Examining the Volunteering Perspectives of Individuals Participating in Child Welfare Volunteer Activities
Harun Aslan, Tarık TuncayActs of volunteerism can be observed in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions, as well as and even more so in nearby streets and apartments. Volunteering behaviors mean different things in different societies based on economic, social, and cultural reasons. While volunteering may sometimes be perceived only as a philanthropic behavior, other times it is considered as the behaviors that contribute to economic development. The opinions of volunteers and administrators working in this field play a significant role in uncovering these meanings. In this context, the study aims to investigate the perceptions that volunteers and managers who participate in Türkiye’s child welfare volunteer activities have toward volunteering based on their experiences volunteering in this field. The field of child welfare is considered a source of intense participation in terms of volunteer work in Türkiye. Therefore, this study has conducted in-depth interviews with 60 volunteers in the field of child welfare. The research has preferred the qualitative research method and phenomenological research design within its scope. The participants’ narratives have been analyzed thematically, with three themes being identified and discussed in detail regarding their perspectives: the personal level, the family and social environment level, and the societal level. These themes reveal the importance of understanding how volunteering is perceived in Türkiye. The research has concluded that individuals’ personal experiences and the perspectives of family, friends, and the society in which one lives are able to affect one’s perceptions about volunteering. Conducting future research on the subject as well as studies on areas where volunteering activities are frequently involved, such as elderly welfare, violence against women and women’s rights, disaster situations, and how to protect the natural environment, may enable a more holistic perspective to be formed in order to reveal how volunteering efforts are perceived in different social services fields.
Çocuk Refahı Alanında Gönüllü Faaliyetlere Katılım Sağlayan Bireylerin Gönüllülüğe Bakışlarının İncelenmesi
Harun Aslan, Tarık TuncayGönüllülük davranışlarına çeşitli toplumlarda ekonomik, sosyal ya da kültürel nedenlerden dolayı birçok anlam yüklenmiştir. Gönüllülük bazen yalnızca bir hayırseverlik davranışı olarak algılanabilirken bazen de ekonomik kalkınmaya katkı veren davranışlar olarak düşünülmüştür. Gönüllülüğe yönelik toplumsal anlamların keşfinde gönüllülerin ve bu alanda çalışan yöneticilerin görüşleri önemli katkı sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Türkiye’de çocuk refahı alanında gönüllü faaliyetlere katılan gönüllülerin ve yöneticilerin gönüllülük alanındaki deneyimleri temelinde gönüllülük algılarını incelemektir. Çocuk refahı alanı Türkiye özelinde gönüllülük çalışmaları açısından yoğun katılımın olduğu bir kaynak olarak değerlendirilmektedir. Dolayısıyla bu çalışma çocuk refahı alanından 60 gönüllü ile derinlemesine görüşme yoluyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırma kapsamında nitel araştırma yöntemi tercih edilmiş olup fenomonolojik araştırma deseni tercih edilmiştir. Anlatılar tematik olarak analiz edilmiş; kişisel düzeyde, aile ve sosyal çevre düzeyinde ve toplumsal düzeyde bakış açısı olmak üzere üç tema belirlenerek ayrıntılı olarak tartışılmıştır. Araştırma kapsamında, bireylerin gönüllülüğe yönelik algılarında sahip olduğu kendi kişisel deneyimlerinin yanı sıra aile, arkadaş çevresinin ve yaşadıkları toplumun bakış açısının onların gönüllülük algılarını etkilediği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Konuyla ilgili gelecek araştırmalarda gönüllülük faaliyetlerinin sıkça yer aldığı yaşlı refahı, kadına yönelik şiddet ve kadın hakları, afet durumları ve doğal çevrenin korunması gibi alanlar üzerinden yapılacak çalışmalar gönüllülük çabalarının farklı sosyal hizmetler alanlarında nasıl algılandığının ortaya konulmasına yönelik daha bütüncül bir perspektif oluşmasına imkân tanıyabilir.
Volunteering is a universal phenomenon and a way in which people try to do something good for society. People all over the world participate in volunteer activities for a great variety of reasons, such as to help eliminate poverty, to improve primary health and education, to provide a safe water supply and adequate sanitation, to tackle environmental issues and climate change, to reduce the risk of disasters, and to combat social exclusion and violent conflict. Various studies in the volunteering literature have occurred in various geographies, disciplines, and research groups on how volunteers perceive volunteering. However, volunteering studies carried out in Türkiye and, more specifically, studies on the reasons for volunteering and perceptions on volunteering are limited. Internationally announced reports have also clearly stated that the phenomenon of volunteering plays a limited role in Türkiye. According to the World Values Survey (WVS) in 1999 and 2007, only 4.5% and 5.3% of the population in Türkiye were members of social and/or political non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Additionally, Türkiye’s ranking is relatively low in the announced international reports in terms of participation in volunteering. For instance, the results from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF, 2018) World Giving Index 2018 Report show Türkiye to rank 131 out of 146 countries. While volunteering occurred at a rate of 2.5% in social organizations, this number was 4.2% for political organizations (İçduygu et al., 2011). For this reason, studies on the field of volunteerism in Türkiye should be considered to have acquired scientific data and to be one of the factors that will unlock both individual and social development and integration. This study uses the inspiration provided by these sources to guide our research with the aim of revealing the perceptions toward volunteering that the volunteers and administrators who participate in volunteer activities in the field of child welfare in Türkiye have through their experiences in the field of volunteering.
Method
In line with the research purposes, the study has selected the phenomenological research design for revealing the experiences, perceptions, and meanings individuals attribute to a phenomenon. The qualitative study uses the in-depth interview technique with semi-structured interview forms. Data were collected from 60 participants in volunteer fields who had been accessed using the purposeful sampling method. The participants involve volunteers from 10 different NGOs and administrators from 10 different NGOs, four different ministries, four different municipalities, one international organization, and three different universities that have a wide range of participants in child welfare in Türkiye.
Findings and Discussion
The results of the research are presented under three main themes: (a) perspectives on volunteering at a personal level, (b) family and social environment’s perspectives on volunteering, and (c) society’s perspectives on volunteering. The study also analyzes within its scope the participants’ first associations about volunteering.
The perceptions on volunteering at the personal level reflect how individuals generally think about volunteering. Personal-level perceptions on volunteering have been categorized into: volunteers’ perceptions, experts’ perceptions, and decisionmakers’ perceptions.
The results show volunteering to have been identified and perceived with concepts such as social welfare, active citizenship, responsibility, solidarity and helping, winwin, taking time, sincerity, gratuitousness, and contribution to change. Accordingly, the expressions that refer the perspective of volunteering and all eight subthemes that were created afterward involve positive attitudes toward volunteering. The main reason for this result can be considered as individuals who are involved in voluntary activities being able to realize and experience the benefits of volunteering. In particular, the emphasis on responsibility, solidarity, helping people, contributing to change, and being an active citizen indicate a sense of achievement at the personal level, while emphases such as contributing to social welfare, contributing to change, and win-win describe the macro-level contribution of volunteering from a personal point of view.
At the family and social environment level, volunteering has been found to be identified and perceived through such concepts as appreciation, insecurity and fear, waste of time, and not considering working in the field of volunteering as a serious job. The inferences about the family and social environment’s perspectives on volunteering point to a structure that inherently has both positive and negative meanings. Individuals who bring their volunteering lifestyle to their family and social environment allow the benefit they’ve created to be discovered by their environment. Thus, an interaction can emerge that positively affects the volunteer, such as being appreciated by one’s environment, improving one’s commitment to the field of volunteering, and changing both one’s own perspective towards volunteering, as well as of those in one’s own environment. Regarding the negative points of view involving family and social environment, historically speaking, the fear and insecurity created by the political climate in the field of civil society, the loss of time, and the inability to see volunteer activities as a serious business result in one’s family and social environment being unable to fully understand the individual’s environment.
In line with the point of view toward volunteering at the society level, volunteering is also found to be identified and perceived with such prejudices and concepts as: being a free workforce, having no economic return, and being an area that creates fear and distrust. In the context of society’s perspective on volunteering, the inability of society to understand and know the volunteer activities, as well as the insecurity and fears in the field of civil society from past to present, can cause the social perspective of volunteering to be formed at a negative level. As a result, making the right policies and promoting efforts to change negative perceptions and prejudices in both the family, social environment, and society will contribute to correcting perceptions of volunteerism and to reconstructing its image.
Conclusion
The research concludes that individuals’ personal experiences and the perspectives of family, friends, and the society in which one lives can affect one’s perceptions on volunteering. This general result reveals the need to conduct new studies from a multidimensional perspective and a range of micro- and macro-variables in order to change individuals’ perceptions toward and increase their motivation to participate in volunteer activities. Moreover, areas such as elderly welfare, violence against women and women’s rights, disaster situations, and the protection of the natural environment are areas in which volunteer activities are frequently involved, and studies on these areas may allow a more holistic perspective to be created to alter awareness about volunteerism.
