7 - actualités

Volunteering at the Age of work

The average profile of a volunteer in Europe is a working person aged 35-55 years.

Volunteering among paid staff
The chance to be a volunteer grows with your professional activity : unemployed people have less chances to be volunteers as they don't have a free spirit and mostly lost the self esteem needed to volunteer. The chance to become a volunteer is also higher among graduate people.
The decrease in working time is a general trend in many European countries. In the 80s the amount of time spent at work had become smaller than the time spent out of work , if you consider the lifetime of a European citizen. Leisure time is first allocated to family life or activities such as sport, music, cinema, television.... After a while, the need for feeling useful to others increase and many seniors join non profit organisations.
Associations benefit from this time given by people with a professional experience and more free time.
Social responsability of the firms
Private organisations have become more aware of their responsability towards society. Patronizing voluntary actions directly or through trusts or charities may be a way to support the non profit sector. Supporting voluntary actions among their staff is another alternative for certain firms. In Europe, they are usually big firms, in the United States they can be smaller firms, such as in the Silicon Valley (California).
Supporting volunteering of their paid staff may be during their working time : employees volunteer some hours or a day each week ; it can also be a full time activity for a certain period (months or years) in an association. Most of the time, volunteering is during the free time of the employees, in the evenings or during the week ends. It can be considered, for instance in american firms, as a proof of a good spirit, a positive image for the firm.

From volunteering to professional activity
In France and Europe, volunteering belongs to private life. Volunteering through the firms is more developed in the United Kingdom or the Netherlands. But there is a new way, for firms, to recognize volunteering : to consider that a volunteer experience may be valued as a diploma or a professional experience are already valued. It shouldn't be in the same way but it should also be integrated in the professional curriculum of any person who wants to benefit by a training or be promoted in his/her own firm.

For further information

Intervention of iriv for a french network encouraging volunteering among employees: France Initiative.

Quel statut pour le bénévole/volontaire?", IRIV, Paris, 1998