Attitudes to Volunteerism in Europe
Exempla Partner Michiel Gen presented together with Jessica Lombardo of ASIS International at ASAE 2022 about attitudes to volunteerism in Europe.
Working with volunteers in Europe can be challenging for US-based associations. The cultural differences between the US and Europe can be significant and within Europe there is a large divergence of attitudes towards voluntary work steeped in history, religion and society. There are many assumptions about how attitudes to volunteerism differ across European cultures, often built around stereotypes but very little insight based on science or data has been available in the international association community. Michiel presented a review of available research and statistics and together with Jessica compared and contrasted this to real world examples from ASIS International.
The session was very well received with one participant commenting “Fabulous session… Thank you Jessica and Michiel, your knowledge share offered me the most value from the entire conference! Much appreciated! I am looking forward to our post-discussions.”
Michiel is working on an article that summarises the findings of the research. Watch this space for more on this topic!