Diversity/Inclusion/Equity

This training exercise aims to get participants to explore their own perceptions around cultural diversity. Nancy Nuñez, Training Service Manager for Volunteering Ireland, shares an exercise she learned in ‘Anti Racism Training for Trainers’ that she usually uses with volunteer coordinators, but which can be done with both paid staff and volunteers of an organisation. Using photographs of real people and discussing participants’ reactions to them, the exercise demonstrates that perceptions are the way we perceive something; a perception is not necessarily right or wrong, but something that is constructed by ourselves and our society.

Victoria is a fascinating city nestled in the westernmost portion of British Columbia. It is a city which is known for being “more English than the English” and a great place to have afternoon tea in the old style.

You wouldn’t think they’d be producing material on the cutting edge of volunteer involvement, but this is the second research project I’ve seen from them in the past ten years that takes a very interesting and in-depth look at some area in volunteer management -- in this case, using volunteering as a way to connect isolated individuals back with society.

One of the least-researched areas of volunteer involvement in the United States is that of ethnic volunteering. Hispanic volunteering, in particular, has received much less attention than it deserves considering the vast increase in size and importance of the Hispanic population of the United States.

This qualitative study, by Safrit and Lopez, is one of the few efforts to examine Hispanic reactions to volunteering.

Marc Musick and John Wilson are doing some of the most interesting and useful studies of volunteer behavior today, and this current article, co-written with William Bynum, is no exception. In what is both a review of available literature and new research of their own, the authors provide a thorough and useful look at whether and how volunteering by African-Americans differs from volunteering by whites.

Among their findings and conclusions (and covering both the literature review and their own additional research):

1. "...(F)or all kinds of volunteering except the entirely secular, black volunteering is more influenced by church attendance than is white volunteering, a reflection of the more prominent role of the black church in its community...(and) among volunteers for secular activities, church attendance has a negative effect on volunteering, but only for whites."
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   • Read more about Race and Formal Volunteering: The Differential Effects of Class and Religion

e-Volunteerism enjoys making discoveries. Periodically we find material that was produced by an organization originally for in-house purposes only, but which is of such quality, uniqueness, or interest to warrant sharing more broadly. We will seek permission to reprint these "Tools You Can Use" to spark the creativity of our readers to adapt great ideas pioneered elsewhere.

In this issue, we present a notable tool for assessing how an organization ranks when it comes to diversity. This "Diversity Continuum" was developed last year by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, whom we thank for permission to publish excerpts. First, we applaud PPFA for integrating standards for volunteer diversity alongside the same standards for employee diversity! Second, we think this grid does an outstanding job of delineating different levels of diversity.