Workplace Volunteering

The Maasai Weekly Market

An innovative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project has taken place in rural Tanzania, involving UK-based project management company Buro Four and international development specialist MondoChallenge. In this feature article for e-Volunteerism, representatives from both organizations write about the special challenges and unique rewards of this project, which for the first time brought individual water harvesting systems and a community Internet center to residents of a rural Tanzanian Maasai village in 2008. 

This edition of Along the Web focuses on a miscellaneous set of new and interesting publications on volunteering.  Included are trends in volunteering, employee volunteering, disaster volunteers, immigrant volunteers, and a miscellany of other interesting things.

This article examines a research report done at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada by Evelina J. Rog, S. Mark Pancer, and Mark C. Baetz: “Corporate Volunteer Programs: Maximising Employee Motivation and Minimizing Barriers to Program Participation.” The research was done on the Ford Motor Company’s employee volunteer programme and is based on in-depth interviews with over 100 staff. It outlines six key points to increase employee volunteering. The Research-to-Practice article highlights where the findings resonate with other volunteering research, but also notes some areas where convincing companies to have an employee volunteering programme might encounter barriers not addressed in this research.

The emergence of employee volunteer programs has been one of the most significant developments in volunteerism in the past 20 years. In this issue of “Along the Web,” we look at 42 resources from six countries with solid information to help both businesses and charities make use of this new approach to volunteering.