This is a study on the attitudes towards voluntarism and non-profit work, as expressed by employees in the Church of Sweden's children and youth activities. The study has had a mixed methods design, reflecting in the fact that the study at large is two-part, a quantitative part and a qualitative part that complement each other's results. The quantitative part had access to an empirical survey from the project “Av fri vilja på fritid 2021”, run by the Church of Sweden's unit for research and analysis, while the qualitative material is based on two focus group interviews, conducted in two different parishes in Skara diocese. The purpose of the study has been to, among employees, find indicators of attitudes towards voluntarism and non-profit work in the Church of Sweden's children and youth activities and to examine differences in attitudes within the parishes. The study is based on the theoretical concept of lived ecclesiology to identify the expressions that relates to attitudes towards voluntarism, as well as the perspectives ‘Church as community’ and ‘Church as service provider’ to shed light on the differences between parishes. Conclusively, the quantitative analyses show an overall picture of employees' attitudes towards voluntarism and non-profit work. The reduction of variables through factor analyses gave four indicators for attitudes towards voluntarism could be identified: cooperation, competition, complement and tradition. The qualitative analyses illustrated the different attitudes found among employees from two different parishes, via the perspectives of Church as community and Church as service provider. The first is characterized by unpretentious activities where everyone is welcome as they are, the employees try to ensure that the non-profit work is meaningful and that the volunteers, based on their own will and experience, take an active part in both planning, teaching and community. The latter is characterized by primarily being a place to learn about God and Jesus, a place that is something more than a "regular after-school centre", and where the employees plan and carry out any activities to maintain a high level of education while the volunteer are given simpler tasks to help and support the employee. In addition, the study shows how important the organizational choices are for how parishes work with voluntarism; by providing the volunteer with trust and development, they will take greater responsibilities and become an important part of the parish's activities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-479701 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Sörner, Christine |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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