Placing youth in a volunteer framework

Abstract

Volunteering Auckland faces an encouraging challenge: it has more youth volunteers than it has organisations willing to place them. As a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits find and maximise a volunteer base, Volunteering Auckland wants to discover what hinders and what might help organisations to effectively engage and retain volunteers between the ages of 10 and 19.

Most research related to youth volunteerism is youth-focused – encouraging youth to participate and pointing out the benefits they receive in terms of social capital, work experience and personal achievement. But here we look at this from the organisational perspective, seeking to discover why few organisations choose to accept youth volunteers, their challenges and prejudices, and proposing ways Volunteering Auckland can equip organisations to overcome these.

Even organisations that have vulnerable clients or unsafe environments may find tasks that youth are capable of carrying out safely. Examples from those that have both high-needs clients and a thriving core of young volunteers demonstrate how that can be accomplished. For nonprofits that do not have the margin to invest in the staff needed to nurture a volunteer base, strategic training and supervision may enable them to incorporate volunteers. Furthermore, some youth may not find a fit within an organisation, or may wish to take more of their own initiative. Volunteering Auckland has the tools to help them create their own community project and recruit other young people to pitch in, both for one-off projects and initiatives that participants take further.

“Young people bring a different perspective to problems. They may be more creative, may see the easier way to get something done, may be more direct. The easiest way to find out what they may be able to contribute is to ask them and to listen to their answers.” — Families Volunteer by Kerry Kenn Allen and Sarah Harrison, 1983, p. 35