catalina_francisco said:Used to think that way, and if I was in my own country my plan was to be in business for myself and work 3 days for paid clients and 2 days for unpaid clients who couldn't pay.....but except for the own business idea, volunteering lost it's charm for me. Why? A lot of previously paid positions were scraped by the government putting a lot of people out of work, and given to volunteer organisations who had people who would do it for nothing. The quality of service dropped dramatically endangering people's lives and health, many lost careers they had worked in for decades, people who previously accessed the services were not necessarily able to anymore as they were judged on a scale devised by bureaucrats with no knowledge of the area as to whether they 'needed' or 'deserved' the service, and it devalued workers who had previously earned their wage and worked committed to their clients, denying them the right to be paid for what they did, to earn a living.
Feminism has a huge problem with people's work being devalued to worthless through the volunteer system and it is a valid argument from quality of service, and the right to work and earn a living perspectives. People have a right to make a living, not to be expected to work without pay. And while you may argue that it is OK though if volunteer workers would not be doing anything otherwise, it still at the end of the day denies a paid worker that job and an income which may be needed fi volunteers weren't so ready to offer their services free. My objection to this system is made stronger from coming from the country with the largest unpaid volunteer work force (and growing) in the developed world, and a huge problem with unemployment which the government does not want to address in a way which will return people to work. They say they make improvements but the reality is they just creats new policies which make another section of the unemployed ineligible to claim benefits which in turn removes them from the unemployment figures. Looks good, but is just shifting figures and burying them where they can't be seen by the system and it's observers.
Catalina
You don't necessarily have to work for free to volunteer. You can act as a big brother or big sister. You can monitor the halls in a school. Be a cross guard when the city cannot afford to hire policemen to do this. Or you build houses for Habitat for Humanity. I've never heard of a developer losing money because Habitat built houses for people who could never afford them otherwise. Or you join a cause like - save the beavers - which has no funding except that which its advocates can raise - in order to help. There are a lot of ways to volunteer that won't take jobs away from others. And sometimes, some non-profit organizations could not survive without its volunteers. Like the hospice I used to volunteer for. I never put a pharamacist or nurse or secretary out of work, if anything I allowed them to get their work done while helping to raise money that paid for the care of patients and also their salaries.
