United States

Over a year ago, Steve McCurley sent Susan a gift from a local library book sale. It was a copy of the 1966 novel for teens by Alice Ross Colver, Vicky Barnes, Junior Hospital Volunteer: The Story of a Candy Striper. Steve was right that Susan would like this sample of volunteering folklore. How could she not, with dialogue throughout the 171 pages like this:

“I’m accepted!” she breathed. “At least I’m to appear for an Orientation Course next week Monday. Oh, Mother, I’m so terribly happy!” She stopped and ended with a wobbly smile on her face. “Here’s my report card. I got all A’s.”

“And that, if I’m not mistaken,” her mother said smilingly, “is an anticlimax.”

This Voices from the Past shares more of Vicky’s adventures as a volunteer as well as other references from older books for children and teens that shaped all our impressions of what volunteering is and who does it.

You don’t need to be a drama queen (or king), or the star of your 1971 high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, or even a Shakespearian scholar to tap into the rich tool kit of theatre techniques available to any trainer.

While a few very successful trainers go out of their way to avoid exercises that resemble theatre games in any way, the reality is that most of us need a creative way to share information, enliven our presentations, and reach out to a diverse group of adult learners who tend to have short attention spans and their own, unique learning styles. Using drama, a catchphrase that includes a variety of theatrical techniques, is the perfect way to make a good presentation more effective and memorable.

A word of caution : Drama can make a good presentation great, but it won’t make a bad presentation good. As in the use of any training technique, before you begin to think about what drama exercises to add, start with a solid strategy and make sure that your curriculum is well thought out to meet the stated objectives of the course.

This article is adapted from the very popular workshop the authors first taught together at the International Conference on Volunteer Administration in Phoenix in 2000. Like the workshop, this article is divided into two sections and explores the continuum of theatre techniques, from creative drama to fully scripted skits, and looks at how they can be adapted to virtually any training.

The first part of the article looks at Creative Drama and includes examples of how these techniques can energize an ice breaker, help participants explore a complex concept though individual role playing, and work through tough issues with fully improvised group scenes. The second part of the article explores the use of scripted scenes in training, and how to bring out your own Tennessee Williams in the process.

There are some wonderful pointers here for any trainer, along with an an icebreaker and several skits (with and without scripts).  

With the advent of more and larger data sets, research on volunteering is transitioning from pontificating to proving hypothesis about volunteering characteristics. The RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas publishes the Investigator, a series of information briefs designed to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers in volunteerism, and to encourage researchers to do more in the field of volunteerism.

The first issue,“Data Sets on Volunteerism: A Research Primer,” previewed in e-Volunteerism before being made available to the public, summarized existing data sets and provided examples of the analyses that can be generated from them. One of the data sets described was the Current Population Survey Supplements. The second issue of the Investigator, “Volunteering by States,” uses this data set to report volunteering rates and characteristics of volunteers by each State in the United States.

e-Volunteerism unveils the second issue of the Investigator (giving readers the chance to provide feedback prior to the public presentation) with comments explaining the process. Learn more about the characteristics of volunteers on a state-by-state basis in the US, and how to use such studies to assist your volunteer program. Non-American readers will find the concepts useful as well and have the opportunity to identify similar studies in their countries.

In 1980, VOLUNTEER: The National Center for Citizen Involvement (predecessor of the Points of Light Foundation) published Exploring Volunteer Space: The Recruiting of a Nation, by Ivan H. Scheier. As has been the case so often with Ivan’s writing, the book was way ahead of its time and unfortunately is now largely unknown. It is a joy to be able to use this “Voices from the Past” feature section of e-Volunteerism to reintroduce new readers to the very-much-still-relevant pages of Exploring Volunteer Space. In the Introduction, Ivan says:

The further cultivation of volunteering is the theme of this book; intensifying, energizing, and expanding it, working out from today’s career leadership of volunteering. The core is the director, coordinator or administrator of volunteer programs, plus resource people and organizations at local, state and national levels. These leaders number an estimated 70,000-80,000 people in the United States today…Without this leadership, there would be no significant volunteer movement for anyone to analyze here. Nevertheless, this leadership seems thin on the line, because the volunteer helping army is far larger than we suppose, and visible leadership, however, talented, shrinks drastically in relation.

In the excerpt presented here, we share Ivan’s thoughts on “Thick and Thin Leadership” – “Practical Issues in Career Effectiveness.” Over time, we’ll revisit Exploring Volunteer Space and give our readers more excerpts. And, since Ivan is Consulting Editor for this journal (/team/scheier.php), we may even hear from him directly in response.

A never-before published draft excerpt from Carol Weisman’s upcoming book, Raising Charitable Children: Kids Who Give as Good as They Get (anticipated for publication in late 2005). The chapter previewed here explains the concept – and how-to’s – of a “Joy and Sadness Meeting” as a technique of helping parents and children discover the possible causes on which to focus their charitable attention. The written material is accompanied by an audio interview with Carol, as she shares three real-life examples of how to encourage family philanthropy.

Have you ever wondered where researchers find the statistical data that allows them to determine the long-term effects of volunteering on one's health or on one's career?  Or questioned how frequently the Independent Sector or the Bureau of Labor Statistics conduct surveys on volunteering among Americans? Or, more to the point, have you ever wondered why the research that is published about volunteering never seems to really answer the questions that most concern you as as a manager of volunteers?

The RGK Center on Philanthropy and Community Service, a Center at the University of Texas at Austin, unveils the first of its Investigator series of Fact Sheets to e-Volunteerism readers in advance of release to the general public.  Designed to encourage graduate students and others to consider research in volunteerism, the first issue in this quarterly series identifies some of the more commonly used survey instruments that collect data on the volunteering behaviors of Americans.  The Fact Sheet provides information about the type of questions asked, the frequency with which these questions are asked, and how to secure the findings from these instruments.  Developed by economist and Ph.D. student Mark Pocock, in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Jane Rehnborg, the director of the Center's volunteerism initiative, the Investigator series will address topics important to volunteerism at the University level.

You can tell the age of the book, The Citizen Volunteer , by the pronoun in its subtitle: His Responsibility, Role and Opportunity in Modern Society. The really ironic part is that the book was copyrighted in 1960 by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)!

 

NCJW produced the book as part of the celebration of its 65th anniversary. They signed on Nathan E. Cohen, the Dean of the School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University as editor and he, in turn, asked seventeen different writers to contribute chapters. In this article, we examine what these social observers were thinking about volunteering just before the turmoil of the '60s decade - and how right or wrong they were in the last section of the book entitled "Looking Ahead."