We are presenting you an article from the journal Sociální práce/Sociálna práca published in issue 4/2011, which focused on the theme of Volunteering and Social Work. In developed democratic countries, citizen participation in volunteering is an everyday practice and has a long tradition. Volunteering can be performed by people regardless of gender, education, religion, or race.

The European Commission declared 2011 the European Year of Volunteering, which provided an opportunity to demonstrate in a European context that volunteer activities increase civic engagement and help strengthen citizens' sense of belonging to their society. As part of the Year of Volunteering (EYV 2011) and the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteering, the campaign “With the Flag of Volunteering Around the World” — Alliance Flag Tour — took place, in which volunteers from 26 countries also visited Slovakia. Together with the Civic Association INEX, they decided to contribute over the summer to environmental protection for one social institution in Bratislava. The activity was supported by the Mládež v akcii program together with the Ministry of Education, Science and Research of the Slovak Republic.

If we look at volunteer work from a historical perspective, we must state that it has been present in society for thousands of years. The essence of volunteer work is selfless help to those who need it. It usually involves helping the elderly, the poor, orphans, and the sick. In the Middle Ages, this help came under the protection of the church and charity, which was always dependent on volunteer work and donations. In the 19th century, the first hospitals were built, orphanages were established, and homes for the elderly and sick were created. In Switzerland, the Red Cross was founded in 1863 and a few years later the American Red Cross.

As Tošner and Sozanská (2002) note, volunteering is classified according to:

I. Historical development – the older European community model. Based on shared interests, volunteers spontaneously gather in natural communities (church, sports youth organization). Professional volunteer centers gradually emerge, specializing in a specific social or age group. These centers retain a community character and are a new force for friendly relationships.

II. From the perspective of the path volunteering takes, it can be divided as follows:

  • bottom-up, it is based on informal groups of friends who have taken up joint activity
  • top-down, it is built on structured groups in which professionals work.

In Slovakia, volunteer activities began to be discussed more broadly only after 1989. According to statistical office surveys in 1998, 19 percent of citizens in the Slovak Republic were involved in volunteer activities, while in 1999 only 13 percent were. When compared with other countries, we still have fewer of these activities here. Our volunteers do not have as much social status and recognition as in other countries. There is still no legislation for carrying out this work.

Volunteering – A Heart for Service

Volunteer work has a long tradition in the world and belongs to the development of society as an integral part. Volunteering is characterized as unpaid, deliberate activity undertaken of one’s own free will for the benefit of others. A volunteer is a person who offers an organization their knowledge, abilities, skills, and experiences under agreed conditions and is not financially compensated for this activity in the form of a salary as a regular employee.

A volunteer is a natural person who has reached at least the age of 15 (the lowest age limit is set by the legislation of the respective state depending on circumstances) and who therefore acts based on their own free decision and in their free time. This activity is provided under a volunteer activity agreement concluded with the person receiving it or with the sending organization. It includes the following activities:

  • Assistance to people with disabilities
  • Assistance to foreigners (refugee camps, etc.)
  • Assistance to people serving prison sentences
  • Childcare
  • Removing the effects of natural catastrophes
  • Environmental protection

Volunteering – A Heart on the Palm

The level of volunteering is closely connected to individual characteristics of a person. In volunteering, men and women are represented in approximately the same proportion—about 45 percent men and about 46 percent women. Young people up to age 30 most often participate, representing about 40 percent; then there are people of the middle generation, about 30–59 years old, who on average make up about 50 percent. With people over 60, it is about 42 percent. The share of volunteer activities is highest among people with higher education, reaching up to 57 percent, and decreases with educational level. In Slovak volunteering, young people are very often highly engaged, and they actively seek out problematic situations because they feel an inner need to get involved in solving them. Organizations should create space for concrete opportunities for involving young people in volunteer activities—especially among groups of people who are socially disadvantaged.

For a person with a volunteer heart, the meaning of life is to use oneself as a means of helping others without expecting any form of compensation. Experienced volunteers remain in this service precisely because they feel they have achieved what they wanted to achieve, and so they are simply fulfilling the meaning of their life. This also includes those who are sufficiently economically secure and who often say, “I have food to eat, I have clothes to wear, I have a roof over my head, I have my family, and I need nothing else—I therefore want to help others who still do not have these things.”

Volunteering – Service with Heart

Besides the sense of belonging, self-realization, satisfaction, and a large number of practical experiences, volunteering mainly provides the opportunity to help another person and thus make them happy. We can express the significance of volunteering through the functions it performs:

1. Service Function

– provides residents with a variety of kinds of public-benefit services.

2. Innovative Function

– alongside the business sector, it is a source of a large number of innovations. This also includes the adoption and application of modern methods from abroad. Through this function, societal demands on volunteer organizations are also expressed—that their services should be professional and of high quality.

3. Advocacy Function

– this involves defending and promoting the rights of individuals or groups. Volunteers defend the rights of clients and participate in improving the quality of their lives.

4. Expressive Function

– volunteer movements create space for the presentation of differences to raise awareness of diversity (different cultures, races, languages).

5. Discovering Function

– people, through volunteer activities, discover their abilities that they do not normally develop.

6. Community-Building Function

– supports their natural development and develops responsibility for life in a given community (neighborhood, municipality, city).

It should be noted that volunteering is strongly linked to the meaning of life, personal well-being, satisfaction, and quality of life. It is one of the paths of humanizing society, which increasingly relies only on material values and careerism.

This essay for the journal Sociální práce/Sociálna práca was prepared by Iveta Šípošová Sources:** BÚTOROVÁ, Z., BÚTORA, M.: Mimovládne organizácie a dobrovoľníctvo očami verejnej mienky. S.P.A.C.E, 1997. OCHMANOVÁ, M.: Dobrovoľníci – cenný zdroj pomoci. Institute for Policy Studies, Baltimore, 1997. TOŠNER, J., SOZANSKÁ, O.: Dobrovoľníci a metodika práce s nimi a v organizáciách. Portál, 2006. WOLEKOVÁ, H.: Dobrovoľníctvo vo svetle výskumu. Centrum pre analýzu sociálnej politiky, Bratislava, 2002.

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