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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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