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'Narratives of disadvantage and inequalities in Volunteering'
5 July 2021
by Dr Kris Southby
Leeds Beckett University
On 21/06/2021 the Institute for Volunteering Research and Centre for Health Promotion Research jointly hosted a symposium to discuss narratives of disadvantage and inequalities in volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic with a panel of experts and invited guests. This blog captures our main takeaways from the discussion.
Let’s start by saying that volunteering and voluntary action is, broadly speaking, a good thing. Volunteers can gain skills, meet new people, and feel good about helping others. Recipients, whether individual people or communities or organisations, can receive the support they need. Volunteering is also good at a broader, societal level in terms of creating active and engaged citizens, developing communities, and supporting the capacity of local ‘systems’, such as in health and social care or education. However, not everyone participates in volunteering and voluntary action equally and so the associated benefits are not maximised or equally shared.
The symposium on the 21st discussed how issues of inequality and disadvantage around volunteering and voluntary action played out during the COVID-19 pandemic and what this might mean as we move forward (hopefully!!) into a recovery phase. The online discussion was hosted by Jurgen Grotz - Research Database, The University of East Anglia (uea.ac.uk) and was chaired by Professor Jane South | Leeds Beckett University. The expert panel members were:
Bridget Robinson from Black Health Initiative (@BHIleeds)
Gary Blake from Voluntary Action Leeds (@gazzajazz | @VolActionLeeds)
Bal Athwal from Health Education England (@NHS_HealthEdEng)
Peter Beresford from University of East Anglia(@beresfordpeter)
Sarah Hanson from University of East Anglia (@walkingresearch)
Kris Southby from Leeds Beckett University (@krissouthby)
The first thing to note is: what do we mean by ‘volunteering’? Our understanding of volunteering and voluntary action effects how we understand any observed inequalities in participation or peoples’ lived experience of disadvantage. Whilst more women than men or more people who are not struggling financially might register for ‘formal’ volunteering roles, do these patterns still hold true when it comes to more informal, neighbourly helping behaviours?
Secondly: amongst the hardship of the past 16-ish months, volunteering and voluntary action can, on the face of it, be seen as a shining beacon of positivity. From NHS Volunteer Responders to people helping their neighbours with grocery shopping to ‘clap for carers’. These were all good things that happened as part of our collective response to dealing with the pandemic and extended a positive narrative around volunteering. But, dig a little deeper, and the pandemic revealed some more problematic issues.
The pandemic response has reemphasised volunteering and voluntary action as altruism – something the have’s do to help the have not’s. The idea of heroic volunteers and the helpless recipients has been repeated over and over. Just think of images of neighbours delivering medicine and food parcels for elderly or disabled neighbours who have been forced to shield from the virus. Now, of course these are helpful and supportive things; everyone needs help every now and then. But this narrative casts people into set roles and removes any sense that, for example, elderly or disabled or poorer people have anything they can contribute.
Volunteering and voluntary action as altruism also removes the politics. We’ve been told we’re “all in it together”, experiencing the same hardships and obligation to rally around for the greater good of defeating the virus. The idea of volunteering and voluntary action as an expression of civil society action to fight inequality and champion disadvantaged groups has not been present. This can be seen as part of a wider trend of co-opting the voluntary and community sector through things like funding arrangements as an instrumental tool for policy objectives that existed prior to the pandemic.
Thirdly: much of the inequality and disadvantage associated with volunteering and voluntary action comes from trying to shoe-horn people into defined, ‘formal’ volunteer roles that, whilst convenient for organisations, are ill-suited to individuals’ attributes and wants. Thinking about people at risk of marginalisation and exclusion (from volunteering and society more generally), we need to create opportunities specific to them and not expect them to arrive ‘ready made’ to do some unpaid work.
Each of the panel members recorded a position statement about volunteering and inequalities. Dr. Karen Mak from University College London also provided a position statement about volunteering in the pandemic but was unable to attend the symposium.
Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk