Ehrenamt

Voluntary Commitment and Learning. Results of a Survey on Volunteers by the Federal Government

The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth’s (BMFSFJ) survey on volunteers, carried out in 1999 and 2004, shows that voluntary work is on the rise, especially in the area of work with young people and adult education. Learning motives play a major role in voluntary commitments. Technical expertise is also considered to be important, but more so by men than by women. Opportunities for continuing education are considered to be poorer – with participation rates remaining at the same level.

Between prestigious office and everyday support. Voluntary commitment in continuing education

When people engage in voluntary work in the field of continuing education on behalf of an institution, this is often because organisations believe they can obtain social capital in this manner. These persons then operate as organisers or in development associations. The focus of the author, however, is on those people who voluntarily provide support but often remain invisible – referred to in the literature as “fuzzy volunteers”. The potential they have to offer is of special significance in the field of continuing education. They are often not conferred the honour and recognition they deserve, concludes the author, who views practice in the field of continuing education from the Bourdieuian perspective of “symbolic capital”.

New responsibility for older people. “Senior citizen trainers“ in the EFI Programme: training concept and fields of activity

This article presents a continuing education strategy with which older people are prepared for voluntary work as senior citizen trainers. The six-week course was developed in the model programme “experiential knowledge for initiatives” (briefly: EFI), which was funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth over a five-year period, terminating in 2006. The course links experience-related elements with modules which aim at developing practical competence and those which convey know-how geared to specific roles.

Serving oneself. The new voluntary work and the role of full-time educationalists

People’s own learning and development motives play a more important role in the “new voluntary work” than before. This article relates subjective descriptions by volunteers of the learning motives underlying their commitments and adopts a profession-oriented theoretical perspective to relate these to a strategy of support for volunteers by full-time educationalists, referred to as learning and development support for “learning in voluntary work”. The structure and design of this role depends on whether it involves task-, person- or participation-oriented voluntary work. The subjective descriptions were generated within the framework of a qualitative research project carried out at three places where volunteers work: hospices, church parishes and political associations.

Voluntary work 2.0? Media-related conditions for voluntary work in the Internet

A participation culture has developed in the Internet which is broadly discussed under the rubric of “Web 2.0” and which is explored in this article to determine the principles of voluntary work operating here. To this end the author first forwards a definition of voluntary work in “offline” reality before examining the communications-related conditions prevailing in the Internet upon which a conception of voluntary work can be based. It would appear that anyone can earn a good reputation who has a broad impact through achievements or creative ideas. Prestige is ultimately generated in this manner by the Internet itself.

The paratext of biographical interviews

This article profiles everything which the biography researcher intentionally prompts or unintentionally receives during field work from his interview partners in the way of “paratext” which contributes to the design of the subject of research. Thus a notion which is usually used in the field of literature science is in this manner adopted in biographical research.