The concept of “volunteers” has often been used recently in the news: “volunteers helped the orphanage”, “the volunteer movement in the city is gaining momentum”, “a volunteer detachment took part in rescue operations”. From this very word it blows with something pure, kind, good, gratuitous. So who are these volunteers and what motivates them to embark on the path of helping all those in need?
Definitions of volunteer
Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary gives the meaning of the word “volunteer”: from a French volunteer, a freelancer is a member of the army at his own expense and of his own free will in wartime, but not enlisted. And so it really was before.
The meaning of the word “volunteer” is now somewhat different. This is still a volunteer, but already in the service of the people. In a broad sense, this is a person who engages in community service on a voluntary basis. A small but important detail: not every free work is volunteering. The basic rule is that this work should benefit people.
Volunteer: scope
Directions where volunteers can put their energy, mass. Below are only the most popular ones.
- Ecological direction, or otherwise “green volunteering” - planting trees, cleaning the planet of debris, working in nature reserves.
- Event volunteering - an activity dedicated to a specific event.
- Donation
- Social welfare volunteering - providing assistance to vulnerable groups of the population (pensioners, orphans, disabled people).
- Media volunteering is the dissemination of information.
- Fundraising - the organization of a non-profit fundraising for the treatment of a particular patient.
- Help animals.
Volunteers in Russia. Specificity
In Russia, the volunteer movement is not so popular as, for example, in more developed countries. Thus, according to a survey of the site Superjob.ru, among our compatriots only 8% would like to help people for free, while, for example, in the USA this figure reaches 27% (data as of the end of 2009). And the point here is not that the level of empathy among Russians is lower. In Russia, the volunteer movement itself began relatively recently. So, in Russian legislation the definition of “volunteer” was written down only in 1995 and has not yet managed to form the image of a volunteer among the masses. Also in our country, the specifics of the volunteer work is not fully spelled out in regulatory legal acts, which also excludes the possibility of additionally motivating people to this activity.
The peculiarity of Russian volunteering is that it is primarily aimed at young people who are not burdened by families and children, while in other countries volunteers are also pensioners, people of mature age, people with disabilities and even small children.
What does the word “volunteer” mean for those who are currently engaged in this activity? First of all, it is a conscious choice to help others, enjoying it and not hoping for anything in return. But many volunteers say that they receive in full for their efforts. The sense of self-need and the charge of positive emotions make up for those forces that these amazing people spend on helping others.