Lin Yuan-yuan calls the seniors he and his wife Lai Li-chuan look after "old buddhas." He says it is because he has learned a great deal of life wisdom from them over the seven years he and Lai have served as full-time volunteers for the Hondao Senior Citizen's Welfare Foundation in Taichung City, central Taiwan. Although the job does not reward them financially, Lin and his wife believe that the experience has taught them to be better people. Lin says volunteering has shown him that "all the people in the world are members of one big family. All the disputes about money, power and fame now seem so trivial and not deserving of any attention."
In Taiwan, volunteering used to be viewed as performing a charitable act or a good deed, perhaps as a means to achieving religious goals such as becoming more virtuous and accumulating merit. Such faith-based convictions have led many to donate their time and effort to religious volunteer-based welfare organizations, including the nation's most renowned nonprofit organization, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation.
However, although such motivations to show mercy and compassion for others are highly respected by society, organizations are unable to depend solely on the relatively few individuals who are frequently willing to donate their time, effort and money to fulfill society's unmet needs. Therefore, some groups have been working to change the image of volunteer work to a system of reciprocal assistance.
Debbie Huang, secretary-general of the International Association for Volunteer Effort in Taiwan (IAVE-Taiwan), says volunteer service has transitioned from its former emphasis on individual benevolent acts to providing a multitude of social services. IAVE is dedicated to the goal of promoting the development of volunteerism worldwide. "The goal of volunteer work has been expanded from helping individuals to providing solutions for various social issues," Huang says. The issues can be as small as promoting recycling at the community level and as big as slowing global warming. "Volunteers don't just work for the sole purpose of helping the underprivileged; on the contrary, they do it to promote the overall public interest," she says. Under this new approach, Huang adds, those who volunteer services to the public have come to realize that they will also benefit from living in a better society.
Many volunteers are motivated by the urge to improve their communities and society as a whole, Huang says. Figures from the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) prove her point, showing that more individuals choose community service than any other category of volunteer work. In 2006, for example, more than 30 percent of all volunteers identified their effort as community service--the single largest grouping of volunteers. Huang says that "the idea has gradually become popular that everyone can get involved in volunteering in different ways."
Along with changes in the nature of volunteerism, the number of social welfare volunteers is also increasing. The total number of registered social welfare volunteers grew from 58,671 in 2003 to 108,869 in 2007, MOI figures show.
The background of those who choose to volunteer is also changing. According to MOI statistics, homemakers accounted for nearly 30 percent of all registered social welfare volunteers in 2007, the highest percentage of all occupational groups. The number of homemaker volunteers grew from 17,294 in 2003 to 31,483 in 2007, an 82 percent increase. However, volunteers from other sectors of society are catching up rapidly. Last year, 26 percent of all registered social welfare volunteers said they worked in industry and commerce. Their numbers rose from 6,872 in 2003 to 12,942 in 2007, an increase of 91 percent.
To provide a firmer legal foundation for volunteer organizations and workers, the government promulgated the Volunteer Service Act in 2001. The act details the basic rights of volunteers, including the rights to participate in decisions regarding volunteer service plans, receive training and be covered by an organization's accident insurance plan. It also stipulates that registered volunteers must be able to obtain a formal record of their service and qualifies them for a volunteer service honor card after serving 300 hours within three years. The card grants the holder free admission to various public recreational facilities. Those who have served 3,000 hours are publicly recognized and awarded plaques. Through such rewards, those who help others receive personal recognition and the benefits of living in a better society.
Chen Mei-huei, chief of the Social Development Section, a unit of the MOI's Department of Social Affairs, says that the act demonstrates the government's determination to promote volunteer work, noting that under its auspices, volunteer groups are able to apply for government subsidies for training programs and advertising.
The government's emphasis on assisting the volunteer sector became apparent in 2005 when the Cabinet-level National Youth Commission (NYC) helped IAVE to establish the group's International Resource Center (IRC) in Taiwan. The resource center is the worldwide group's first such endeavor. The center's goals are to expand information services for volunteer efforts and serve as a base to further promote volunteerism and youth services around the world. Following the establishment of the IRC, the MOI and National Science Council assisted IAVE-Taiwan and the IRC by cultivating a group of local volunteers from the fields of science and technology. The government-backed effort paid off with the volunteer group's most inspiring project, one successfully connecting Taiwan's experience to the global volunteer community, when IAVE chose the Taiwan group to redesign and relaunch its official website, www.iave.org in 2003. Although the site moved to Canada in 2006, translating IAVE's website into Chinese is still handled by a teacher and a small team of student volunteers in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan. In March this year, the government signed a memorandum with IAVE committing support to the IRC for another three years.
Bankers' Hours
The new emphasis on volunteer service as a system of mutual help has found expression in the concept of "volunteer time banks," which have developed as the nature of and motivations for volunteer work have evolved. In these banks, volunteers are able to "deposit" their hours of work in exchange for an equal length of service from another member. One hour of service is counted as one service credit, regardless of the nature of the work. The concept places an equal value on each contributor's time--an hour of service from an unemployed person is just as valuable as an hour of service contributed by a corporate executive. The system emphasizes the principles of doing what you can in the time you have available, and in the way you feel most comfortable with.
"This type of volunteer system helps people to discover their own potential and find more possibilities for offering their services," says Sun Chang-liang, an assistant professor at Chaoyang University of Technology's Department of Senior Citizen Service Management in Taichung County. He stresses the notion that not all of life's necessities must be purchased with money. By adopting the concept of volunteer banks, individual needs can be satisfied within the community, he says.
Referring to Edgar Cahn of the United States, the originator of the "time dollar" idea, Sun says that in the end, "he [Cahn] figured out that people are the true wealth and real assets and that 'we can tap the capacity of every human being to contribute something of value.' In a way, this also redefines the value of people: It is people, not money, who generate real value."
Volunteering as crossing guards at intersections near their children's schools is a common community service performed by mothers. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
An efficient method of coordinating the volunteer time banks is essential to making the system work. Coordinators are responsible for finding members who are capable of fulfilling the requests of those who wish to make a "withdrawal," which explains why time banks usually begin in a community, where members are neighbors and more aware of one another's needs and abilities.
Although the concept of volunteer time banks is still being evaluated by many nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, Taichung's Hondao foundation took the plunge by adopting the system in 2006.
The concept of time banking originated in the United States in the 1980s, but has reached a very high state of development in Japan. When Hondao's founders began to consider establishing a bank, they traveled to Japan to learn about successful schemes such as the one implemented by Nippon Active Life Club (NALC). Having used the time bank system for nearly 15 years, NALC now claims more than 26,000 members and 130 local bases all over Japan. Such a large number of volunteers makes long-distance exchanges of service possible, so that for family members living in other cities, help is only a phone call away for members ready to swap their deposited credits for services.
In addition to promoting the time banking system, NALC also encourages members to volunteer in the "traditional" way by serving without any credits in return. Thus, while some have expressed fears that the system of trading services could ruin the fundamental goodwill of volunteerism by making it more selfish and less altruistic, NALC's figures show that the total number of traditional, non-time banked service hours of all NALC members has been consistently higher than the hours members deposit to their time banking accounts. In 2001, for example, NALC members served about 118,000 hours of traditional volunteer service, while claiming only about 90,000 hours in the time banking system. By 2005, traditional hours had reached 192,000, while time banking hours climbed to almost 160,000. NALC chairman Takahata Keiichi interprets the statistics as showing that it is "through the time currency system that people have found the sheer happiness of helping others."
Reciprocity
Instead of recording volunteer hours in account books, Hondao, which began operations in 1995 to help seniors, follows the innovative strategy of employing "time currency." Called Mutual Help Coupons, the chits are used as a medium of exchange, with face values of 10, 30 and 60 minutes. Hondao divided the county into seven districts, each of which has its own coupon system.
In this way, by providing assistance, individuals are then able to "purchase" services from other providers and the process of helping others is shifted from a one-way relationship to a bidirectional one, says Lin Yi-ying, Hondao's chief executive officer.
Lin says it is important to inform the public that everyone, including volunteers themselves, occasionally needs help. According to her, the fear of being labeled as disadvantaged or requiring economic or social assistance sometimes makes people reluctant to ask for help when they need it. "I have heard people saying, 'I am not as poor as you think; why don't you give the service to those who need it more than me?'" she says. The emphasis on mutual help is one of the strengths of the time bank system because it encourages individuals to both give and receive assistance.
Lin says that an ideal society is one in which individuals seek the help of others to solve their problems, and she is convinced that the interaction and warmth created through the exchange of services will build communities with stronger social connections. Senior citizens in particular benefit from such interaction--and not only through receiving services, but also by giving them. "Being continuously reminded of the value of their lives through the exchange of services, seniors come to understand their lives are actually more meaningful [than they think]," Lin says.
Through the end of January this year, more than 230 members had participated in Hondao's program, with about 850 exchanges of service. Hondao social worker Elma Lee says that in order to generate new services, those participating in the program are encouraged to use their coupons as quickly as possible. To do so, the organization established the rule that all vouchers must be spent in the same year in which they are earned, either by purchasing services or items donated by Hondao members at the foundation's year-end flea market.
Creative Ideas
Lin and Lee have noticed that seniors participating in the program have come up with many innovative services. These include leading morning exercises in the community, making quilts and performing "soul restorations," which are traditional rituals aimed at bolstering the psyche of those who have received a shock or encountered other disturbing situations. On the other hand, members of the only non-senior citizen group in the program--faculty and students in Taichung's Hungkuang University--have developed creative service ideas of their own, including exchanging class notes and handouts, fixing computers and offering a morning wake-up call service.
Hondao still must surmount several hurdles before the scale of the project can be increased, Lin says. Compared to Japan's NALC, Hondao's system has not yet fully developed. Interactions between members are also not as frequent as Hondao would like them to be, especially in the larger districts, Lin says, with members tending to exchange services once a week when they meet at scheduled activities. Other problems include an inefficient coordination system and members who do not understand or follow the rules. To overcome these obstacles, Lin says Hondao plans to reevaluate the design of the current system and introduce the concept of time currency to the public through seminars and activities.
Although these new forms of volunteer work give people many more options as to what type of services they choose to offer or receive, IAVE-Taiwan's Huang believes the spirit of volunteering--working together to improve society--is rewarding as an everyday attitude. Huang also believes serving as a volunteer has changed her life. "I've become more active and positive," she says. "I've also learned that when individual dreams become collective goals, nothing is too difficult to accomplish."
Write to Audrey Wang at awang@mail.gio.gov.tw