New responsibility for older people. “Senior citizen trainers“ in the EFI Programme: training concept and fields of activity This article presents a continuing education strategy with which older people are prepared for voluntary work as senior citizen trainers. The six-week course was developed in the model programme “experiential knowledge for initiatives” (briefly: EFI), which was funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth over a five-year period,…
Voluntary Commitment and Learning. Results of a Survey on Volunteers by the Federal Government The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth’s (BMFSFJ) survey on volunteers, carried out in 1999 and 2004, shows that voluntary work is on the rise, especially in the area of work with young people and adult education. Learning motives play a major role in voluntary commitments. Technical expertise is also considered to be important, but more so by men than by women. O…
The paratext of biographical interviews This article profiles everything which the biography researcher intentionally prompts or unintentionally receives during field work from his interview partners in the way of “paratext” which contributes to the design of the subject of research. Thus a notion which is usually used in the field of literature science is in this manner adopted in biographical research.
Voluntary work 2.0? Media-related conditions for voluntary work in the Internet A participation culture has developed in the Internet which is broadly discussed under the rubric of “Web 2.0” and which is explored in this article to determine the principles of voluntary work operating here. To this end the author first forwards a definition of voluntary work in “offline” reality before examining the communications-related conditions prevailing in the Internet upon which a conception of volun…
