What about volunteering?

Volunteering is a term that describes altruistic activities or services which are provided for non-financial gain. In the current century this practice is becoming popular and plays an important role in many people´s way of life.

The term volunteer is quite new. It was used for the first time around five hundred years ago and from the beginning, the word has been related to military issues. It was used for those who joined the army without being forced and also for those who freely joined dangerous actions at war.

In the American civil war, for example, women had an important role by helping and supplying the soldiers in the front. Clara Barton was a significant character during the war organizing an agency formed by volunteers which became later, in 1881, American Red Cross.

The word volunteering doesn´t mean necessarily working without remuneration, but means working by own conviction, believing that the work is useful for the humanity and for yourself. Nowadays the term has become more popular and it has different fields to action and many ways to be implemented.

Volunteering is useful to create practical opportunities in the education system and also brings chances to explore new ways to learn. This educational volunteering service is known as service learning and, according to Janet Eyler, it gives more powerful learning experience: "Students like service-learning. When we sit down with a group of students to discuss service-learning experiences, their enthusiasm is unmistakable....it is clear that [the students] believe that what they gain from service-learning differs qualitatively from what they often derive from more traditional instruction."

Janet Eyler (1999), Where's the learning in service-learning?

Volunteering is increasing its applications and nowadays we find many different types of works: volunteering in developing countries, environmental volunteering or community voluntary work are just a few examples of some fields of work. Sometimes, the needs of a society act as a spontaneous call for volunteers, especially in emergency situations or natural disasters.

In 2002, an oil spill happened in the Spanish and Portugal coasts causing the worst environmental disaster in the Peninsula. The event, called “the Prestige disaster”, strongly impacted on Spanish and Portuguese society and, just a few days after the crash, thousands of volunteers where mobilized, making the cleaning campaign a success.

Public statements are giving chances to do volunteering in a local and international frames – the EVS (European Voluntary Service) program, for example, which is financed by the Erasmus + program, allows youth people to have work experiences in different countries – but also some private initiatives are acting actively on building these scenarios.

On line platforms such as Helpx or Workaway are being used for many people to travel around the world using their skills as an exchange item (instead of money). The mentioned websites are building a huge network of guest all around the world that need volunteers for specific projects. The users can easily join this projects though contacting directly the guests by email.

This kind of exchanges are becoming popular because of the economic crisis. For many youth, volunteering in NGO´s, cultural events or hospitals is a way (sometimes the only way) to gain experience in order to have success in the working market. Each day, more and more people are looking for jobs which they like and that can be useful for the development of the society as well. For this reason, the act of volunteering plays a crucial role in the modern society and, sooner or later, it will be acting as an important key for civil changes.

Rafael Anton Garcia

 

 

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