EXCLUSION AND GROWTH EXPERIENCES THROUGH STRUGGLE IN VOLUNTEERING

Abstract

Volunteering has been studied in various aspects - competencies gained while volunteering, the meaning of the volunteering for the organisations, the impact of volunteering on mental or physical health (Plagnol and Huppert, 2010), happiness interface with volunteering or motivation for volunteering. Volunteering is recognised as a field of learning, but all researches studying education or learning in volunteering are developed with the topics, like competencies, employability, moving out from learnd helplessnes etc. This study is aimed to research multilayerity of volunteering and experience experience of volunteers in social help field. The research is phenomenological and not focusing in any foreseen objectives, oriented to the voluneters experience. According to phenomenological approach research methodology was chosen Interpreatative Phenomenologiacl Analysis. In this article is presented part of the research, giving deeper view on one one of the superordinates theme, with the aim: to present the exclusion and growth experiences of young adults in the long-term and full time volunteering. In the study participated 6 research participants, 3 young man and 3 young woman in the age 20 to 30 years old and to collect the data of the research were used semi-structured interviews. Conclusions of the study, presented in this article shows, 1) that volunteers experience volunteering as changing and multi-faceted phenomenon that reveals the experience of anxiety, fear, disappointment, helplessness, limitation, volunteering for a long time and volunteering on a daily basis; 2) Surviving uncertainty and helplessness in volunteering brings volunteers experience closer to those whom they are helping, experienceing their suffering personaly as the suffering of the volunteers. Resaerch participant were as if ejected from wished and usual experience to unwished and tension raising experience through excluding struggle experince. 3) Exclusion experience in volunteering for research participant opens requestion and evaluation of the existence meaning. In exclusion experience young adults idealized imige of volunteering switched into reality of volunteering with death, illneses, poverty, conflicts and other helpless situations of help recieveing people. The experience of absurd and nonsense for the research participants opend the opportunity to find a new meaning of volunteering and personal existence or absurd and nonsense experience for research particiapants become continues experience of volunteering, having the meening of Sisifus suffering.