Changing the Image of Volunteering

Abstract

In 1992, the editors of a book which can be seen as a precursor to this volume (Hedley and Davis Smith, 1992) argued that ‘the volunteer movement’ needed to ‘rediscover its identity and to develop a new “public culture” ‘ which ‘should stress that volunteering is no longer (if it ever was) about charity and dependency, but is about mutual support and reciprocity … It should stress the role of volunteering as advocacy and as campaign work, and not just as service delivery in the health and personal social services’ (pp. 5–6). This process of rediscovery would be helped by widening the base of volunteering: while, they caution, the ‘stereotype of a volunteer as a middle-aged, middle-class woman has never been entirely true’, nonetheless some socio-economic groups were over-represented and some were under-represented in the volunteer population.