This special issue aims to validate the voices of southern partners in communities where international volunteering takes place. The collection deals with nine countries from the Global South: Peru, Guatemala, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa and India. Its individual chapters embody a distinctive approach that aims to decentre critical perspective by representing subaltern voices. The study's data is drawn from 212 individual interviews and 21 focus groups, and its findings are couched within critical and normative theories, which offer alternative views to the often dominant critical constructions that frame dialogue on international volunteering. This approach presents these stories and interpretations in a way that better situates the voices of the host organisation and community staff within historical, political, social and economic reality.
VolunteerMatch taps expert knowledge from today's volunteerism professionals to help nonprofits take a more inventive approach to volunteer engagement Volunteer Engagement 2.0: Ideas and Insights Changing the World shows you many of the innovative approaches to engaging volunteers that are reshaping nonprofits, volunteer programs, and communities around the world — and how you can bring these changes to your own organization. Curated and edited by VolunteerMatch, the Web's most popular volunteer engagement network, these transformative strategies and practices are already being used by innovative nonprofit, government, and business sector leaders in volunteering — and they represent many of the future trends in volunteerism. This insightful collection contains actionable advice on strengthening volunteering at your organization as well as broader explorations on the nature of opening organizations to volunteers to show you how to create a new volunteerism model that supports your organization's mission and programs. Among other things, you'll learn how to attract millennials and baby boomers to your cause, the best ways to partner with corporate and pro bono volunteer programs, why micro volunteering may be the future of online giving, what's new in national service, why your supporters are a largely untapped goldmine of fundraising success, and what trends will drive volunteering in the future. For more than 15 years VolunteerMatch has had unprecedented access to leading innovators in the nonprofit, government, and corporate sectors. In this book, you'll share that access as you explore the ideas, strategies, and insights that will boost volunteer engagement today and in the future. Learn what trends and ideas are reshaping volunteer engagement today Reconsider your volunteer model to reflect your organization's mission Find out what the leading thinkers predict will drive volunteering in the future Optimize volunteer recruitment, screening, orientation, and training Understand and cater to the motivations of your volunteers The world of volunteering is changing and there has never been a better moment to engage the time and talent of those who support your cause. How will your nonprofit grow and thrive with the help of volunteers? Volunteer Engagement 2.0: Ideas and Insights Changing the World provides the innovation and inspiration, you just need to supply the action.
"This year, over ten million people will go abroad, eager to find the perfect blend of adventure and altruism. Volunteer travel can help you find your place in the world--and find out what you're made of. So why do so many international volunteer programs fail to make an impact? Why do some do more harm than good? Learning Service offers a powerful new approach that invites volunteers to learn from host communities before trying to 'help' them. It's also a thoughtful critique of the sinister side of volunteer travel; a guide for turning good intentions into effective results; and essential advice on how to make the most of your experience."--Amazon.com.
"While many young adults want to help their community in some way, many are unsure of where to start. This book empowers teenagers to take action by providing information on how to get started, be successful, and make a difference. First-hand accounts from teenagers provide additional insight from those who have gone through the process themselves"--
This volume overlooks the distinct expressions and awareness of volunteering in the lived reality of people from different regions of the world. By casting the net widely this book not only expands the geographic reach of experiences, models and case studies but also transcends the conventional focus on formal volunteering. It highlights institutional forms of volunteering specific to developing nations and also describes volunteering that is more loosely institutionalized, informal, and a part of solidarity and collective spirit. As a result this book provides a different look at the values, meaning, acts and expressions of volunteering. The chapters in this book consist of essays and case studies that present recent academic research, thinking and practice on volunteering. Working from the premise that volunteering is universal this collection draws on experiences from Latin America, Africa including Egypt, and Asia. This book focuses on developing countries and countries in transition in order to provide a fresh set of experiences and perspectives on volunteering. While developing countries and countries in transition are in the spotlight for this volume, the developed country experience is not ignored. Rather the essays use it as a critical reference point for comparisons, allowing points of convergence, disconnect and intersection to emerge.
Although there is significant research on large events that take place within athletics, small-scale events are largely ignored, in part due to the lack of press that they generate. However, these events require planning and preparation in the same way that larger sporting events do. This disparity between the effort that goes into the event and the attention the event draws allows for a gap in strategy or information available to those planning smaller scale athletic events. Principles and Practices of Small-Scale Sport Event Management is a cutting-edge reference publication that examines the successful organization and planning of small-scale sporting events. Featuring a wide range of topics such as community engagement, event planning, and sports management, this book is ideal for event planners, sports managers, marketers, academicians, practitioners, industry professionals, researchers, event organizers/coordinators, and students.
Just a generation ago the notion that holidays should be invested with ethical and political significance would have sounded odd. Today it is part of the lifestyle political landscape. Volunteer tourism is indicative of the growth of lifestyle strategies intended to exhibit care and responsibility towards others less fortunate, strategies aligned closely with developing one’s ethical identity and sense of global responsibility. It sits alongside telethons, pay-per-click, Fair Trade and ethical consumption generally as a way to “make a difference”. Volunteer tourism involves a personal mission to address the political question of development. It draws upon the private virtues of care and responsibility and disavows political narratives beyond this. Critics argue that this leaves the volunteers as unwitting carriers of damaging neoliberal or postcolonial assumptions, whilst advocates see it as offering creative and practical ways to build a new ethical politics. By contrast, this volume analyses volunteer tourism as indicative of a retreat from public politics into the realm of private experience, and as an expression of diminished political and moral agency. This thought provoking book draws on development, political and sociological theory and is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in the phenomenon of volunteer tourism and the politics of lifestyle that it represents.
Overseas volunteering has exploded in numbers and interest in the last couple of decades. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people travel from wealthier to poorer countries to participate in short-term volunteer programs focused on health services. Churches, universities, nonprofit service organizations, profit-making "voluntourism" companies, hospitals, and large corporations all sponsor brief missions. Hoping to Help is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of global health volunteering, based on research into how it currently operates, its benefits and drawbacks, and how it might be organized to contribute most effectively. Given the enormous human and economic investment in these activities, it is essential to know more about them and to understand the advantages and disadvantages for host communities. Most people assume that poor communities benefit from the goodwill and skills of the volunteers. Volunteer trips are widely advertised as a means to "give back" and "make a difference." In contrast, some claim that health volunteering is a new form of colonialism, designed to benefit the volunteers more than the host communities. Others focus on unethical practices and potential harm to the presumed "beneficiaries." Judith N. Lasker evaluates these opposing positions and relies on extensive research—interviews with host country staff members, sponsor organization leaders, and volunteers, a national survey of sponsors, and participant observation—to identify best and worst practices. She adds to the debate a focus on the benefits to the sponsoring organizations, benefits that can contribute to practices that are inconsistent with what host country staff identify as most likely to be useful for them and even with what may enhance the experience for volunteers. Hoping to Help illuminates the activities and goals of sponsoring organizations and compares dominant practices to the preferences of host country staff and to nine principles for most effective volunteer trips.
This book provides an overview of perspectives and approaches to the cultural meaning of sport volunteering in different countries. The main objective is to reflect on the diversity of meanings with regard to volunteering in different cultures and societies. Additionally, this book will shed light on volunteering practices and the impact of volunteering from both an economic and a sociological perspective. The book begins with an introductory section that gives an overview of the rationale of the text and the diversity of sport volunteers in general. From there, the book's 25 chapters each discuss a specific country case study provided by researchers from the respective country. These studies provide a comprehensive overview of volunteering in each country, such as motivations of volunteers, satisfaction of volunteers, their perceived cost and benefits, and many other areas related to the overall study. By having twenty-five different countries represented and a native of each country authoring the respective chapters, this book serves as a comprehensive and diverse review of sports volunteering around the world and can be incorporated into courses in economics - particularly those dealing with sports economics - and can also be used as a reference for volunteer organizations and sports economists worldwide.
What is virtual volunteering? It’s work done by volunteers online, via computers, smartphones or other hand-held devices, and often from afar. More and more organizations around the world are engaging people who want to contribute their skills via the Internet. The service may be done virtually, but the volunteers are real! In The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, international volunteerism consultants Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis emphasize that online service should be integrated into an organization’s overall strategy for involving volunteers. They maintain that the basic principles of volunteer management should apply equally to volunteers working online or onsite. Whether you’re tech-savvy or still a newbie in cyberspace, this book will show you how to lead online volunteers successfully by: -Overcoming resistance to online volunteer service and the myths surrounding it; -Designing virtual volunteering assignments, from micro-volunteering to long-term projects, from Web research to working directly with clients via the Internet; -Adding a virtual component to any volunteer’s service; -Interviewing and screening online volunteers; -Managing risk and protecting confidentiality in online interactions; -Creating online communities for volunteers; -Offering orientation and training via Internet tools; -Recruiting new volunteers successfully through the Web and social media; and -Assuring accessibility and diversity among online volunteers. Cravens and Ellis fervently believe that future volunteer management practitioners will automatically incorporate online service into community engagement, making this book the last virtual volunteering guidebook that anyone has to write!
