Benefits of Volunteering

We typically write about volunteers in human service settings, but we don’t want to overlook the enormous popularity of volunteering with animals and the volunteer management involved with these unique settings. In this issue, Along the Web highlights the many roles volunteers take up in zoos and animal parks – including  working alongside rather than ‘hands on’ with animals and the many human-facing roles volunteers often play with paying customers. Writer Arnie Wickens provides links to websites of zoos around the world to illustrate some of the volunteer experiences to be found, and also includes links to videos of volunteers, volunteer managers, and relevant academic research about volunteers in zoos.

“After 12 years at the helm of a leading faith-based volunteering charity, I have decided to retire.” So writes Leonie Lewis, MBE, who has been Director of the Jewish Volunteering Network (JVN) since its inception in the UK in 2007. Having recently chosen to retire from her role, she reflects in this personal e-Volunteerism essay on the changing trends she has seen in volunteering over the last decade and on how the community can adapt to maximize the impact that volunteers make.

 “I leave with many questions that still need to be asked and many that I’ve hopefully answered through my time with the organization.  Do I leave the charity in a good place? Have I made a difference? And what is my legacy?” In this poignant reflection, Lewis tries to answer her own questions. In the process, she reveals some changes, challenges, and insights into volunteering that will no doubt resonate with the entire profession.

"Volunteers in the food redistribution revolution" would have been an unlikely Along the Web topic even just a few years ago. But today there is an undeniable and growing public awareness about the shocking amount of food that’s wasted and sent to landfills, despite still being fit for people to eat. Citizens now understand and are speaking out over the economic, environmental, and ethical concerns raised by food over-production and disparities in food distribution. And food poverty in the midst of this excess and waste has also become a rising concern.

Volunteers around the world are leading the way to create solutions to this unsustainable food mismatch. They are, if you will, ‘stepping up to the plate’ to challenge, to campaign, and to make a practical difference through the redistribution of surplus food. This Along the Web looks at some of these creative food redistribution programs, with featured websites, video clips, volunteer stories, and first-hand accounts of volunteers leading this revolution.

 

The voices of international hospice and palliative care volunteers come through clearly in a new book, The Changing Face of Volunteering in Hospice and Palliative Care. Published in mid-2018 by Oxford University Press and edited by Ros Scott and Steven Howlett, it presents an international perspective, history, and information on hospice and palliative care through the eyes of different country experts. And it also includes insightful volunteer narratives to illustrate and aid the reader in understanding the volunteers’ perspectives.

In this Voices, co-editor Allyson Drinnon reviews this valuable resource, with a special emphasis on the voices and stories of hospice volunteers that unfold in this publication. 

Volunteers make great volunteer managers, but their value in these roles isn’t always recognised. This feature article by Tom Freeland explores the benefits that ‘volunteer’ volunteer managers or ‘lead’ volunteers can bring to an organization. He also explores the fears an organization needs to address when adopting this approach, and the joy and challenges of utilizing volunteers as volunteer managers.

The devastating impacts of hurricanes and floodwaters are well known throughout the world, including nearly every region of the United States. In September 2013, a catastrophic amount of flooding besieged Boulder, Colorado, when almost a year’s amount of rain fell in just a few days, killing eight people, stranding thousands, damaging nearly 19,000 homes, and creating miles of impassable roads. 

Despite these conditions, volunteers began showing up. In addition to local residents offering to help, thousands arrived from far-off states to help shelter evacuees, clean out flooded homes and buildings, and dig out debris that littered fields and roads for miles. Boulder quickly recognized that in order to rebuild a resilient city, it would need to leverage all of its resources wisely – including the talents of residents and others who wished to volunteer.

In this e-Volunteerism feature interview, Beth Steinhorn, president of VQ Volunteer Strategies, begins with a first-person account of the city's initial response to the floods. She then conducts an important interview with Aimee Kane, Boulder's Volunteer Program and Project Manager, who discusses why and how the City of Boulder built a culture of community and volunteer engagement in the years since the floodwaters of 2013. 

Managing volunteer programs can be a whirlwind of risk management, policies, and procedures, with mounds of credentialing and more red tape than we’d like to admit. Jumping through hoops can become a necessary skill for volunteers to meet all of the criteria required to donate their time, particularly in large organisations or regulated sectors.  

In this article, author Tracey O’Neill reflects on her own experiences as a volunteer in three organisations where she also managed volunteer services and programs. She explores what these experiences taught her when it comes to ensuring that “my volunteer programs remain relevant and appealing to our community and supporters.” O’Neill’s ideas will challenge you to reflect on ways you can make volunteering more accessible and appealing in your organisation, while working to retain the best volunteers in today’s volunteering climate.

When human beings have new experiences, new synaptic pathways forge in our brains. We become alert to new ideas and we can be guided to new understandings and different behavior.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, Angela Parker – the co-founder of a global agency called Realized Worth that specializes in employee volunteer training, program design, and employee engagement – describes how participants who integrate a few basic concepts into civic engagement and volunteering activities can be guided to challenge assumptions, become alert to new ideas, orient to what those ideas mean for them, and take action toward new behaviors. And when these new behaviors are rooted in inclusivity, equality, compassion, and empathy, Parkers argues that civic engagement and transformative volunteering can result in better employees, better organizations, and better communities.