Concern about water quality has become an important environmental issue in the world, the United States, and Virginia. Volunteers have increasingly stepped forward to assist in the water quality monitoring task, and both state and federal protection agencies increasingly depend upon such voluntary assistance. The Izaak Walton League's Save Our Streams (SOS) is one such volunteer citizen water quality monitoring program. Recruiting, training, organizing and retaining volunteers are among the most resource intensive tasks of volunteer organizations. The purpose of this thesis is to document the motivations of SOS volunteers and the primary causes of their attrition in order to improve the SOS program as well as to enhance the experience of SOS volunteers. We also compared motivations of SOS volunteers, differences in SOS volunteers' evaluation of the program, and suggestions for improvements by varying participation levels in volunteerism. We found that SOS volunteers are primarily motivated by a desire to protect streams and to improve water quality. Learning about streams and teaching these concepts to others were also important motivations. Volunteers cited not enough time and having too many other obligations as the main reasons why they stopped participating in SOS activities. Recruitment and retention of SOS volunteers may be aided by providing feedback about how volunteer data are being used by protection agencies to protect streams, and providing opportunities for learning about streams and teaching these concepts to others. Lastly, we found that those volunteers who were most active in SOS differed in their motivations for participating, tended to be the most critical of the services and materials, and were most adamant about their data being used to protect streams. / Master of Science

This article focuses on volunteerism in the social work field. Volunteerism phenomenon is booming in the Czech Republic; however, due to our historical development it lags behind Western countries. For this reason, this article conveys the management of volunteerism in Germany where it is directly linked to organization's management principles. I have broken down this topic into recruitment and selection of volunteers, their training, evaluation and rewards for their activities and into the coordination of volunteer activities. The aim of this study is based on the German system that can be passed on to the Czech setting in form of recommendations to individual areas of volunteerism management including proposals for more effective supervision of volunteers for Czech volunteer centers/organizations. The theoretical element of this manuscript is extracted from scholarly journals and articles including information from Czech and foreign literature concerning volunteerism circumstances in the Czech Republic and Germany. The practical element was accomplished in Freiwilligen-Zentrum Aachen and in Freiwilligenagentur Impuls Dusseldorf. At the volunteer center in Aachen, I brought together diverse combinations of interview methods with the volunteers' Coordinator, observations and study of the...

This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study was implemented to explore and describe the initial and long-term motivations of community volunteers within a selected homeless shelter in central Indiana. The settlement house movement of human service delivery was the conceptual framework, which provided guidance and understanding concerning why and how community members provide human services through volunteerism. The research question examined the ways in which long-term volunteers thought about and made sense of their motivations to volunteer initially and over the long term at a homeless shelter. To answer the research question, the IPA methodology was implemented with 6 long-term community volunteers at a selected shelter. This design provided rich qualitative text that was analyzed to develop themes to explain and describe how the 6 study participants made sense of their individual motivations descriptively, emotionally, religiously, and socially. The overarching conclusion was that all 6 participants shared a common theme, which was Evangelical tradition, volunteerism, and social responsibility. This new finding provides a first look at the motivations of community volunteers, previously unknown in academic literature, and indicates a key subgroup of volunteers that may be the focus of future research on assisting community shelters with recruiting and retaining community members for the effort to eradicate homelessness in the United States.

An emphasis on citizen engagement, which has direct bearing on conservation and community organizations, is emerging within the corporate realm. Businesses are beginning to view local involvement as a strategic component of their corporate social responsibility mandates, suggesting that it provides win-win benefits in branding them as leaders in the field while advancing noteworthy causes. Concurrently, conservation groups are seeking to partner with corporations in an effort to diversify funding sources, accomplish much needed work and find creative methods for outreach to a “non- traditional” support base. This research explores employer supported volunteer initiatives, an emerging facet of corporate community engagement where businesses form alliances with community organizations to facilitate donation of staff time to carry out hands-on conservation activities. Using a literature review, a series of global case examples and data collected from key local (Ontario-based) conservation and corporate-based informants, this study assesses the challenges and opportunities associated with cross-sectoral collaboration while investigating the potential of employer supported volunteer programs to foster conservation stewardship. Respondents from both sectors face such challenges as finding or maintaining suitable contacts, organizing team volunteer opportunities with mutually beneficial outcomes and understanding each other’s frames of reference. Despite these hurdles, they also realize that employer supported volunteerism can raise awareness about stewardship and the importance of volunteerism in general, provide opportunities for enhanced collaboration and demonstrate leadership in the arena of corporate social responsibility. Collective experience from both sectors provides the basis to determine thirteen principles for effective partnerships. Accompanied by a set of best practices to forward conservation programs, these principles supply an essential “how to” guide for cross-sectoral partners to work together effectively. The implementation of these principles will assist in providing a stepping stone to tap more fully into the potential for joint partnership and even garner greater capacity for stewardship than could be achieved by civil society or corporate players alone.

An emphasis on citizen engagement, which has direct bearing on conservation and community organizations, is emerging within the corporate realm. Businesses are beginning to view local involvement as a strategic component of their corporate social responsibility mandates, suggesting that it provides win-win benefits in branding them as leaders in the field while advancing noteworthy causes. Concurrently, conservation groups are seeking to partner with corporations in an effort to diversify funding sources, accomplish much needed work and find creative methods for outreach to a “non- traditional” support base. This research explores employer supported volunteer initiatives, an emerging facet of corporate community engagement where businesses form alliances with community organizations to facilitate donation of staff time to carry out hands-on conservation activities. Using a literature review, a series of global case examples and data collected from key local (Ontario-based) conservation and corporate-based informants, this study assesses the challenges and opportunities associated with cross-sectoral collaboration while investigating the potential of employer supported volunteer programs to foster conservation stewardship. Respondents from both sectors face such challenges as finding or maintaining suitable contacts, organizing team volunteer opportunities with mutually beneficial outcomes and understanding each other’s frames of reference. Despite these hurdles, they also realize that employer supported volunteerism can raise awareness about stewardship and the importance of volunteerism in general, provide opportunities for enhanced collaboration and demonstrate leadership in the arena of corporate social responsibility. Collective experience from both sectors provides the basis to determine thirteen principles for effective partnerships. Accompanied by a set of best practices to forward conservation programs, these principles supply an essential “how to” guide for cross-sectoral partners to work together effectively. The implementation of these principles will assist in providing a stepping stone to tap more fully into the potential for joint partnership and even garner greater capacity for stewardship than could be achieved by civil society or corporate players alone.

Senior's volunteerism in the Czech Civil Society's background does not have clear contours so far. This thesis brings a clearer idea about senior's volunteerism in the Czech Republic. It outlines the possibilities for development of senior's voluneerism and better knowledge in Czech and foreign researche. The second part of the thesis shows the results of a qualitative research which was realized on the sample of volunteering seniors in the social services in Prague.

Culture is an active process. It does not lie dormant in things (that is, any commodity, object or event that can be made to signify), waiting patiently to be awoken by an appropriate consumer. It is the practice and making of meanings. Culture is not in the object but in the experience of the object: how we make it meaningful, what we do with it, how we value it. John Storey (2003) Inventing Popular Culture, page viii The traditional arts, dance theater, music, visual arts and multi media are all accepted as being part of culture. In the same way that culture can be defined by the perceptions and feelings of each individual the arts belong to everyone. Bruno Frey (2003) in his book Arts and Economics: Analysis and Cultural policy considers the ways in which the arts are funded and supported and argues that a decision making system involving the diverse participants, audience, experts, artists and administrators is best equipped to establish and safeguard the constitutional rights to artistic expression (Frey, 2003:17). Can the experience of the arts be protected in the same way? This is an examination of the process, physical, historical and emotional issues that all play a part in the definition of the arts in Taipei. Entering the experience as a mother, artist, foreigner and long time resident of Taipei gave the researcher the opportunity to use many lenses simultaneously. This multifaceted view informed the choice of this topic. Can heritage sites and old buildings be successfully made into public arts venues? Do the underlying elements of history and conservation contribute to the venue’s ability to reach a large audience? Can free access be in part supported by in these sites through the use volunteers instead of paid staff? In order to better understand the role of the arts in contemporary Taipei life, the researcher, under the parameters of the Volunteer Services Act of Taiwan, conducted her research while a volunteer in the venues.

Each year a group of university students from English speaking countries go to Chile and work as volunteers under the National Volunteer Centre Program. The purpose of this case study is to examine how a group of novice volunteer teachers describe their experiences in a foreign country and how these experiences shape their understanding of teaching. Participants went through the process of open-ended questionnaires and one-on-one interviews of their experience. This study was sustained in the literature by the domains of volunteerism, English Language Teaching, and volunteerism and ELT, and a socio constructivist and experiential lens was adopted. Even though volunteer teaching abroad is an increasing worldwide trend, there are few studies that combine these areas, showing that the existing blend of volunteerism and English language teaching needs to be further examined. The analysis of the data showed that novice volunteer teachers experience five types of experiences when teaching English: language teaching experiences, language learning experiences, challenges, general experiences, and volunteering experiences. Novice teachers recalled their expectations before teaching and those were maintained, modified, or unfulfilled. Volunteers stated what teaching means to them after working in public schools, they were able to describe diverse language teaching experiences, and make recommendations to future volunteers.

This study is about the nature of nurses' decision making related to volunteering to provide humanitarian aid in a major national disaster. Additionally, it is about the lived experience of nurses who volunteered in that disaster. It is a transcendental phenomenological study using the approach of Clarke Moustakas and the purpose of the study was to describe the experiences of the nurses, their reasons for volunteering, and the impact of their experience on their lives several years later.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Nadia Shapkina / In the current climate of proliferating nonprofit organizations and demanding social service needs, volunteers play a crucial role. This study looks at career volunteers, who, unlike other types of volunteers, identify with their work as if it were a paying occupation. It examines personal narratives and experiences through interviews in two Kansas communities and in-depth participant observation in one Kansas homeless shelter to find unique identity formation in the way that career volunteers make sense of who they are and what they do. These volunteers show a tendency to reject modern frames around the concepts of work, home, and volunteerism. Instead, they integrate life categories, lending an often counter-cultural conception of identity and meaning to their lives’ work.