Volunteering in non-profit organizations is characteristic for Nordic countries and Sweden especially. The most common gender division is, that men tend to be active within sports clubs, often in leading positions or as members at the board. For women it is more common to be part of social organizations, taking care of others. With this existing knowledge as a starting point, this study examines what motivates young men in Sweden who takes part in organizations that practice activities typically coded as feminine. The study is qualitative as we want to examine the intentions, and the feelings participants have about their engagement in these organizations. The collected data was analyzed through thematic analysis. For the purpose of this undergraduate dissertation the authors have studied an organization called Vän In Umeå and interviewed five young men involved in the organization as well as had informal conversations with women working in it. The theoretical framework for the study is based upon the concept of social capital, social exchange theory and theory of motivation. The results show that the young men´s social capital is important for how and if the engagement arises and develops. Another finding is that the will to grow as a person and to be a part of something bigger motivates the men in their volunteering, as well as feelings of doing something of value for another person.

This study on parent involvement in Early Childhood Development in KwaZulu Natal investigates the experiences of educators and parents of the different types of parent and community involvement as set out in the Epstein typology. In order to investigate this phenomenon a thorough background of the theory and practice of the Epstein model has been provided. In addition the work of other researchers that support the Epstein typology of parent involvement forms an integral part of the discussions. As parent involvement is the key focus of the study, parent involvement in education before and after 1994 are discussed. In this regard relevant educational policy and legislation that are designed to increase the role of parents and the community in Early Childhood Development are highlighted. Parents' role in the provision of Early Childhood Development is explored. The provision of Early Childhood Development in KwaZulu Natal, which provides a backdrop for the investigation, is exptained. In addition contextual factors that influence parent involvement in KwaZulu Natal are provided. The research methodology and the research design used in this study are described in detail. By means of a qualitative approach the experiences of a small sample of educators and parents in Early Childhood Development are explored using the six types of parent involvement that include parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home and collaborating with the community as set out in Epstein's comprehensive model. The experiences of educators and parents of Grade R learners of the six types of involvement have been included. Although all schools engage in some form of parent involvement, it is evident that not all schools involve parents in all types of parent involvement to the same extent. The study concludes with recommendations for developing strategies to involve parents more effectively in Early Childhood Development in KwaZulu Natal

Bereits 1992 gründete der in Chemnitz geborene Frankfurter Verleger und Antiquar Wolfgang Weidlich mit fünf seiner ehemaligen Schulfreunden den Verein „Förderer der Stadtbibliothek“. Mit hohem bürgerschaftlichen Engagement unterstützt er seine Heimatstadt seit der politischen Wende. Kontinuierlich bemüht er sich unter anderem um Buchspenden von Verlagen und fördert mit Geldspenden den Ankauf von aktuellen Medien sowie Bibliotheksprojekte. Für sein außergewöhnliches unermüdliches Engagement durfte der Förderer der Stadtbibliothek sich 2001 in das Goldene Buch der Stadt Chemnitz eintragen und erhielt 2005 das Verdienstkreuz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Der Einsatz der Ehrenamtlichen in den Städtischen Bibliotheken ist in verschiedenen Projekten möglich, je nach Interesse, Fähigkeiten und natürlich nach dem aktuellen Bedarf innerhalb der Projekte. So können sich Interessierte in den Projekten Bibliotheksgeschichte, Soziale Bibliotheksarbeit/Bücherhausdienst, Medienpflege/Hilfsarbeiten oder als Vorlesepate engagieren. Außerdem gibt es seit 2010 in einer Stadtteilbibliothek einen ehrenamtlich geleiteten Lesezirkel.

Voluntary service is experiencing transition. This transition is marked by social, symbolic and policy changes that have transformed the relationship between paid and unpaid work, and is reordering the connection between voluntary practice and professional expertise. Giddens (1998) identified this as the third way. Rose (2000) sees this transformation as a strategy embodying a tacit regime around the economic transactions that implicate the agent in self-governance based on normative moral possibilities, thus ordering the moral subject. Research has not yet established the fundamental elements of this transforming logic, or the mechanisms by which oppositions such as paid and unpaid are being resolved by voluntary organisations. The thesis argues that third way commentators’ view of the bureaucratic transformation of voluntary service that examines “historical and social conditions, professional strategies, and disciplinary stakes and constraints…” (Shusterman, 1999: 10) does not account for the nature of service, or the practice and logic of that service. Therefore this study interrogates the notion and logic of service for the nature of the discourse and experience of service at the time of the move toward the third way, the point that voluntary values and practices meeting economic action. This logic is examined and extrapolated by empirical examination of the case service in Rotary and Zonta, organisations whose members are professional and act in voluntary positions. Bourdieu’s (for example 1984[1979], 1998, 2002[1977]) work on the logic of practice (featuring field, habitus and practice) frames the theoretical exploration of the embeddedness and logic of a particular social object in the context of practice. Exploring the field, habitus and practice for aspects of service suggests a multidimensional approach that investigates the discourse, experience, dispositions and contextual practice of service. Thus the study of service is conducted by collecting data from codes of professional conduct and objectives of Rotary and Zonta (the discursive level of interpretation); professionals’ experience and interpretation of volunteering (where the habitus of volunteers is made visible); and observations of practice and order at Rotary and Zonta meetings. The data was collected and analysed using Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical analysis (1969a, 1969b, 1989), Erving Goffman’s footing (Burns, 1992; Goffman, 1981), and Harvey Sacks’ indexicality and membership categorisation analysis (Lepper, 2000; Sacks, 2000[1992]). This study examines and reports on elements and relationships in the service discourse such as expertise, judgment and discretion; aspects of the logic of service exhibited in professional agent’s experience of voluntary service, including agency and professional ethics; and the rituals practiced by professionals in the voluntary context. Many of these elements are contextual components of the opposition between economic and symbolic values in the voluntary setting. Empirical evidence presented in this study suggests that voluntary service when practiced within the new frame of economic rationales and bureaucratic structures does not amalgamate opposing sectors so much as expose a common logic of service.

This thesis is a study of older volunteers and their feelings of being valued and of worth within that role. The perceptions of older volunteers and their managers within three participating non-government organisations, government and organisational policy documents and relevant legislation and literature in the fields of ageing and volunteering provided data for the research. Changing political, economic and social conditions together with ageing of the Australian population have resulted in human services being increasingly contracted to non-government organisations. This in turn has resulted in more services than hitherto being delivered by volunteers many of whom are older people. Population ageing implies that there will be an increasing need for human services provision in the first half of the twenty first century. Whether there will be sufficient volunteers to maintain these services will depend at least in part on the responsiveness of organisations to their volunteer base and the effectiveness of their recruitment strategies. This research indicates that a sense of mastery over their circumstances is critical to volunteer satisfaction. Volunteers discussed their perceptions of maintaining control over their circumstances through the process of initiating volunteering arrangements and negotiating role changes in response to their changing health or abilities. Managers recognised the need to be responsive to the changing abilities of older volunteers and identified strategies for maintaining the volunteer contribution. Management style and in particular communication emerged as integral to volunteer satisfaction and an awareness of and responsiveness to differing motivators was important, particularly in relation to social networking and making a worthwhile contribution as a source of feeling valued.

Although the benefits of supervision are known nowadays, it is still not applied in a number of fields. This concerns even such occupations where direct work with clients is the basis of work or voluntary activity (e.g. health care, school education and even some organisations providing services of social care etc.). This thesis first informs about supervision in general, i.e. about its history, objectives, functions and division. Further, it deals with the person of the supervisor, the supervised person, and their relationship. The theoretical part is finished with information on social services, volunteering and supervision of volunteer programmes in the field of medical and social care. In comparison with the supervision of providers of social services, this volunteer supervision should be different, and this difference should consist in its voluntary, not obligatory, character. This diploma thesis aims at describing specific features of supervision of volunteer programmes in the field of medical and social care. A partial objective is to find differences between providing and receiving supervisions in volunteer programmes and supervisions of organisations providing social services. The research was both quantitative and qualitative, included method of questioning, semi-standardised questionnaire and a guided interview. There were three hypotheses set in the thesis, two of which were confirmed and one disproved. Further, on the basis of her results, the author defines the specific character of the supervision of volunteer programmes. The author regards as the most important finding the fact that volunteers take part in supervision voluntarily and with pleasure, view it as beneficial a natural part of their volunteer activity. This is also the most essential difference between the volunteer supervision and the supervision provided by social services, where over 50 per cent of staffs view supervision as an obligatory part of their occupation, and a much higher percentage of the staffs in comparison with volunteers say that they do not regard supervision as a benefit for themselves. The author sees the applicability of this thesis in publishing her results in professional journals or in publishing on the web pages of the National Volunteer Centre, because so far almost nothing has been published on this subject.

The thesis' theoretical part focuses on resource research on topics: education of seniors, volunteering, communities, societies and library. In the practical part of this thesis, we focus on description of not-only educational work of Municipal library in Louny and the analysis of senior's attendance in culture using a custom survey. The survey was focused on middle-aged and older inhabitants in the town Louny, and developed, evaluated and collected by the author of this thesis. In the last part, we can find description of the collected data. Here it analytically evaluates and compares information about the socio-cultural activities in Louny, and offers the next step of development for management of the library.

The main subject of this thesis is the evaluation of corporate volunteering in terms of its possible use as an instrument for staff development and improving corporate culture. The first chapters deal with theoretical solutions and the introduction of the concept of corporate social responsibility, corporate volunteering, working with human resources and corporate culture. The work charts the general knowledge of the concept of corporate volunteering among potential employees (students). Determine their interest or lack of interest in engaging in corporate volunteering in the future. The work investigates from managers and employees of companies that are involved in corporate volunteering, its main benefits and disadvantages. The aim is to determine whether corporate volunteering to help employees develop their enterprise or to improve the corporate culture. The work also focuses on finding interest in corporate volunteerism among employees of companies that do not engage the concept.

A côté des grandes ONG qui bénéficient d'une visibilité dans l'espace public national, de nombreux citoyens décident, suite à une expérience vécue dans ou avec le Sud (voyage, résidence, adoption, etc.), de « faire quelque chose » pour améliorer les conditions de vie des populations rencontrées et, avec le concours de quelques amis, créent leur propre association de solidarité internationale. Dans un contexte marqué par la recherche d'une meilleure efficacité des interventions menées dans les pays du Sud, leitmotiv de l'injonction à plus de professionnalisme de la part des acteurs, cette thèse étudie les discours et les pratiques de ces citoyens « ordinaires » afin de mettre en lumière le rôle qu'ils jouent dans le champ du développement à travers l'animation de ces « initiatives populaires de solidarité internationale » (IPSI). Plus précisément, dans la tradition interactionniste de la sociologie des groupes professionnels, nous nous intéressons au processus dialectique par lequel les responsables salariés des ONG et les responsables bénévoles des IPSl construisent et définissent leur légitimité d'amateur et de professionnel, en tant qu'acteur de développement. La sociologie de l'action publique nous invite également à étudier l'influence que les pouvoirs publics, par leurs instruments, ont sur la responsabilité et la légitimité des acteurs, sur leurs interactions, sur leur reconnaissance mutuelle. L'injonction externe au professionnalisme provenant également des exigences formulées par les partenaires du Sud, nous nous intéressons enfin, de manière transversale, aux perceptions de ces derniers, dans le cas de projets soutenus au Sénégal. / Alongside established, high-profile non-governmental organisations (NGOs), many individuals decide that they need to "do something" to improve the lives of the people they have met (while travelling, living in another country or adopting a child, etc.). These people join forces with a small group of friends to set up their own development organisations (referred, to hereafter as "popular development initiatives", or PDIs). At present, one of the major concerns in international development cooperation is to make development workers more professional in the interest of better aid effectiveness. This thesis therefore looks at the discourses and practices of these "ordinary" citizens, in order to highlight their role and to identify key issues for this sector. More specifically, we study the dialectic process by which NGO staff and PDI volunteers build and define their professional and amateur legitimacy as development actors, through the prism of the interactionist perspective of the sociology of professional groups. We also draw on the sociology of public action to consider how public authorities, through their policy tools, influence the responsibility and legitimacy of these actors, the interactions between them, and their mutual recognition. The need for professionalism also stems from demands by local partners in the developing world, so we have taken an interest in their perceptions in the case of Senegal.