OfficinaSociale is a research center associated with the NGO COPE that since 2016 has involved young researchers in various activities that focus on international cooperation and its main protagonists: volunteers.
The project “Professione Volontario” aims to delve deeper into the phenomenology of cosmopolitan solidarity by observing a particular type of subjects - development volunteers who operate through third sector and private social organizations and associations such as NGOs - and focusing in an innovative way on the dynamics that translate these experiences into human and professional identity traits. Professione Volontario focuses its attention, applying a mixed-method methodology (qualitative + quantitative) on the actions and activities of decentralized cooperation through life stories to which is added a quantitative survey via a questionnaire administered online in anonymous form.
The innovative and interdisciplinary nature of the proposal lies in two orders of motivations. Professione Volontario is an innovative research as it will not limit itself to exploring the motivations that led to carrying out a development cooperation experience abroad but will explore the progressive professionalization of the figure of the "development volunteer" highlighting a) the dimensions of active actor of social change in the contexts of intervention (abroad) and b) the possible conflicts that this "commuting" life entails when returning to the contexts of origin (in our case in Italy).
The Professione Volontario project aims to be an innovative and scientifically founded tool to understand and manage the impacts that development cooperation actions produce on human relations at a micro level (individual experience) and at an organizational level (experiences in the cooperation organization) with a particular focus on the professionalization trajectories of the cooperator.
- Experienced expatriate volunteers/cooperators currently employed in projects or returned to Italy
- Volunteers in Universal Civil Service currently employed in projects or returned to Italy (approximately 1 year of experience)
- "Simple" volunteers employed for short periods in projects or returned to Italy who do not belong to the previous categories (e.g. interns and/or volunteer camps).
If you are also part of an NGO and want to participate in the questionnaire, you can help us spread it in two simple steps:
- by participating in a quantitative questionnaire and promoting the widest possible participation of those who work for the organization you represent (by forwarding the survey questionnaire to its members and requesting their completion)
- Indicating 2 to 4 contacts who participate in the campaign of biographical interviews with volunteers through direct (in Sicily) or mediated (Skype-Zoom) interviews, even for those who are currently expatriates.
SHARING OF RESULTS
The organizations that will participate in the research will be invited to the events for the presentation of the results and for those who will guarantee a participation of at least 70% of the members belonging to the organization, OfficinaSocialeCOPE will send a confidential quantitative report resulting from an analysis focused on their organization.
For Officina Sociale Augusto G. Gamuzza
Director and scientific director
Researcher in General Sociology, University of Catania
For further information you can contact us by email: officinasociale@cope.it
