A significant area of growth in recent years has been the phenomenon of 'voluntourism' – traveling somewhere on vacation but using the time to engage in some type of organized volunteer project. In this Keyboard Roundtable, we seek to find answers as to why this form of volunteering has become so popular, what it takes from volunteer management to coordinate this effort and the potential for even further growth in the future.
When it comes to describing volunteers and the volunteer community, attention tends to be focused on social or human services. In fact, case studies, examples of volunteering, and vocabulary choices disproportionately assume that the volunteers are "solving problems" or "meeting community needs." So we hear a lot about mentors, friendly visitors, tutors, care givers, and other similar roles − all of which makes people who work in the cultural arts feel like stepchildren. This Keyboard Roundtable presents an international panel of volunteer program managers in the arts, who share their views on what it’s like to lead volunteers in the cultural arts and how they cope with feelings of being ignored by their social service colleagues.
All faiths rely heavily on the goodwill of their followers to undertake work on behalf of the church/synagogue/mosque/congregation of both a spiritual and practical nature. Is this recognized as “volunteering” by those in leadership positions within their respective faiths? How does service to the congregation relate to service done in the outside community under the sponsorship of the house of worship? Where does service as an expression of faith end and volunteering begin? Is there a clear jumping off point either scripturally or pragmatically?
With the world’s largest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup, recently winding up in Germany, we at e-Volunteerism decided it was time to turn our attention to the nuances involved in volunteering and volunteer management practices within the context of hosting major events.
Major events utilize the support of thousands of volunteers which, by sheer weight of numbers, creates management complexities not experienced by volunteer managers working in more conventional kinds of volunteering. Some of these issues, which we discuss in this Roundtable, include:
This Keyboard Roundtable offers a variety of opinions from volunteerism leaders around the world, involved in coordinating volunteer effort across a wide range of major events. We invite you to learn about this unique style of volunteer involvement from their experiences.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Geneva, Switzerland in early December 2003 and included a pre-Summit "Conference on Volunteering and ICTS" (Information and Communication Technologies). To put a more personal face on this event, listen to a sampling of interviews with attendees from five different countries.
Earlier this year, Elisha Evans and Joe Saxton of 'NFP Synergy' in the United Kingdom, released a report titled 'Five key trends and their impact on the voluntary sector'. The report looked at five demographic trends and explored their likely impact on the voluntary sector.
The five trends the report examined were:
The report offers many valuable insights into possible future trends affecting volunteering, a topic in which e-Volunteerism is clearly interested.
Rather than simply present you with the NFP Synergy document, we decided to invite several international leaders in volunteerism to review the report and add their thoughts, comments and opinions to those expressed in the report.
Keyboard Roundtable participants from Australia, Canada, Rumania, the United Kingdom, and the United States discuss what an "entrepreneurial volunteer" really is (a pioneer or someone who doesn't like rules? a blessing or a nightmare?) and how a volunteer program manager can welcome and support out-of-the-box participants. Here's an excerpt from one of Abby Dyson's (UK) comments:
One area of discussion that I'm particularly interested in exploring, and finding solutions where there are obstacles, relates to that first group of volunteers that Rob identified which is, in my opinion, very similar to the final group that Linda refers to.
These are people who, for various reasons, are put off by the rules and bureaucracies that exist. One set of reasons may relate to a lack of understanding, time and/or willingness to navigate existing systems. Alternatively, perhaps as in the case of Linda's expected experience as well as Ioana's volunteer, there are people with a clear understanding of what they have to offer and/or want to achieve (often they don't have both) and an expectation that the organisations they work with will be able to accommodate them.
The first set of reasons will, I think, happily be tackled by Volunteering Managers seeking to, as Adaire says, "institute good volunteer management principles and practices" which will strip away the bad rules that may have developed over time as well as effectively communicate the need for good and necessary rules.
The second set of challenges are, I think, less likely to be embraced as the solutions are less clear, more challenging and time-consuming.
The field of volunteerism spends inordinate amounts of time arguing the finer points of just what is and what is not volunteering. Most readers are familiar with a range of concepts that strive to ‘define’ volunteering. Such concepts include volunteering being conducted
However, a much more fundamental question was posed recently on both the OzVPM (Australasia) and UKVPMs (United Kingdom) newsgroups, causing quite a reaction, and prompting us to share the thoughts of respondents with you all through this Keyboard Roundtable forum.
The question was, quite simply: ‘Is volunteering work or leisure?’
With the generous permission of the participants, we have compiled some of the key postings in this debate and hope e-Volunteerism readers will join in.