Volunteerism and Human Services - Essay Example

Nowadays other benefits, except a financial one can be retrieved from a work. For example, one can volunteering in order to improve their job skills (or on the contrary, non-professional skills) and receive new experience which is needed, or to be in a volunteering program for food, social goods or a chance to travel, etc. “Many volunteers are involved not only in direct practice, but also in administration, advocacy, and policy” and volunteering staff is a part of organizational personnel (Lewis, Packard and Lewis, 2011).

But in common opinion volunteering is still a self-organized charity kind of work. Firstly, it’s so because of the historical background. “Many historians believe the earliest instances of the history of volunteerism in America began when colonists had to form support systems in order to survive the many challenges that came with relocation” (Wart, n.d.). Already since colonization volunteering was connected with most essential parts of Americans’ life, like farming, learning, treating illnesses, etc.

The first volunteer house was found in America by Benjamin Franklin in 1736, and later they’ve started to arise all over America. During the Revolutionary War volunteers were ones who raised money on war, and who pushed forward Great Britain production’s blockade. There was a religious background for volunteering during the Great Awakening in 1830s. People used to gather around the churches and helped poor and homeless. American Red Cross was founded in 1881, but the greatest arise of volunteerism has come with 20th century.

The key role of the mass and, also technical progress helped people to gather on a will of social change. During the Great Depression volunteers were focused on helping people with food and shelter as well as they did later, during World War II, when the role of volunteer medical care was essential. A brunch of voluntarism, environmentalism, has arisen also