Passions, People and Appreciation: Making Volunteering Work for Young People 

… the thing is people don’t perceive certain things to be volunteering until you sit down and you think, well what is voluntary. Something … for helping someone else. Oh well, then, that, that, that and that would also be volunteering but they don’t seem like volunteering.

When I think about volunteering … unless you really think hard … you always think immediately about those official organisations like surf-lifesaving and the RSPCA … and I volunteered to play the organ at church … and you don’t think about it … until you think about it …

Ask young people what they think the term "volunteering" means and it quickly becomes clear that there are many different understandings – and there is lots of confusion. While most of the young people participating in this project agree that it is choosing to do an activity or task that is unpaid:

Just doing something you don’t get paid for.

they also indicate that volunteering can sometimes include activities that you will get paid for – as long as the pay is very low and doesn’t compare with the salary of someone paid to do a similar job. For instance:

It’s still voluntary if you get an honorarium …

While some believe that volunteering must have a "community" dimension:

Obviously it’s unpaid work but it’s also community involvement. It’s charity work to some extent …

Anything that has community benefit that you do without being paid for it.

Not everyone agrees that this is essential. Some young people regard volunteering as also including some activities that have personal objectives:

I don’t think it necessarily specifies community involvement, like it doesn’t have to be – it can be personal …

or that benefit another individual:

… volunteering is helping someone …

Volunteering also includes some activities that you do for your own benefit, such as to get a job or gain skills or confidence:

There’s probably a different kind of volunteering which is really for yourself volunteering. Like there’s the volunteering which is like the charity volunteering, like as we said, they’re helping to serve the homeless or whatever it is but then there’s volunteering which is really getting into the industry, you know …

A lot of volunteering you do is to get a job at the end of it – and a lot of areas you have to … like environmental stuff that’s the only way you’ll get a job …

Even the idea that volunteering is something that you choose to do rather than something that you’re made to do is disputed. While many young people agree that:

It’s not voluntary if it’s compulsory …

many also indicate that volunteering can include activities that appear to be compulsory in some way:

… if you’re in like a school band, say … and we play at engagements … and that’s not … it’s … well the school volunteers usually that we go to these functions but we don’t get a choice in that …

… at school we "get volunteered" to, like, clean up classrooms or go hand out this stack of notes to everyone …

Volunteering can also include activities you do to "get out" of doing something else that you don’t like:

I’ve volunteered to do things for my teachers at school that I didn’t agree with. Like they go "Anyone volunteer?" and you put up your hand to get out of something …

Most young people understand volunteering to mean a formal arrangement to do some unpaid work through an organisation that provides a community service, such as the CFA, the SES, the RSPCA, St John’s Ambulance or the Surf-Lifesaving Association:

… selling … Daffodil Day or Red Nose Day and things like that …

However, many also express a broader view of volunteering that includes activities that are more informal, that you might even arrange yourself:

… people (can) take their own initiative and organise their own thing.

I don’t think that young people have to join an organisation to volunteer. If they want to go out and help the community, get together a bunch of mates and say you know, we’re going to do whatever …

For most young people, the lines between "volunteering", community service, work experience and recreational or extra-curricula activities are indistinct. "Helping out" an enterprise by working without pay so that you can learn the skills required in a job and make contacts that will help you to reach your career goals is "volunteering", but doing it as part of a school program is "work experience". Being a player in a sporting club is not volunteering because:

… it’s a hobby and you have to pay anyway …

but committee members and others who organise and manage the club without pay are volunteers. Volunteering is "serving the community" where help is needed and in whatever way you can, such as singing Christmas Carols at an aged care facility, or fundraising for a local school, but helping someone to move house, or by looking after their children is only volunteering "when you think about it".

In an attempt to reconcile some of these conflicting and confusing ideas, one participant suggested that there may be degrees of "voluntariness":

… you can either do an actual Work for the Dole program or you can independently volunteer with an organisation and then you have to do much more hours … you can divide it between a "more voluntary" and "less voluntary" type of volunteering …

while another noted:

There’s just so many different levels of volunteering …

However, in spite of the confusion about the meaning of the term "volunteering" young people find it difficult to offer alternatives when asked whether they would prefer to see a different term used. "Volunteering" it seems is the word that is at least familiar!

I think "volunteer" is good. I mean, it’s a known sort of a word …

For young people, volunteering is thus a term that has unfixed and multiple meanings, and that can be used to describe a very broad range of activities with differing objectives. Most often it means:

• activities that are unpaid or verylow paid;
• activities that you choose to do, but also some activities that are compulsory; and
• activities that are aimed at benefiting your community, or another person, but also some activities that are aimed towards some personal benefit.

Young people thus have understandings of "volunteering" that are much broader and more complex than the definition of the term laid down by Volunteering Australia. This specifies that it must take place in not-for-profit organisations or projects and must:

• be of benefit to the community and the volunteer;
• be undertaken of the volunteers’ free will and without coercion;
• involve no financial payment; and
• take place in designated volunteer positions only.

Their understandings of "volunteering" appear to encompass activities that a previous study by Soupourmas and Ironmonger (2002) refer to as "informal volunteering". This includes community service activities outside specific organisations, and activities of mutual aid that occur within communities that are crucial to community life, and the building of "social capital", such as child care and care of the elderly.

Young people understand "volunteering" in ways that more closely resemble the broader Canadian notion of:

The most fundamental act of citizenship and philanthropy in our society. It is offering time, energy and skills of one’s own free will. It is an extension of being a good neighbour (Volunteer Canada).

or similar ideas put forward in the United Kingdom:

Any activity which involves spending time, unpaid, doing something which aims to benefit someone (individuals or groups) other than or in addition to, close relatives or to benefit the environment (Institute for Volunteering Research 1997).