4
Hundred of thousands of persons, every day, they dedicate some hours of just the
time to voluntary activities, that they have to their centers the taken one in
loads with difficult situations, the cure of assets of general interest, the support to
persons in state of suffering, of hard work, of solitudes.
The voluntary service, in its knot essence and its solid substance, it is perhaps this?
But of what draft truly?
Also I have asked many times, when I found remarkable difficulties in the
exercise of my activities of service near the parish of my quarter, considered decidedly
“to risk”, “Paolo VI ” of the city of Taranto.
Many times I have had to ask to me, if indeed it were worth the pain, if indeed I what
he/she wanted to help the road boys”, it behaved.
The answer to such question would perhaps have given to me the way of
escaping to the temptation to abandon in the difficult moments, when they are felt
overburdened and to risk of burn out.
My personal questions are now confused with the problems and the questions
of the whole sector, aroused in me numerous from this analysis of mine on the
voluntary service and his structures, in general, and on the sense of the
voluntary service and on because it is become volunteer, in the specific one.
5
INTRODUCTION
The phenomenon voluntary service in the last few decades is changing to face and
operating style: one is passes from one pure reparatory vision to you, based on the
binomial assistance-beneficence, to one discharge vision centralized on the search and
removal of the provoking causes the uneasiness.
The model of voluntary service with reparatory connotation has been placed and
it is placed beside the sufferer with the purpose to contain and to reduce the pain,
heading strongly at the generosity and the spirit of charity of the persons; that one of
discharge type wants to go over: to remove the cause that is to the base of the
suffering, heading to a cultural jump, in the sense of an authentication and effective
answer to the new needs of the sufferer, that they can come heading at the
formation.
This means to know to put in argument the system that provokes the Suffering,
participating to the “pacts of politics” with own politics that have to foundation
the solidarity and are voice of those who they believe in the good and in the bond and
above all of who today it does not have voice: needy of aid (the sick ones,
poor, sufferers,…).
Therefore, the voluntary service is made loaded with something that no other cure
with the same lose interested spirit, with the same strongly but free motivation.
To a vital and irreducible nucleus of the voluntary service experience they are
connected, generally, further branches: other associative experiences organizations
6
not profit or enterprises to social vocation, services publics, institutions, agencies, that
with the volunteers they collaborate.
But it is that vital nucleus to do the difference: there the sense is realized and the nature
of the voluntary action is guarded.
Why it is become voluntary?
For love of the upcoming, For love of the world or perhaps also for love of himself ,
in order to exit from the isolation and to be able themselves to confront with the other,
various to the search of one the fecund communication for both.
The reasons can be multiple, perhaps one for every person engaged in the field.
For political reasons, for intolerance towards the empty ones it leaves you from the
social community, from the institutions, and, daily, from just the familiar within.
Between the criteria commonly it uses in defining the voluntary action, that one of the
gratuities occupies a relief place, understanding in sense negative like absence of
retributions for the performances of the voluntary service, and in positive sense as
ethical attitude that privileges the fine solidarity and altruist regarding that usefulness.
The volunteers continuously have to ask themselves because make certain things,
because they dedicate so much time to the free commitment, in deep they must ask
who does why to make? In fact the true difference inborn in the voluntary action
is the motivational push, and Because.
The persons arrive to the voluntary engagement for many roads and in many various
ways, everyone has its reasons that go estimated and not hidden: many young people
approach themselves with the hope of a job (who can judge of forehead to a dramatic
7
and diffused problem therefore?), others for research purposes of friends, others of
sense for the own life; the old persons have and carry many and vary reasons in order
to succeed in to make voluntary service. Every person must be received for whom is,
but it can be helped to grow in the appointment.
Each has his times, his formalities, his level of awareness: the main point
is to share it and to appears it with that of the others, from the people near, to those
people that have made the same choices in other contexts.
Certainly, what that is the motivations, the voluntary service becomes essential in her
today's society in which the system of the welfare is insufficient.
To want to assure the alone comfort with the laws is an absurd pretension, because the
institutions, however near to the needs, they are not able certain to satisfy them
everybody.
To beyond the law and of how much it can offer, a continuous presence is
necessary, a comfort, and a friendship that can reassure.
From the reflection on the reality of disintegration and abandonment caused by the
crisis of welfare been, it is delineated more and more clear the project of service to the
society, to restore to health it and to fill its lacks.
In reference to said how much, my search will be articulated in this way: in the first
chapter after one analysis of the voluntary service in the several languages and one
careful reflection on the much definition given from several the authors, it
comes examined the voluntary service in how much such one is like lose interested
personal action is like organization.
8
The voluntary service has had a fort increment after 1985; it is diffused in al Italy but
above all in the North, it prepares the proper adherent for a service for the person and
the more and more punctual community.
The characteristic is always that of the rejection not profit and however; therefore it is
based on the fundamental values of the man and on the absolute respect of the human
dignity.
In the successive paragraph, the legislation inherent to the voluntary service
organizations is faced leaving from the examination of the precise one meant
of the term solidarity.
It is passed, therefore, to it ambles in which the voluntary service operates.
The chapter is concluded with a historical examination of the voluntary service by his
first demonstration up to our days, underlining the essential autonomy of the voluntary
service today in sight of the change of the needs in a globalize world.
The second chapter it dedicates the attention on the social function of the voluntary
service, prominent function, evidencing also the other functions based on the values of
which the voluntary action is carrier.
It is born, one new shape of voluntary service, more subjective or objective no profit,
not more uprooted from the entrepreneurship, But indeed to it connected with a new
culture of the gift: participants, jointly liable, report to her.
It is not believed more today to one Be Social truly engaged and that it try to resolve
how much is present and that it seems irresolvable.
9
The third Chapter proposes it a reflection on the main motivations that pushes persons
of every age, sex, religious and political creed to donate just the time to the “other”,
with a particular look turned the young people.
In the quarter Chapter it the importance of the formation to the voluntary service is
faced. The analysis of the architecture, of the points of force and those of weakness in
the field of the formation to the voluntary service in the years, the location of the
nodes connected to the processes formatives constitutes the route through which
it is attempted to comprise the coming from pushes from the social one for a school
that introduces to its inside an education to the values that only the voluntary service
can assert.
These the arguments analyze in the search, all faces to the attainment of the answer to
the pregnant question: WHICH’S THE SENSE OF THE VOLUNTARY SERVICE?
It is tried of giving one answer, also not absolute, to such question in fifth chapter,
continuing with one proposed educational: to educate the young generations and not,
to one life imprinted to the values of the voluntary service.
To educate, that is, not only who wants to make voluntary service or who already
practical but the all to living the own one according to the real sense of the voluntary
service: fraternities, solidarity and gift of himself.
Way of living daily the relationship with the other altruistically, doing in way that the
other people's look is not a threat to my personality but an invitation to the gift.
10
Chapter I
THAT WHAT AND THE VOLUNTARY SERVICE?
The voluntary service is the ring that that combines is well with who is badly
VINICIO ALBANESI
Today the voluntary service could be compared to a solid and incredibly frond
tree, to the beginnings, twenty years ago, It was not that a bud formed by few
associations, then quickly it has grown, planting its roots in the social uneasiness, in
uncontrolled and ignored way by all (rulers, enterprises and medium maximum), until
he has not become great as those plants that they grow free in the piece of ground of
earth and come only noticed when their stalk is strong and higher.
It has been begun to only speak about voluntary service towards the half of years' 70.
The occasion was one historical organized convention in the 1975 from the Caritas, to
which important associations participated to others: the Community of Capodarco, the
Group Abel, the Association Papa Giovanni XXIII and other groups that still
today operate with vigor on the forehead of the fight to the marginalization.
Finally the times for an participation were matured that went to the root of the
problems, critical and insufficient resolute beneficence exceeded the limits of one and
it put in argument the entire social system.
1. Gawronski S., Guide to the voluntary service, Giulio Einaudi Editor S.P.To, Torino 1997, p. 7;
11
it was affirmed with decision the political dimension of the appointment for him
marginalized, in the sense of tense action to change a society that it often produces
emargination.
Whether was proposed to us, in other words, above all to remove the social causes of
the uneasiness, fighting against economic and social the inequality that they always
give it is to the origin of whichever shape of marginalization.
Here because, from that moment, more it has not been spoken than beneficence or
about simple assistance, but of a civil movement with aspirations very more mature
and funds: the voluntary service.
12
1.1. THE VOLUNTARY SERVICE DEFINITION
From the moment in which we try our identity and we
find it also in the relationship with the others,
it is opened for every one of us
the duty and the thrilling possibility
to construct and to make to progress
the relationship between the men,
and therefore the total meant one of the societies.
In finding again the roots of the own ability
to exceed if same
in order to improve itself with the others,
society is placed the possible realization of one
it is placed realization possibility of one society
that it is not against the men, but to they favor.
Gastaldi Enrico, Springhetti Paola, to beyond it walls -The reasons of the solidarity.
The word voluntary service derives from the Latin voluntas-volontà, and it is therefore
legacy to wanting to be and wanting to act.
It is a shape of exercise of the own personality that, joined to one strongly it loads
intentional, that is presiding the choice to engage itself in first person, liberations and
free of charge, in order to fight the social disorders ².
In all the main European languages in all the main European languages the volunteer
definition draws origin from the word willingness. Unless in English where will
(willingness) does not give origin volunteer (voluntary), in all those of Latin origin
2. Gastaldi E., Springhetti P., to beyond it wall: The reasons of the solidarity, FIVOL, Roma 1995, p 148
13
coincide, while in those of Germanic derivation the adjective of free joins to forming,
as an example the composed word freiwilliger.
However, it is difficult to be able to give one completely exhaustive definition of the
term voluntary service, in how much size consisting of definitions is found to us
of forehead to one, terminologies and send back conceptual that resenting of the
historical developments, of the cultural contexts, of the traditions of thought and the
social formations, within which they have been produced and they have endured
several changes, until catching up the configuration they puts into effect: volunteer,
voluntary service organization, voluntarism, voluntary field (with the various
linguistics equivalents: bénévolat, voluntary action/activity, volunteer, volunteering,
voluntarism, freiwilliger Initiatives etc.) a lot in order to cite of some a title it
exemplificative ³.
It must say, in the first place, that institutionalized having to social level with of
organizations no profit, no government, solidarities, under the meaning voluntary
service it is characteristic own of our country.
In no other European or international context is found a phenomenon of differentiation
of sub-arranges of the third sector that collects the organizations that they are based
nearly exclusively on the voluntary and free job of the supporters, comparable to
happened how much in Italy in the course of years seventy and eighty.
The reasons that can be calls in cause to the aim to explain this state of fact, according
to A. Bassi, “they are amenable, like always in the event of social phenomenals, to
3. Colozzi I., Bassi A., One efficient solidarity: The third field and the organizations of voluntary service,
Scientific the Italy new, Roma 1996, p. 84
14
structural and cultural conditions and orders of the social formation of reference”.
In the particular facts:
a) One strongly presence of organizations of the catholic world on a national
level;
b) The development of a reflected thought, partner logical, based on the social
doctrine of the church;
c) The presence of parliamentarians who of it have favorites the
acknowledgment and supported the stabilization.
Concluding this point, it is necessary to mention that this process of legitimizing of
the voluntary service it is culminated at the beginning of this decade with the
approval of a law-picture to it dedicated (law 266/91).
With this law-picture, that I will more ahead deepen in the regarding paragraph the
legislative foundations, it is arrives you to a carried out point of in the history of
the Italian voluntary service, whose effects and whose implications still have not
been fully perceived in all their capacity. To read and to observe, the third field to
leave from the point of view of the voluntary service becomes therefore one nearly
obliged condition in our national context, it is for the numerous fields of activity in
which the organizations of voluntary service are inserted, it is for the not negligible
dimensions in terms of been involved economic and human resources, it is for the
tasks and the functions of sensitivities of the public opinion and of the political
system towards some thematic ones of collective interest that it covers. It is
necessary to make it, but, with a warning: with the knowledge that the voluntary
service exceeds the borders of what it is recognized conventionally, like third field,
from international the scientific community.
15
Like found from studies of social sciences, with the difference of the other languages,
it’s not tracking, in the Italian lexicon, a distinction between the terms that refer to the
voluntary action, to the relates to actors and the types of been involved organizations;
since the single word indicates indifferently is the subjects that carry out one such
activity, either, it is the relative action and it is the content that differentiates
It Indeed, I. Colozzi holds to specify that for great part of the Italian public opinion,
the organizations of third field or no profit they are identified with the
voluntary service, that is “with an enough ideal image of persons that they are
engaged free of charge in order to assist poor, old handicapped and sick people; for
protector the ambiance, in order to help the populations that they have endured of the
natural disasters: in order to organize sport activity or in order to promote cultural
initiatives”.
Also in the legislative terminology the expression voluntary service is adopted second
three various meanings: one, more in general terms, which third field, in order to
mean the promotional attempt of the ordering towards the area of the social
associates, collocate to intermediate level between the public sector and that private
one, in reason of the not lucrative purposes pursued; the other, relative to the
phenomenon of the voluntary service altogether meant, comprehensive of the
contribution as well as of the single volunteers so much of the social formations,
generically characterized by the free action of the adherents , the last one,
about the phenomenon specifically regulated by the Law picture on the voluntary
service (l. 11.8.1991, n. 266), which only refers to that part of voluntary
4. Ranci C; Voluntary service, in Enc. Social sciences, Roma, Treccani, 1998, 793 ss.
5. Colozzi I., The organizational specificity of the subjects of third field: types and dynamics, in donate P. P.
(edited by), Partner logy of the third field, Roma, 1998.
6. Rigano F.,The voluntary service in the more recent legislation, in Bruscuglia L., Rossi E., the voluntary
service to ten years from the law picture, Milano, Giuffrè, 2002, 65 ss
16
service decided to shrink the own spaces of freedom and spontaneity, also to enter in
relationship with the public institutions by means of conventions or varies facility .
In wide sense, the third field, comprising also the voluntary service associations, it
comes to being defined from the following criterion from P. P. Donati :
I. culture that pushes single individuals, single families and single social
groups to be relations in loyal way towards the others (strangers, not familiar); in
concrete, for who it completes actions of voluntary service, they come eluded pure
economic motivations and purposes (of gain, profit, material or monetary
advantage, fringe benefits etc); that it can be guaranteed from the fact that in the
charter or corporate charter of the organization is previewed “not distribution
constrain”.
To simplify, the culture of whom operates in the voluntary service it escapes both
again is from the mentality of whom entrusted to systemic mechanisms (own of the
machine be them or bureaucratic), both from the mentality of whom is entrusted to
the “hand invisible” of the market (what it doesn't serve certain to whom is poor,
marginalized, without power).
II .An auto-regulation of the actor who inspires it to norms that goes from the pure gift
to the reciprocity exchange (but always without purpose of economic advantage).
7. Just with this law the difference between Third field and Voluntary service becomes still more obvious, in
how much; it has established that the voluntary service organizations are only those that are not taken
advantage of retributive professional performances. The third field is one member of our society that is
distinguished from the State and the Market, The diversity is in the purpose that moves the activities carried
out in everyone of these worlds: the State acts in order to guarantee to the citizens the interventions publics
established from the laws, the Market for having the maximum profit from the private economic speculation,
the Third field in order to promote and to realize initiatives of social solidarity.
8. P.P. Donati, Partner logy of the third field, op. cit., p. 40.
17
III. An operational organization that must to have a minimum of criteria of formalized
management, that it correspond to certain requisite of transparency and public
make-accounting, with some instruments budget social.
IV. The accomplishment of a social role that of it ago a specific producer of report
assets collectives, with relations family and nets privileged of osmosis with the
fourth sector (inform them) and mix of varied nature for how much concern the
input-output with the other fields.
In reason of the fact that several the subjects of third field can show one
prevalence of one or the other characteristic , the tendency of these subjects is stated to
differ between they, that is to specialize for fields of participation and organizational
modality.
The voluntary service, therefore, it asserts P.P. Donati, “it is the type that introduces
the purer motivations and purposes in altruistic sense, and it stretches to specialize
itself in the field of the true and own social problems (pathologies and deficit)”.
And it is for that the greater part of the voluntary service organizations declares not to
want to make work of substitution of the State, , in how much, they often, they act as
substitute of deficiencies generated from social processes on which they do not have
some control.
To the aim to do clarity among all these terms and attributes, the partner logiest
and Dutch investigator W. Melief , it proposes to distinguish, in via preliminary
matter, “two amble to you main conceptual:
a) That legacy to the concept of volunteer and voluntary action;
9. P.P. Donati, Partner logy of the third field, op. cit., p. 42
10. Melief W., Volunteers, organizations of voluntary service and field of the associalities, in Colozzi I.
(edited by),Third social field and political new in Italy and Europe, Milano, 1994.
Ricevi informazioni sui nostri servizi, sulle offerte e non perdere news e consigli su università e lavoro.
