‘This word volunteer is killing us’: Making sense of volunteering in social welfare provision for orphans and vulnerable children in rural Zimbabwe

Madziva, Cathrine and Chinouya, Martha (2017) ‘This word volunteer is killing us’: Making sense of volunteering in social welfare provision for orphans and vulnerable children in rural Zimbabwe. International Social Work, 60 (5). pp. 1126-1140.

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Abstract

This qualitative study explored how volunteers delivering social welfare to orphans and vulnerable children through a community initiative supported by donors made sense of volunteering during a period of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. Findings confirm that volunteering in Africa is influenced by a normative value system embedded in Ubuntu. Volunteering emerged as contradictory given the contextual prevalence of the social obligation discourse rather than individual choice as embedded in the European sense of voluntarism. Volunteering masked the cost of participation, thereby potentially making poverty worse for the poor in a context without a formal welfare system.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Community response, normative value system, orphans and vulnerable children, stipend tokens, traditional cultural capital, Ubuntu, volunteering
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	02 Nov 2017 13:55
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 06:51
DOI:	10.1177/0020872816672518
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872816672518
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3011356