Types of Volunteering
Volunteering assumes number of forms and is present in many places where we often do not even notice it - if we help our neighbour carry shopping bags up the stairs or if we just clean the space outside the house and thus we enable the whole neighbourhood to benefit from it. Each person has an inborn capacity to donate voluntarily and selflessly his/her time and work, the only difference there is among us the extent to which and the form in which we are willing to do so.
Donorship has already found its place in our society. For ever more people it is natural to make one-off donations for publicly beneficial aims or contribute to collections for the inhabitants affected by natural disasters. It is a simple passive form how to immediately appease one's conscience and at the same time to invest money for a good cause. To dedicate one's time and to exert one's energy as a volunteer requires more commitment and enthusiasm.
Voluntary civic assistance has traditionally been a component of any society since the very beginning of its existence. It is a system of reciprocal services which was successfully developed in the past period of totalitarian society due to the absence of properly functioning market and services. This system has expanded to assume unprecedented dimensions and looked rather like ancient economy. It has become a tradition that within the group of one's acquaintances or fellow workers people would borrow from each other tools and clothes, flats and vehicles and at the same time would exchange topical, more or less relevant information. In the course of last decade these forms of volunteerism gradually grew into market relations, though they still prevail within the family, relatives and neighbourhood. In the rural district people still help each other out during the harvest or if they move to a new flat or house.
Mutually beneficial volunteerism is an activity carried out by members of a certain association or club for the sake of implementing their objectives and mission. The Corps of Voluntary Fire Fighters is perhaps one of the oldest and the most widely spread organizations of volunteer based activities. Local exercises and evening dances which follow have been in the annals of a number of villages. After the political changes in 1989 there was an unprecedented upsurge of non-profit sector in the Czech Republic. Clubs and associations, which had been subject to suppression during the past system of government, were restored to life. Many of them restituted some of their former property and could thus continue their activities. Among these rank e.g. scouting, YMCA, or Sokol, which in a short period of time managed to re-establish the nationwide network of organizations based to a large extent on voluntary work of its members.
Apart from this thousands of new organizations have been established which build on human enthusiasm and volunteering. These are numerous cultural, sport, children and youth organizations, in which certain groups of citizens voluntarily organize numerous activities for themselves and their friends. This includes organizations that endeavour to help their members who are disadvantaged in one way or another, whether they are seniors (e.g. Life 90), Romanies (e.g. the Tolerance Foundation, People in Need - the Czech TV Public Benefit Corporation, the Association of Romany Children and Youth, HOST), or the handicapped (e.g. the Prague Association of Wheelchair Users, the Rainbow Foundation, the Czech Paralympic Committee).
In all these associations and clubs every year people work for tens of thousands of hours for free while organizing leisure time activities, which together with collections, both financial and in-kind, contribute to the improvement of quality of life of its members.
Publicly Beneficial Volunteerism Publicly beneficial volunteerism is based on the willingness of citizens to freely and in keeping with their beliefs to speak up, whether for the sake of their fellow citizens or for the sake of a certain change in society. Contrary to the mutually beneficial volunteerism this type of volunteerism puts as its top priority the need to be of service to one's fellow citizens. A typical example are the voluntary blood donors or the Mountain Rescue Service. After the year 1989 many non-governmental non-profit organizations have become the platform for this type of volunteerism. They seek to win over volunteers from among the general public, whether it concerns one-off events or a long-term voluntary co-operation.
Voluntary Service Voluntary service is usually a long-term (up to several months) commitment to conduct voluntary work often beyond the borders of one's homeland. In the Czech Republic this type of volunteerism emerged only after 1989, when a lot of volunteers arrived here predominantly from the U.S.A. and Western European countries. Their activities were focused mainly on teaching languages. As time went by Czech organizations came to being too. They focus on sending volunteers abroad both for group "workcamps" and individual study stays in humanitarian or environmental organizations. Different organizations offer different benefits, insurance, pocket money, meals and accommodation allowances and the like. Some organizations confine themselves to sending volunteers only, often though they operate on a reciprocal basis. The following entities are devoted to organizing voluntary services in the Czech Republic, e.g.:
