Volunteering is a relatively new word, very much in fashion—but the reality behind it is ancient.
As old as humanity itself. Thank God there have always been generous hearts drawn to others: the weak, the elderly, the sick, and so on.
Generosity is what animates and motivates volunteering. It makes us sensitive to others' needs and moves us to offer help freely.
Does this mean every service offered to another person counts as volunteering? We think not. The word volunteering should apply only to service that is offered with some regularity and faithfulness—qualities that usually give it both its merit and its effectiveness. Yet even when regular and faithful, volunteering can only be part-time work, since it is unpaid and therefore not labor in the strict sense.
The heart of volunteering lies in the quality of relationships between people—a quality born from a generous, free, and freely given choice.
The heart of volunteering lies in the quality of relationships between people—a quality born from a generous, free, and freely given choice.But then, can we call young people who commit to living in a community volunteers? We think not, because even if their motivation is generous, they necessarily receive a salary, which makes them workers. It is true that the line between social worker and volunteer is not always sharp, especially since volunteers often possess real skill and training.
Moreover, beyond skill, organization is something both work and volunteering share. While there can be individual, spontaneous volunteering, most volunteer services operate through groups that, for the sake of efficiency and continuity, require some structure.
But these structures differ from professional ones: they are chosen and created by the group members themselves. It is surely this choice, combined with the unpaid nature of the work, that gives volunteering a distinctive quality in both its services and its relationships.
Perhaps it was the discovery of this quality that sparked the recent surge of interest in volunteering—the praise, the high hopes placed in it? Could it also reflect a certain disappointment at how few and inadequate many state social services are?
We should also note, though, that the term volunteering is often used as the only alternative to state services, overlooking a third category entirely: private services. We mean medical-pedagogical institutes, residential communities, sheltered workshops, and so on—run by associations, religious orders, or youth cooperatives.
These are subsidized to varying degrees by the state, but they are not state services. Their permanent staff is often motivated by generosity as well. Yet as we said above, they are workers with salaries—and rightly so, because it is necessary.
The point is this: in principle, volunteering alone cannot sustain permanent social services. Instead, volunteering should complement certain services or pioneer new ones, and it must remain free. Any attempt to regulate it from outside, to pay for it, to govern it by law, risks killing it—sooner or later. It would destroy what is essential: the exceptional quality of relationships between people, born from the free, unpaid, and generous choice to serve.
by Nicole Schulthes, 1984
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