Articles

11th issue of Voluntary Action - Volume 4 Number 2

 

Modeling the volunteer experience: findings from the heritage sector

Dr Karen A. Smith, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, University of Greenwich Business School

Download this article £3.50
Existing BT Click & Buy subscribers will be able to access this for free using their subscription log in details

An individual’s evaluation of their ‘volunteer experience’ is influenced by a range of factors, including the people they work with (other volunteers, managers, paid employees, visitors), the organisation and community in which they volunteer, and the work they carry out. Drawing on empirical qualitative research with managers and volunteers in a sample of museums and heritage sites in the UK, a conceptual model of the interrelationships between the elements influencing the volunteer experience is presented and critiqued. Managers play a central role in the direct management of volunteers; however, they can also act as a interface between the other elements – which is particularly important, as these relationships influence both the volunteer’s and the organisation’s assessment of volunteering. The interrelationship model can act as an agenda and framework for future research.

Voluntary work: a bridge from long-term incapacity to paid work?

Anne Corden, Social Policy Research Unit, University of York

Download this article £3.50
Existing BT Click & Buy subscribers will be able to access this for free using their subscription log in details

Many disabled people take part in voluntary work of all kinds, including those who also have paid work and those whose main income comes from social security benefit. The Labour government’s extension of active labour market policies to groups of people previously assumed economically inactive has focused attention on ways of helping incapacity benefits recipients to try to return to work. There is a belief that voluntary work may serve as a stepping stone into paid work by increasing the employability of, and opportunities for, disabled people. In this article the author looks at structural issues within social security arrangements for disabled people that may influence their participation in voluntary work. Drawing on her recent research, she discusses whether and how doing unpaid work can smooth the path to paid employment for people with impairments or long-term health problems.

The age of the volunteer: narrating generation as a motivational factor in volunteering

Audrey Slight, Lecturer in Applied Social Science, Department of Applied Social Science, St Martin’s College, Carlisle

Download this article £3.50
Existing BT Click & Buy subscribers will be able to access this for free using their subscription log in details

Volunteering is currently identified as a constituent in recent policy debates orientated toward the socialisation of responsibility. This article brings together theory and empirical evidence to demonstrate how one group of older volunteers identify their point of reference for volunteering as the welfare state arrangements set up in the post-war period. The significance of such constitutive attachments, generated through their location in the ‘welfare state generation’, is explored as a motivational impulse for voluntary activity. The article concludes that if government agendas continue to highlight volunteering as a mechanism of inclusion, and also as a constituent in social change orientated toward the regeneration of civil society and the production of ‘active’ forms of citizenship, then this must be viewed in the context of people’s lives as a whole, not merely postulated as the locus of solidaristic bonds that may not be lived by the people who are expected to produce them.

Voluntary Service Centres in Italy: a new social actor in the development of voluntarism

Elena de Palma, Researcher, ISTAT (National Institute of Statistics), Italy

Angelo Paganin, Co-ordinator, Voluntary Service Centre of the Province of Belluno, Italy

Download this article £3.50
Existing BT Click & Buy subscribers will be able to access this for free using their subscription log in details

This article presents an overview of Italy’s Voluntary Service Centres. It discusses how they were established, and then reviews their activities and organisational structure. The article then analyses the major issues that the Centres currently face, and concludes with an examination of their positive aspects. All the research data derive from the study I centri di servizio per il volontariato in Italia. Rapporto 2000 (‘Voluntary service centres in Italy: Report 2000’), produced by CESIAV (‘Centre for the study of and initiatives for associations and voluntary work’) and the National Network of Voluntary Service Centre Committees.