A volunteer is a person who does community service for free, on his or her own initiative. Volunteers can be found at animal shelters and nursing homes, forest fires and music festivals, night shelters, hospices, and other places where people need help.
As a rule, volunteers help non-profit organizations that don’t always have the resources to hire the right people for a salary. These are ordinary people who in their free time at the request of the foundation spend time with children with cancer, so that it would be a little easier for them to endure difficult treatment. And there are thousands of such foundations, organizations and movements all over the country.
History of the Volunteer Movement
Historians write that the ideas of volunteerism emerged most clearly with the spread of Christian teaching, which is based on love of neighbor, mercy and helping the weak. In Byzantium, on church holidays, emperors went out to the main square and distributed alms to the poor, and the first almshouses were built for the elderly.
The French, English and Spaniards in the XVII-XVIII centuries, who volunteered for military service, were officially called volunteers. The term “volunteer” has a common Indo-European root, which means “desire” and “aspiration.
In a more modern and familiar sense, the word “volunteer” began to be used after World War I. Former Austrian, British, German, and Swedish soldiers rebuilt destroyed French farms for free. So in 1920, one of the oldest volunteer organizations – Service Civil International – appeared, which was engaged in the reconstruction of European cities and villages affected by the war. The year 1920 is officially considered the birth year of the volunteer movement.
