Articles

Tenth issue of Voluntary Action
Winter 2001 (Volume 4 Number 1)

 

The effects of volunteering on refugees’ prospects of getting paid work

Susan Stopforth, MSc student, City University

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This article discusses volunteering by refugees and how it increases their chances of obtaining paid work. Refugees’ views of volunteering confirm its importance for references, for gaining work experience in Britain and for regaining confidence. The data confirms that volunteering has a significant effect on the employment chances of those refugees who have also achieved British graduate qualifications.

Spending time, building communities: evaluating time banks and mutual volunteering as a tool for tackling social exclusion

Dr Gill Seyfang, School of Development Studies and CSERGE (Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment), University of East Anglia

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The findings of the first national survey of time banks in the UK are presented. A time bank is a community currency that aims to build social capital and promote community self-help through mutual volunteering (both giving and receiving help in exchange for time credits), targeting socially excluded groups. The origins, size, scope and character of time banks in the UK are described, and early indications suggest that they are starting to achieve their objectives, albeit on a small scale reflecting their recent introduction. Practice and policy implications are discussed. With increased funding and a favourable policy framework (concerning implications for incapacity benefit recipients in particular), they have great potential to transform volunteering for the twenty-first century and to help foster new kinds of community participation.

The invisibility of volunteers and the need for research: an Australian perspective

Dr Catherine McDonald and Dr Jeni Warburton, School of Social Work and Social Policy, University of Queensland

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In Australia, as in the UK, the non-profit sector has acquired an increased strategic importance as a key partner in a new social coalition of interests. Yet despite the importance of the third sector to the institutional structure of Australian life, it has been neglected as an area of research study. More specifically, there has been a paucity of research into the phenomenon of voluntarism and the activity of volunteering itself. This article argues that there is an urgent need for further study in the area of volunteers and voluntarism in the Australian context, and more specifically a need for theoretically informed research that allows for deeper understandings of volunteering as a complex social phenomenon. The motivation of people to volunteer as social services become privatised; the relationship between volunteering and the concepts of social capital and civil society; and the relationship of volunteering to its institutional context – these are all issues that merit theorising and further empirical research.

The impact of volunteering on citizenship qualities in young people

Dr Diann Eley, Institute of Youth Sport, Department of Physical Education, Sport Science and Recreation Management, Loughborough University

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This paper examines a sport-based Millennium Volunteers programme that aims to provide training and support for young people to volunteer in their schools and the community. The research set out to describe the psychosocial characteristics, motives and attitudes towards volunteering of young people involved in the programme over a nine-month period. Overall results showed that leadership skills and the range of volunteer motivations increased, while the importance of, and attraction to, volunteering also changed over time. Providing a profile of young volunteers and a measure of the impact of their volunteer activity may be of benefit to charities, educators and community administrators who wish to increase interest in, and opportunities for, volunteering by young people. This study demonstrates (a) the advantage of using sport as a vehicle for encouraging pro-social behaviour and citizenship among young people, (b) the positive impact volunteering can have personally on the volunteer, and (c) the potential benefits for the community.

‘It was the best of times and the worst of times’: on being the organiser of student volunteers

Jill Manthorpe, Department of Social Work, University of Hull

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Within higher education, relationships between students and the communities where they study and work are various and variable. Many students engage in voluntary activity, and over the years have established formal voluntary sector groups that contribute to the range of third-sector activities in UK towns and cities. This article discusses the work of organising such voluntary activity from the perspective of full-time organisers of such groups: fellow students elected by students themselves for the period of one academic year. Their own roles have changed but many considered their work had been very influential on their lives and careers. To the students, full-time organisers act as the public face of the group. This can be a heavy responsibility.