Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty,
and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from
nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these
programs really accomplish? In Making Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers
an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside
youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy
reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while
volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that
empowerment programs aim to teach.With short-term funding and a dizzy
mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a
complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes
the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers
who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and
what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly
through
short-term projects. She looks at adult "plug-in" volunteers who,
working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become
like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers
can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the
family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions
between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the
bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book
demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious
funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and
long-term commitments from volunteers.Based on participant research
inside civic and community organizations, Making Volunteers illustrates
what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more
effective.
