| Summary: | 碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 社會工作與兒童少年福利學系 === 106 === The purpose of this study is to find out the motives for volunteer participation in Shalu District’s community care centers. The researcher conducted a mini-census by surveying 376 volunteers from the community care centers. The four research findings are as follows:
A.Personal characteristics: Most of the volunteers were women and the average age was between 60 and 69 years old. Most of their marital status was “married”. Buddhists made up for most of the population and Taoist were the second largest group among them. Their level of education was primarily elementary or middle school.The longest volunteer experience in community care centers was three to less than five years and the second longest was one to less than three years. Most of the volunteers participated in two to three community volunteer groups. In terms of total volunteer experience, the longest was five to less than seven year, next was three to less than five years.
B.Community characteristics: 11 of the communities had been formed for over a decade. Volunteer captains of each center were mostly elected by members of the volunteer group. Most community development associations had between 101 and 150 members, the second ones had between 151 and 200 members. Characteristics of the volunteer organizations: Most had over five volunteer groups with a total of 101 to 150 members; the second highest ones had a total of 151 to 200 members. Most of the individual volunteer groups had between 21 and 30 members.
C.When analyzing the volunteer basics of each center, the characteristics of their volunteer experiences, they can be classified into the following types: “primarily married females”, “married but of mixed age groups”, “active participants of different volunteer groups”, “long-standing” and“still developing. The characteristics of the communities and volunteer organizations can be classified into “the democratic type”, “the high cohesion type” and “the flourishing type”, each with different levels of motives.
D.There are seven motives for volunteer participation in community care centers. The first is self-improvement. They felt strongest with “By becoming a volunteer and interacting with others, my viewpoint becomes more mature,” and weakest with “When the elderly are unhappy, I am able to find ways to assist them.” The second motive is interpersonal relationships, with the volunteers feeling strongest towards“After I became a volunteer, I made more friends and my social network has also broadened,” and weakest towards“When not on duty, we volunteers will get together or socialize.” The third is expectations. They felt strongest with “I feel like I can benefit my future generations with my good deeds by doing volunteer work” and weakest with “Being awarded as a volunteer is dignifying, so I like to participate in volunteer work.” The fourth motive is rewards. Volunteers felt strongest with “Being a volunteer can make me happy every day,” and weakest with “I earn praise or rewards for being a volunteer.” The fifth is altruism with the strongest feelings towards “Seeing others happy makes me happy as well,” and weakest towards “I like coming here to do volunteer work for the harmony of the community.” The sixth motive is personal needs with the strongest feelings towards “I think it can satisfy my need to do good,” and the weakest towards“When I think about doing something worthwhile, I think of volunteer work.” The last motive is to pass time. The strongest feelings were towards “I would rather be a volunteer than waste time doing nothing at home,” and the weakest feelings were towards “I no longer watch television alone at home.”
The researcher offers seven suggestions based on the findings of this research: (1) Plan strategies to draw in volunteers that are of different gender and age groups for the community care centers; (2) Integrate religious beliefs and values in Chinese culture when recruiting volunteers; (3) Satisfy the different needs of different volunteer types; (4) Discover community residents with free time and encourage them to participate in volunteer work; (5) Pay attention to the different needs of senior volunteers when implementing professional training; (6) Encourage democratic ways in forming volunteer group captains in order to attract more participation; (7) Design a variety of rewards and incentives based on the needs of different volunteer groups.
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