PDF format. Editorial
This is the last edition of Voluntary Action. Over the last ten years the journal has published a great many papers on volunteering, covering a wide range of perspectives. We have published overviews, think pieces and innovative research and have explored specialist areas. We have covered a many subjects, including management issues, policy matters, motivations of volunteers, evaluations of programmes and impact studies. At the end of last year the Institute re-published some of the papers that have appeared in the journal under the title Volunteering and the test of time, which highlights some of the papers that have helped provide frameworks to understand better the phenomena of volunteering.
In the first issue, Justin Davis Smith’s editorial said the time was right for a new journal which reflected the upsurge in interest in the voluntary sector and volunteering, but which concentrated on volunteering and was relevant to practitioners and policy makers as well as academics. So what is different? Not the importance and profile of volunteering, which has gone from strength to strength in the last ten years. What has changed is how we look to disseminate research. Readers will have noted that this journal ceased to be available as a paper-based publication two volumes ago, which was a response to trends in publishing journals. Since then we have taken some strategic decisions about how the Institute should best disseminate research. The conclusion is that publishing an in-house journal in these fast-changing times is not the best use of resources. So rather than see this as an end, look out for other ways the Institute will be collating, reviewing and disseminating research into volunteering.
So, on the one hand, this is a loss of a specialist journal. But there are other resources. A specialist journal still exists, in the form of the Australian Journal of Volunteering. Emphasis on the needs of practitioners is covered by e-volunteerism, run by Susan Ellis. As I write, the Voluntary Sector Studies Network is working on ideas for a new journal. Although this will not be volunteer specific, it will no doubt feature some of the articles that would have interested Voluntary Action readers.
And so to this edition; Ruth Unstead-Joss examines volunteering within Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), looking at the relevance of understanding why individuals are attracted to the VSO experience. The article tackles the difficult area of how issues of power and powerlessness between the volunteer and the host community may inform individuals’ intentions to become a volunteer. However, the powerful nature of selfexamination through volunteering seems to overcome these ideas once in-country and it is then the relationships volunteers establish with local people that motivate them to remain active participants within the development process on their return to the UK.
Young-joo Lee and Jeff Brudney then present a review of the health effects of volunteering for older adults. The article reviews the literature on the positive health effects of volunteering and investigates the mechanisms through which volunteering affects older people’s health. It then reviews nine volunteer programmes for older adults looking for how their design can help maximise the positive health effects. The authors’ conclusion is a list of recommendations for a successful programme, showing that successfully run and managed programmes also maximise the health outputs.
Anne Birgitta Yeung offers an analysis of church volunteering in Finland asking if, in our late-modern times, there is still a place for traditional institutions, social ties and altruism. If we are increasingly individualised, where does altruism fit in? She argues that volunteering, as an act of compassion and altruism, need not conflict with freedom and individualism. Rather, volunteering can assist in the growing individuality through developing the self in a range of ways – skills, confidences and inner growth.
Peter Konwerski and Honey Nashman take us back to the theme of volunteering and health. They look at how volunteering can benefit people, and coin the wonderful ‘philantherapy’. Further, they argue – as I think many have – that some of the benefits that do not always show in quantitative measures exist in widespread qualitative data. Again, and as we might expect, it is vital that volunteer programmes are managed effectively to maximise the benefits volunteers can get from participation.
So, that brings us to the end of Voluntary Action. Things have changed since the first edition. The Institute remains the Institute but what was in 1997 The National Centre for Volunteering is now Volunteering England, with Justin Davis Smith – Director of the Institute and editor of this journal in 1997 – as Chief Executive. I would like to say thank you to two constants throughout the ten years of the journal, to Alan Dingle for his editing skills and to Jacki Reason for making each issue look fantastic.
Steven Howlett
Editor
Roehampton University
