VOLUNTEERISM AND CO-PRODUCTION. Perspectives on Volunteering: Voices from the South. Panel I. Session Title. Abstract.

Transcription

1 VOLUNTEERISM AND CO-PRODUCTION Session Title Perspectives on Volunteering: Voices from the South. Panel I Panel I : Introduction to Perspectives on Volunteering Voices from the South This panel introduces three papers on volunteering in the countries of the Global South. The papers will later be published in different versions and with several modifications as chapters in a new edited volume, Perspectives on Volunteering: Voices from the South, for the ISTR Book Series that will be published by ISTR/Springer in 2016/ The papers on this panel expand the geographic reach of experiences, models and case studies, but also transcend the conventional focus on formal volunteering. The volume highlights both the specific institutional forms of volunteering in developing nations and volunteering that is more loosely institutionalized, often considered informal, being part of solidarity and collective spirit. As a result, a different look at the values, collective meaning, acts and expressions of volunteering is provided. The Co-editors of this book: Jacqueline Butcher and Christopher Einolf will moderate both panels and present a paper in Panel I offering an overview of literature on volunteering in the Global South, an analysis of the studies and country cases in this volume and a synthesis and analysis of the volunteering phenomena in this region of the world. Dekker, P., & Halman, L. (2003). The values of volunteering: Cross- cultural perspectives. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Hodgkinson, V. (2003). Volunteering in global perspective. In P. Dekker, & L. Halman (Eds.), The values of volunteering: Cross- cultural perspectives (pp ). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Manual on the Measurements of Volunteer Work. (2010) Johns Hopkins University and International Labor Organization, ILO. Musick, M., & Wilson, J. (2008). Volunteers: A social profile. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Salamon, L., Anheier, H., List R., Toepler S., Sokolowski W., and Associates, (1999). Global Civil Society Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Societies Studies. State of Volunteer World Report (SWVR), UN Volunteers, UN, New York (December / 2011). State of Volunteer World Report (SWVR), UN Volunteers, UN, New York (December / 2011). Retrieved from : Wilson, J. (2012). Volunteerism research: A review essay. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(2),

2 Additional Information Jacqueline Butcher and Christopher J. Einolf are proposing two panels since the panel cannot be larger than 4 papers and we have authors from a book for the ISTR Book Series that want to participate. Please take this into consideration in reviewing. Participants Jacqueline Butcher, jacqueline.butcher@ciesc.org.mx; Centro de Investigación y Estudios sobre Sociedad Civil, A.C. (Session Organizer) Paper 1. Measuring Volunteering: Comparative Estimates Among Developing, Transitional, and Developed Countries Title (Panel Paper) Paper 1. Measuring Volunteering: Comparative Estimates Among Developing, Transitional, and Developed Countries Author Lester Salamon, lsalamon@jhu.edu; Center for Civil Society Studies - IPS (Non-Presenter) S. Wojciech Sokolowski, sokol@jhu.edu; Johns Hopkins University (Non-Presenter) Megan Haddock, megan.haddock@jhu.edu; Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies (Presenter) : Volunteering is a complex phenomenon that has often defied definition, let alone measurement. Undertaken in leisure time, it is nevertheless a form of work. Pursued for no monetary compensation, it nevertheless produces tangible and intangible benefits for both its beneficiaries and for the volunteers. Supposed to be undertaken as a matter of free will, it is often motivated by personal, cultural, religious, or other obligation. Finally, the perceived importance of volunteering lies not only in the economic value of its product but, also in the important social functions it performs in promoting social integration, civic participation, and the values of solidarity and altruism. This paper presents information that can form the essential foundation on which other measures of the value of volunteering can most usefully be built. It begins by documenting the highly limited solid information that has long existed about volunteering around the world and the inconsistent and uneven quality of what limited data that do exist-- a product of the lack of an agreed conceptualization of this phenomenon or an approach to assessing it. To the extent that volunteering has been measured, the focus has been almost exclusively on volunteering through organizations, which introduces an important source of bias by disadvantaging regions in which voluntary organizations is limited but direct people-to-people volunteering is still abundant.

3 The paper then examines the recent advances in the measurement of volunteer work at the global level by the international statistical community achieved by the International Labour Organization in the 2011 publication of its Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. Developed with the aid of an International Advisory Committee that included both statistical experts, nonprofit practitioners, and researchers from around the world, this Manual significantly broadened the focus of volunteer measurement beyond organizational volunteering to embrace direct (informal) volunteering and provided a set of standards that could produce comparable data for the first time on a global scale. A number of countries have begun applying this Manual in their statistical work, producing the first truly comparable picture of the scope, composition, characteristics and value of both direct and organizational volunteering. The paper highlights the results of these early efforts, the new insights they have generated, and the broader estimates of the global scale of volunteering that they are enabling. Based on these and related data, we have been able to estimate levels of volunteering worldwide and compare them among developed, transitional, and developing countries. Ultimately, we find that when both formal and informal (direct) volunteering are taken into account, the differences in the rates of volunteering between developed and less developed countries reported in prior studies diminishes substantially. As this foundation of knowledge about volunteering comes further on board, other scholars will be in a better position to explore both the demographics of volunteer involvement and the reasons for variations in that involvement, as well as to gauge more precisely the broader impact that volunteering is having both on the volunteers themselves and on those who benefit from their activity. Keywords Volunteering, Civic engagement, Participation, National Measurement Standards Butcher, J. (2010). Ed. Mexican Solidarity: Citizen Participation and Volunteering. New York: Springer. Butcher, J. (2010). Mexican Solidarity: Findings from a National Study. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 21(2), doi:1007/s Einolf, C.J. (2011). Informal and Non-Organised Volunteerism (E3). Background paper prepared for the United Nations State of the World s Volunteering Report. International Labour Organization Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. Salamon, L.M. (2010). Putting Civil Society on the Economic Map of the World. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 81(2), doi: /j x. Salamon, L.M., Sokolowski, S.W., & Associates. (2004). Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector, Volume II. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Individual Submission Panel Paper Paper 2. T Models, developments and effects of trans-border youth volunteer exchange programmes in eastern and southern Africa

4 Title (Panel Paper) Paper 2. T Models, developments and effects of trans-border youth volunteer exchange programmes in eastern and southern Africa Author Jacob Mwathi Mati, jacobmati@gmail.com; University of the South Pacific (Presenter) : Drawing on a comparative evaluation of two trans-border youth volunteers exchange programmes in eastern and southern Africa, this chapter attempts to contribute to knowledge on transborder youth volunteer exchange programmes, which is a relatively neglected field of research in Africa. The programmes studied are Canada World Youth South-South Young Leaders in Action and Southern Africa Trust SayXchange in South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. The principal research questions addressed are: 1) what are some of the models for youth volunteer exchange programmes active in eastern and southern Africa? 2) What are the impacts of some of these programmes on volunteers, host communities and organisations? 3) How do these programmes contribute to African regional integration and development imperatives? On the basis of North/South binary of volunteers origin and where they serve, existing volunteer exchanges in Eastern and Southern Africa are broadly categorised as North-South, South- North, and South-South programmes. The findings suggest that trans-border youth volunteer exchange programmes can facilitate youth empowerment and community development, and at the same time, incubate and facilitate crystallisation of regional African identity. This is in line with previous studies that show that social identities are embedded and constructed in actions such as transnational volunteering (Sanchez-Mazas & Klein, 2003: 4; Stürmer and Kampmeier, 2003) which further contribute to bridging social capital (Lough, Sherraden, & McBride, 2014). The people-to-people interactions inherent in volunteer programmes can aid development of value consensus, mutual understanding, appreciation and accommodation of difference (Kimenyi & Kimenyi, 2011; Lough & Mati, 2012; Caprara, Mati, Obadare & Perold, 2012), and creation of a regional identity that could foster regional integration efforts (Mati & Perold, 2012; Stürmer & Kampmeier, 2003). The chapter concludes that, in addition to their youth empowerment potential, interactive social action processes inherent in such youth volunteer exchange programmes provide viable tools for engendering values exchange, incitement of shared identity consciousness and social capital formation, in aid of Africa s integration and development efforts. Caprara, D., Mati, J.M., Obadare, E. & Perold, H. (2012). Volunteering and civic service in three African Regions: Contributions to regional integration, youth development and peace. Brookings: Brookings Institution Kimenyi, M. S., & Kimenyi, I. W. (2011). Peace interventions and prospects for reconciliation in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. Unpublished manuscript. Lough, B.J. & Mati, J.M. (2012). Volunteerism for peace in East Africa. CSD working papers No : Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved October 9, 2014, from Lough, B.J., Sherraden, M.S. & McBride, A.M. (2014) Developing and Sustaining Social Capital through International Volunteer Service. Voluntary Sector Review, 5(3): DOI: / X Mati, J. M., & Perold, H. (2012). Youth volunteer exchange programs in Southern and Eastern Africa: Models and effects. Johannesburg: VOSESA. Sanchez-Mazas, M. & Klein, O. (2003). Social identity and citizenship: introduction to the special issue. Psychologica Belgica, 43-1/2, 1-8.

5 Stürmer, S., & Kampmeier, C. (2003). Active Citizenship: The role of community identification in community volunteerism and local participation. Psychologica Belgica, 43-1/2, Individual Submission Panel Paper Paper 3. Volunteering in the Global South Title (Panel Paper) Paper 3. Volunteering in the Global South Author Jacqueline Butcher, Centro de Investigación y Estudios sobre Sociedad Civil, A.C. (Presenter) Christopher Einolf, ceinolf@depaul.edu; DePaul University (Presenter) : While the issue of volunteering attracts scholarly attention all over the world, much scholarly research has a theoretical and empirical bias favoring developed countries and a Northern or Western perspective and experience. Recent reviews of the literature on volunteering (Musick & Wilson, 2008; Wilson, 2012) show that nearly all studies cover volunteering in the developed countries of North America, Asia, and Europe. Publications on volunteering through an exogenous lens are well represented while those from an endogenous lens focusing on the cultural and contextual realities of the Global South in all its diversity are underrepresented. As a result, the literature overlooks expressions and awareness of volunteering in the lived reality of people from different regions of the world. The comparative and single country studies in Perspectives on Volunteering: Voices from the South bring together the broadest range of research done to date on volunteering in countries of the Global South. Four major themes emerge: the definition of volunteering, (ILO, 2010, SWVR, 2011) the influence of the global North, ( Dekker and Halman, 2003,) the role of volunteers in economic development ( Salamon, et al. 1999), and the relationship between volunteers and the state. (Hodkinson, 2003). Many authors argued that definitions of volunteering that originated in the global North fail to characterize and fully measure the extent of volunteering in the global South. Measures of informal volunteering leave out actions that people characterize using indigenous words meaning something like cooperation, solidarity, and reciprocity. Formal volunteers often receive stipends beyond the token levels considered acceptable in developed countries, and these stipends can cause political and practical problems for development work. Much of the literature considers volunteers from the global North to be a negative influence on Southern volunteer programs, but there are two examples of the positive influence of Northern volunteers. In addition to the example of Peru already discussed in this panel, there is the case of the connection between corporate cultures in Spain and the United States with the corporate

6 culture in Latin America, which helped the region found an advanced and sophisticated corporate volunteer program. Most authors agree that volunteers provide a boost to the economies of Southern countries and aid in development, and we discuss examples from sub-saharan Africa, Nepal, and China. Governments recognize and value the economic contribution of volunteers but can be threatened by the role of volunteers in politics and civil society. We demonstrate this dynamic with examples from Turkey, Kenya, Mozambique, Mali, China, and Nepal. This paper also elaborates on some important conclusions on how volunteering in the global South is perceived throughout the world and enhances the variety of cases that show differences in perception and in diverse activity of this complex phenomena. Dekker, P., & Halman, L. (2003). The values of volunteering: Cross- cultural perspectives. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Hodgkinson, V. (2003). Volunteering in global perspective. In P. Dekker, & L. Halman (Eds.), The values of volunteering: Cross- cultural perspectives (pp ). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Manual on the Measurements of Volunteer Work. (2010) Johns Hopkins University and International Labor Organization, ILO. Musick, M., & Wilson, J. (2008). Volunteers: A social profile. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Salamon, L., Anheier, H., List R., Toepler S., Sokolowski W., and Associates, (1999). Global Civil Society Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Societies Studies. State of Volunteer World Report (SWVR), UN Volunteers, UN, New York (December / 2011). State of Volunteer World Report (SWVR), UN Volunteers, UN, New York (December / 2011). Retrieved from : Wilson, J. (2012). Volunteerism research: A review essay. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(2),