Aking Volunteers

Making Volunteers

An inside look at how community service organizations really work Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? In Making Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach. With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. She looks at adult "plug-in" volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers. Based on participant research inside civic and community organizations, Making Volunteers illustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective.

Making the Voice of Humanity Heard

HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands has made her mark in the annals of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. In this anthology prominent members of the world community and global experts and practitioners come together to pay tribute to Princess Margriet for her decades of dedicated service to the Movement and the Netherlands Red Cross Society. This tribute takes place on the occasion of the end of her eight-year tenure as Chair of the Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Under the Princess’s guidance, the Standing Commission has come to play a strong and unifying role in the Movement. This unique collection of scholarly and inspirational essays offers a wealth of information on the constituent components and statutory bodies of the Movement and contemplates its mission to help victims and improve the lives of vulnerable people. It addresses the humanitarian concerns and challenges of our time. The anthology further provides a unique forum for the current debates on the application and development of international humanitarian law. It also discusses the Movement’s relations with governments and external partners and the contribution of volunteers. This is the first book to bring the relatively unknown Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and its work prominently to the fore. Making the Voice of Humanity Heard is essential and accessible reading for anyone interested in the daunting tasks and fundamental role of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement as well as the contemporary threats and challenges to humanitarian assistance and international humanitarian law.

History of the Seventh Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers