What Work Does The Retired And Senior Volunteer Program Do?
Human services
Our society is not able to care for all elderly people. They may need companionship, medical care and help to every day chores like shopping and cooking. Meals on wheels program is one of these programs to depend on volunteers to deliver meals. Elderly people programs are in the first place on many retired and senior volunteer programs. But children are as important and in need also, so there are educational programs like mentoring and programs to relief in poverty where children live. One such program is foster grandparent program. Many of these programs are organized by national, government backed and local agencies.
Charities
Charities often come from private organizations, but they may in some cases have public funds to do the work they were created for. The field of charity can encompass all human services and anything human being may need to get help to live like clothing: goodwill stores, meals and shelters for homeless people etc. Medicine and doctors are also provided for the needy. Doctors also support retired and senior volunteer programs and work as volunteers.
Environmental protection and natural disasters
The Gulf oil disaster uses volunteers to clean shores from oil. And the Haiti earthquake used many volunteers in the catastrophe the earthquake created. Even without any catastrophe there is a need to preserve our environment, which requires volunteers. Most often retired and senior volunteer programs are created for disasters, when a disaster strikes.
Other programs
There are some other programs to serve some higher principles like helping in developing countries for example “Service Volontaire International”. (It could also be considered a charity.) These programs too take retired and senior volunteers.
3 Responses to “What Work Does The Retired And Senior Volunteer Program Do?”
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Press Release
Are volunteers being nationalised?
The number of people who volunteer their time to help good causes in England is declining because, says a new book, organisations that deploy them are too bossy and do not give them enough scope to use their initiative and talents.
The book*,by Wally Harbert, a former director of social services and retired UK director of Help the Aged, says that people born after the war, who are now retiring, want to be challenged and fulfilled by volunteering. Instead, they are too often offered repetitive work and carry little responsibility. He believes that volunteers are sometimes used as cheap labour.
Although the book concentrates on the UK experience it resonates with changes in volunteering in other parts of the industrialised world
The Prime Minister, David Cameron is promoting the Big Society to encourage more people to take control of events in their communities but local residents are, too often, sidelined by organisations with their own agendas. Mr Harbert says “No organisation has the right to colonise the social capital of a neighbourhood without offering empowerment to local people”.
He explains that responsibility for public services in the UK is gradually being transferred to charities and that their volunteers are expected to share the values, endorse the policies and accept the control of paid staff. But government is the paymaster so they and their work have been nationalised. Their biggest asset – their independence – has been abandoned.
Increasingly, large national charities formed by determined and passionate volunteers are controlled by men and women in suits. Some volunteers have been disinherited and forced to abandon control over assets they painstakingly built-up over many years. Self help and mutual-aid are being squeezed out by a new and predatory philanthropy.
Large charities are hoovering-up substantial government funds for work in disadvantaged areas into which they parachute staff, disempowering local people. They abandon services when the money runs out, deepening the distrust and cynicism of residents.
Volunteers are at the mercy of powerful organisations that are backed by government money and which fight to recruit and control them. Their voices are muffled by organisations benefitting from their activities that claim to speak on their behalf. Baby boomers, more than any previous generation, want opportunities for self expression and personal fulfillment. They are lost to volunteering if they do not find what they are looking for.
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*Baby Boomers and the Big Society by Wally Harbert, published by Grosvenor House Publishing, price, £11.99p
Notes for editors
1. The Citizenship Survey published by the Department for Communities and Local Government in September indicates that the proportion of people volunteering at least once a year has fallen each year since 2005.
2. Wally Harbert is a former President of the Association of Directors of Social Services and has undertaken assignments in Europe on for the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the European Union. He has prepared reports on volunteering for the Cabinet Office, the National Health Executive and the Home Office.
Wally Harbert April 2012.