Volunteer
A volunteer is someone who works for a community or for the benefit of environment primarily because they choose to do so. The word comes from Latin, and can be translated as \(as in doing something out of ones own free will). Many serve through a non-profit organization – sometimes referred to as formal volunteering, but a significant number also serve less formally, either individually or as part of a group. A volunteer work is not and should never be a required work.
A volunteer may or may not get paid or receive compensation for services rendered. [1] General Andrew Jackson's Tennessee Volunteers were paid by the General personally, although he did seek reimbursement at Washington for his expenditures. Volunteering comes in many forms: serving food at the local homeless shelter, providing computer technical support to a non-profit organization, acting in a leadership capacity on a charitable organization's board of directors or coordinating the emergency response in the case of a disaster. Around the world volunteer centers exist to support the voluntary sector and make a difference in the communities that they serve.
Ikando
Ikando is a small non-governmental organisation (NGO) that specializes in volunteer & intern recruitment on behalf of organisations in need. It was set up by Laura Daly in 2004. Their objective is to help more people gain the life changing, life affirming experiences that volunteering can give. They are committed to enabling skill transfer, enabling organisations in the developing world to access different skill sets and to helping volunteers realize the value they can add using the skills they hold.
They hope their volunteers will become responsible global citizens as a result of their experience with Ikando, promoting the need for social change and raising awareness in their home communities on the issues they encountered. Africa has a lot to offer but also needs support, the support it rightfully deserves.
Hospital volunteers work without regular pay in a variety of health care settings, usually under the supervision of a nurse. Most hospitals train and supervise volunteers through a specialized non-profit organization called an auxiliary. The director of the auxiliary is usually a paid employee of the hospital.
A hospital volunteer is sometimes nicknamed a candy striper. This name is derived from the red-and-white striped jumpers that female volunteers traditionally wore. The name and uniform are used less frequently now.
Volunteers' services are of considerable importance to individual patients as well as the health care system in general. Some people volunteer during high school or college, either out of curiosity about the health-care professions or in order to satisfy mandatory community-service requirements imposed by some schools. Others volunteer at later stages in their life, particularly after retirement.
Candy Stripers originated as a high-school civics class project in East Orange, New
Jersey, in 1944. The uniforms were sewn by the girls in the class from material provided by the teacher - a red-and-white-striped fabric known as \stripe\(source: Adele Huck McCain, a student in the class). The students chose East Orange General Hospital as the home for their class project.
Duties
Duties of hospital volunteers vary widely depending upon the facility. Volunteers may staff reception areas and gift shops; file and retrieve documents; provide administrative backup; help visitors; visit with patients; or transport various small items like flowers, medical records, lab specimens, and drugs from unit to unit. Because of health-care laws and insurance liability, volunteers are often limited to clerical duties, or other activities which don't require direct contact with patients.
A few hospitals ask their volunteers to help out with janitorial duties, like cleaning beds. Other \volunteers\include patient-care liaisons and volunteer orderlies. These volunteers must operate on the orders of a nurse or a physician and are given special training to permit them to work with patients. They are also more common in large hospitals, particularly university-affiliated hospitals and teaching hospitals, as they allow pre-medical students to gain experience in patient care while taking pressure off a busy care team.
Some hospitals keep all their volunteers in one place (a dispersal unit) and assign them to tasks based on real-time labor demand, while other hospitals assign volunteers to a single unit for the duration of their service.
Female volunteers traditionally wore pink-and-white jumpers, while male volunteers traditionally wore light-blue tunics or shirts over dark slacks. Today, male and female volunteers often wear a uniform shirt or a short-sleeved shirt with slacks. Some volunteers (particularly \this is usually avoided so volunteers are not confused with medical personnel. All volunteers wear ID tags within the hospital and these will prominently indicate the volunteer's status and position. Volunteerism
Children cart dirt and debris away during a community clean-up day in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Volunteerism is the willingness of people to work on behalf of others without being motivated by financial or material gain. Volunteers may have special training as rescuers, guides, assistants, teachers, missionaries, amateur radio operators, writers,
and in other positions. But the majorities work on an imprompt basis, recognizing a need and filling it, whether it be the dramatic search for a lost child or the everyday giving of directions to a lost visitor.[citation needed] In economics, voluntary
employment is unpaid employment. It may be done for altruistic reasons, for example charity, as a hobby, community service or vocation, or for the purpose of gaining experience. Some go so far as to dedicate much of their lives to voluntary service. One way in which this is done is through the creation of a Non-Profit Franchise. Professional skills
Skills-based volunteerism is a term used to describe volunteering where the volunteer uses their professional skills. This is in contrast to generic volunteerism where specific skills are not necessary. The average hour of traditional volunteerism is valued by the Independent Sectorat between $18-20 an hour. Skills-based
volunteerism is valued at $40-500 an hour depending on the market value of the time. Politics
In almost all modern societies, the most basic of all values is people helping people and, in the process, helping themselves. But a tension can arise between volunteerism and the state-provided services, so most countries develop policies and enact
legislation to clarify the roles and relationships among stakeholders, and to identify and allocate the necessary legal, social, administrative and financial support. This is particularly necessary when some voluntary activities are seen as a challenge to the authority of the state, e.g. on 29 January 2001, President Bush cautioned that volunteer groups should supplement, not replace, the work of government agencies.[citation needed] Volunteerism that benefits the state but challenges paid
counterparts raises the ire of labor unions representing the paid counterparts as in the case of volunteer fire departments, particularly in combination departments. There are two major benefits of volunteerism:
1. economic: activities undertaken by volunteers would otherwise have to be funded by the state or by private capital, so volunteering adds to the overall economic output of a country and reduces the burden on government spending.
2. social: volunteering helps to build more cohesive communities, fostering greater trust between citizens and developing norms of solidarity and reciprocity that are essential to stable communities. The social capital represented by volunteering plays a key role in economic
regeneration. Where poverty is endemic to an area, poor communities have no friends or neighbours to ask for help, so voluntary mutual aid or self-help is their only safety net. This model works well within a state because there is a national solidarity in times of adversity and more prosperous groups will usually make sacrifices for the