Volunteer Economies

Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility.

Since most research on work focuses on paid work, and most literature on education concentrates on schools, it is not surprising that studies on the relations between work and learning emphasize the relations between paid employment and organized education. This unique book deals with an area that has been rarely covered in the literature on work and education: the connections between volunteer work and informal learning. Through a variety of examples, ranging from the Red Cross to teacher-labourers, from cooperatives to social housing, and from participatory democracy to environmental social movements, this volume examines the learning dimension of volunteer work in different contexts. It also considers the special case of volunteerism among recent immigrants. The case studies analyze three basic types of voluntary organizations: those providing social services, representing local communities and mobilizing for social change. The chapters include profiles of the actual work their members do and detailed accounts of the learning practices they are engaged in during their work, and the impact of such learning on their personal and professional development. The concluding chapter offers a comparative analysis, practical recommendations and steps for further research.

The objective of this study is to demonstrate some of the economic contributions made by volunteer activity to Canadian society. When recognized at all, volunteer work is most often seen as isolated individual acts of charity; consequently, it remains largely outside the framework of policy decisions on the Canadian economy. This study shows that these individual efforts, taken as a whole, are not insignificant. It demonstrates this by converting the volume of volunteer activity into a dollar figure.

Discover the transformative power of giving back while exploring the world with Volunteer Travel: Giving Back While Seeing the World. This comprehensive guidebook takes you through the rewarding journey of volunteering abroad, offering practical advice, ethical considerations, and inspiring stories from various volunteer programs. Whether you're passionate about environmental conservation, community development, education, healthcare, animal welfare, or disaster relief, this book provides all the information you need to plan and execute a meaningful volunteer trip. Learn how to balance volunteering with travel, immerse yourself in new cultures, and make a lasting impact on the communities you serve. Perfect for adventurers, philanthropists, and anyone looking to make a difference, this guide will inspire and equip you to embark on a life-changing journey.

Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, Volunteer Tourism: Popular Humanitarianism in Neoliberal Times is the first full-length treatment of volunteer tourism from a longitudinal ethnographic perspective. Volunteer tourism, one of the fastest growing niche tourism markets in the world, is a type of tourism in which tourists pay to participate in conservation, humanitarian or development oriented projects. Volunteer Tourism is a comprehensive and comparative study of the perspectives of Thai host community members, NGO practitioners and international volunteer tourists. The book thus shines an ethnographic lens onto the complexities and contradictions of the volunteer tourism experience in northern Thailand. Drawing on cross-disciplinary perspectives in geography and anthropology as well as development, tourism and cultural studies, Volunteer Tourism illustrates how a focus on sentimentality in the volunteer tourism encounter obscures the structural inequalities on which the experience is based. Such a focus situates volunteer tourism within the commodification and sentimentalization of development and global justice agendas, which hail the new moral consumer and reframe questions of structural inequality as questions of individual morality. As a result, albeit inadvertently, the practice of volunteer tourism serves the continued expansion of the cultural logics and economic practices of neoliberalism.