abstract
Voluntarism is one of the essential elements for a civic society; it`s paramount
to empower and give the opportunities to the citizen to get participate in and
make voluntary commitment as an integral part of their lives. We have conducted
a study and identified the factors that will keep the enthusiasm of the
volunteer`s commitment, or, that will "keep the fires burning" by investigating
the subject matters at three levels: individual, organizational, and the
societal environment as a whole. Our purposes are: characterizing a profile for
the status quo of voluntarism in Taiwan, analyzing the enabling factors at the
individual, organizational and the societal levels; proposing mechanism and
strategies for a sustainable voluntary society. From hundreds of all the healthy
communities, we, based on "outcome of the performance evaluation" and
"categories of the organizations", randomly drew 16 communities and conducted in
depth interviews on the leadership echelon and the rank and file of the
voluntary organizations. The qualitative data were then analyzed with the
procedures in line of the method referred to as "interpretative phenomenological
analysis". Major findings are: the voluntary organizations can be categorized
into three prototypes: professional-dominated, volunteer-led, and the mixed
models. It is crucial to transform the professional-dominated into the
volunteer-led, if the commitment of the volunteers is to be sustainable. The
financial support from the government was helpful at the nascent stage of the
organizations, but the dollars must be gradually cut off in order to have the
organization "stand on its own feet". The policy should be flexible enough to
accommodate the ingenious ideas by the local volunteers; and the volunteers must
be encouraged to go beyond personal network, and make the community, instead of
the leadership, as the target of commitment.
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