A sustainable Volunteer Workforce in Rural/Regional Tasmania (Staff)

Project commencement date:

Project completion date:

The UDRH in partnership with Volunteering Tasmania Inc aims to highlight the work that volunteers do in Tasmanian communities and also to understand how this work can be better supported.

Volunteering is an integral part of Australian life with 34% of Australians over the age of 18 working voluntarily with not for profit organisations during 2006. For regional and rural Australia, volunteering occurs in an environment affected by issues such as an ageing population, lagging education levels and the loss of public and private sector organisations. At the same time government policies are including a concept of volunteering as part of its solution to social problems.

The anecdotal evidence indicates that concepts of volunteering can be contradictory; volunteerism is decreasing and / or volunteerism is increasing. Some think young people do not volunteer but older people do. Volunteerism is often more prevalent in higher income groups.

“A Sustainable Volunteer Workforce” is a small research project which aims to explore some of these assumptions about volunteering. But more importantly we aim to add to our understanding of the nature of volunteer labour in regional and rural Tasmania and how this may be changing.

Three important trends will be explored within the project:

The research will include interviews from three locations and a Tasmania-wide survey. The interview locations will include a small rural community, a large rural community and a suburban community within a large regional centre.

The project will be launched on December 5, International Day of the Volunteer at New Norfolk Community House. The Project team includes UDRH researchers Dr Christine Stirling, Suzanne Crowley, Dr Peter Orpin and Associate Professor Sue Kilpatrick.

Report: Sustainability of Rural Volunteers in Tasmania