary activity, introduced by immigrants in the early colonial settlements of Aotearoa/New Zealand.  Current literature, however, fails to provide sufficient evidence to pinpoint when this culture emerged; instead, literature discusses the contemporary culture of voluntary activity and attaches Māori terms to explain the behaviour.  This article provides an important new look at the origin to Māori volunteerism by identifying certain documentations in history where volunteerism was exercised by Māori.  It gives a voice to an activity that has been unrepresented, and recognises volunteers during 1800 to 1900 for their communal activity and contribution to building the society of Aotearoa/New Zealand.