This on the ABC news website is very interesting about the motivations of young people volunteering, but [observing as someone who organises volunteers] the young people who I encounter volunteering, do it for the sense of taking part in a meaningful c...
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This on the ABC news website is very interesting about the motivations of young people volunteering, but [observing as someone who organises volunteers] the young people who I encounter volunteering, do it for the sense of taking part in a meaningful collective activity, that for previous generations was a feature of workplaces, unions, social clubs, and mass Parties, which are all culturally impoverished
Jess and Basil are bucking a troubling trend by giving their time for free
Volunteers are Australia's invisible workforce … but many organisations are facing a reckoning as community stalwarts get older and are forced to take a step back.
(www.abc.net.au)
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The volunteer workforce has always skewed older and always will, because it’s inherently something for people who don’t have serious childcare or caring duties. But what I see is a genuine cultural shift from twenty and thirty years ago; as the rest of our society is becoming more and more transactional, young people volunteer instead.
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@liamvhogan Interestingly (and again this may be just in my own limited sample size) the friends I have who volunteer the most often are the ones who can't work full time, or at all. People on disability and such.
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@liamvhogan Big big fan of volunteering here. I started volunteering with a fabric and craft op shop a couple of years ago to make social connections in my mental health recovery and now I'm co-managing their newest store. And of course the non-me related benefits. LOL.
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It was supposedly a Gen X attribute to view a meaningful, examined life as incompatible with the world of work (hence the old clichés about selling out). But young people today genuinely observe that there just isn’t a way to live purposefully or act meaningfully in spaces where a market logic operates; it’s simply not available to them. They walk the walk.
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@liamvhogan I think younger people are just finding out about volunteering and exploring third spaces because their parents never volunteered.
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Thermite Be Giantsreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan it’s me, I’m in this photo!
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@vampiress yeah. I started my own volunteering when I was unemployed, I said when I joined, ‘real talk, I have a lot of time’. But I liked it so much I kept going
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Thermite Be Giantsreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan it is interesting to observe the changes over time in how mass organisations treat their members and vice-versa: unions and political parties tending towards professionalisation as mass participation falls, leading to people participating in these orgs more and more as a way to get a meal ticket and less as a purely ideological endeavour.
Even worse so at companies, where the concept of workplace social clubs either encourages derision at drunken office parties and Sunday afternoon “social outings” organised by the boss, or simply forgotten altogether as employment is atomised.So where can young people turn, if through happenstance they aren’t in totally precarious employment and living situations? They often do what I did, which is find a worthy community organisation and volunteer there.
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@liamvhogan Related, weirdly: Gen Z and blood donating. They’re keen and generous.
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@liamvhogan "I retired when I was about 55-and-a-half-years old"
[flat stares intensify]
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@liamvhogan "I'm a burden on society because I'm not economically productive"
omg fuck off with this bullshit