Special Settings/Fields

The Volunteer Probation Officer Law of 1950 formalized Japan’s unique and long-standing reliance on volunteers to assist professional probation officers and aid offenders of all ages with rehabilitation and to work on crime prevention. Today, just under 50,000 people from nearly every area of Japanese society serve as volunteer probation officers (VPOs), alongside less than 800 paid probation officers working with approximately 60,000 people on probation or parole. Half of all VPOs have been involved for more than 10 years and their average age is 62 – a development that is causing some concern.

In this Voices from the Past, we learn the history of VPO activity and why the Japanese believe that social and community support for offenders' rehabilitation are necessary as part of effective crime prevention. Granted, they have been extremely successful; according to a Stanford University study, “Fewer than 4 percent of Japanese criminals who have been assigned to a volunteer officer will commit another crime within a year of their release on parole or probation.”  In addition, we explore what other countries have learned from this Japanese model of volunteer involvement, and briefly review the issues affecting the future of VPOs in Japan. 

If you watched the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, you no doubt recall the “blue jackets” – the 25,000 passionate, talented and dedicated members of the Olympic volunteer team who worked at every event and venue leading up to, during and following the Games. In this e-Volunteerism feature, Olympic volunteer Olga Pazukha takes us behind the scenes at the Olympics in Vancouver and describes what it’s like to volunteer at one of the largest and most-watched events in the world. Pazukha shares her enthusiasm about her volunteer experiences and also casts a critical eye on what can be learned from the things that needed improvement.

How does the depressed global economy translate into something positive for volunteering? In this e-Volunteerism feature, Marzia Baldassari, a member of the Volunteering Ireland Team and Coordinator of the Dublin City North Volunteer Centre, answers this question. With Ireland as her backdrop, Baldassari explains why volunteering and civic engagement are vital during times of shrinking financial resources and growing unemployment. Her description of Dublin City Volunteer Week, a recent celebration of volunteers and volunteering, shows why the old adage “every cloud has a silver lining” can be true for volunteering efforts during a harsh economic downturn.

In this comprehensive and engaging feature article, the current state of volunteerism in Mongolia is explored by Fulbright Senior Specialist Ellen J. Benjamin, Ph.D., who spent time in residence at the Mongolian State University of Education’s Social Work Department in the summer of 2008.  In discussing civil society in Mongolia today, Benjamin draws upon data developed by local activists and foreign scholars. And in this e-Volunteerism feature, Benjamin also shares insights offered by her students and faculty colleagues regarding prospects for the future of volunteerism in Mongolia.  

An innovative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project has taken place in rural Tanzania, involving UK-based project management company Buro Four and international development specialist MondoChallenge. In this feature article for e-Volunteerism, representatives from both organizations write about the special challenges and unique rewards of this project, which for the first time brought individual water harvesting systems and a community Internet center to residents of a rural Tanzanian Maasai village in 2008. 

Over the last few years, we have seen employer-supported volunteering grow into a vital element of the volunteerism field around the world. More recently, we’ve begun to see a shift from the so-called “team challenge” approach to volunteering (where teams of employees perform a task, such as painting a community centre)  to volunteering that makes use of an individual employee’s professional skills (providing professional Human Resources support, for example). On top of this, anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that the growth and popularity of employer-supported volunteering is not diminishing despite the global financial crisis.  

In Part 2 of this Keyboard Roundtable, we bring together leading employer-supported volunteering practitioners and thinkers to explore these and other key issues.  And, as we always do at e-Volunteerism, we give you a chance to share your thoughts and experiences on this important new trend in the volunteer field.

“Whatever Happened To . . . " is a new feature at e-Volunteerism.  Periodically, we plan to revisit articles from past issues to see what has been happening since we first published the stories. Here we update two articles by revisiting animal contributions from the past.

You may have read the article, “Volunteering Through the Eyes and Ears of a Dedicated Dog Volunteer,” written (so to speak) in 2003 by a beloved therapy dog named Mikey.  In a return to our tradition of encouraging canine contributors, e-Volunteerism presents a new dog author named Sammy. In this article, Sammy explores what it’s like to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor – not only in the volunteer world of therapy dogs but in the hearts of those who own him.  

In the weeks ahead, we’ll catch up with recent news from a true dog lover, Betsy McFarland of the Humane Society of the U.S.  She will update readers on her earlier article, Animal Rescue:  Another Heroic Volunteer Effort during Hurricane Katrina, and describe some important national changes when it comes to pets caught in the throes of natural disasters. This addition to Whatever Happened To . . . will be posted in February.