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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 11, 2019

successfully incorporated community volunteering into the country’s broad social
and economic development, recognizes volunteering as an activity which takes

place through not-for-profit organizations or projects and is undertaken with the

volunteer’s own free-will for the benefit of both community as well as the volunteer
(Volunteering Australia, 2015).

The Universal Declaration of Volunteering (IAVE, 1990) too interprets volunteering

as a two-way process of benefits – to both community and the volunteer. In much
broader context, they elucidate modern volunteering as a creative and mediating

action. It enables building healthy and sustainable communities that respect the

dignity of all people, empower people to exercise their rights as human beings and
thus to improve their lives, help solve social, cultural, economic, and environmental

problems, and create a more humane and just society through worldwide
cooperation. Furthermore, with an attempt to articulate universal nature and values

of volunteering, UN Volunteers (UNV, 2020) perceived volunteering as a human
activity, a basic expression of human relationships that occurs in every society in the

world, recognizing volunteers themselves as being an integral part of the very

communities that they are supposed to contribute. While almost all these
interpretations of modern volunteering revolve more or less around an identical

territory, broadly, all resonate that at the heart of volunteerism are the ideals of

connection, solidarity and service and the belief that together the world can be made
a much better place.

The common position of the above interpretations of modern volunteering,

especially in relation to the key purpose of volunteering, seems to be somewhat
different from the way it had been seen in the past (Leigh, 2011). For example,

traditionally, it was seen as an act of charity, philanthropy or benevolence, and the
volunteer workforce as being a part of the frontline workers helping organizations to

achieve better outcomes of the task of service delivery. In that, the volunteer

position was always described as a set of directed tasks so that, in many

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