This seminar was the first in a series of seminars focusing on volunteering in a fair society organised by IVR in partnership with the ESRC and Northumbria University. This event focused on the unpaid voluntary work of older adults. Irene Hardill (NOrthumbria University) discusses Making a difference: older volunteers as community builders. Past presentations from the Institute of Volunteering Research website can be found at the following location - http://www.ivr.org.uk/ivr-events/ivr-past-events

1. Making a difference: older
volunteers as community builders
Irene Hardill, Northumbria University

2. Introduction
• Understanding older people’s pathways to
volunteering
• Meanings, contexts and pathways to volunteering by
older adults
• Research been supported by ESRC and AgeUK
• Present findings of a community study, Brightville,
East Midlands

3. Older volunteers
• Unpaid voluntary activity important part of individual
and community life
• Older people – “kin keepers”, sustaining the family,
and as “neighbourhood keepers”
• For older men and women, the neighbourhood may
be even more important than for younger people.
• But older people seen as recipients not givers
• Movement between service user and volunteers –
from receiving to giving, and vice versa

4. Previous research
• Volunteering motivation - altruism and self-interest.
• Age related sets of motivations.
• Filling the vocational void left by retirement and to
manage increased free time.
• Can be pathway to paid work.
• Focus on individualistic set of explanations, fails to
fully capture the social, economic and cultural
complexity of volunteering.

5. Brightville study
• Draw on in-depth study of voluntary activity within
organisations and groups in an East Midlands
community where people have borne the brunt of
social deprivation and unemployment;
• Four organisations present in the study community
that offer support to families and individuals – 2
Home Start, Community Concern Erewash older
volunteers important
• Mixed methods – life history interviews, observation,
focus groups

6. Cultural theory
• How volunteering they currently do fits into their
daily lives, used cultural theory
• Adaptation of the work of anthropologist Mary
Douglas
• Grid and Group - Grid personal motivations, Group
solidarity among members of the society.

9. Conclusion
• Volunteering gave a sense of purpose, personal well-
being
• Contributes to both community cohesion and
extended families.
• Depends upon active support from within the
household and wider family, and juggled around
family needs and demands.
• Sites of volunteering can be construed as 'spaces of
hope’

10. Bibliography
• Hardill, I. and Baines, S. (2011) Enterprising Care:
Unpaid voluntary action in the 21st century Policy
Press, Bristol
• Hardill, I. and Baines, S. (2009) Active citizenship in
later life: older adults in a deprived community
Professional Geographer 61:1, 36-45.
• Hardill, I. and Dwyer, P. (2011)Growing old in rural
England: some challenges of delivering village
services in the mixed economy of welfare paper
Journal of Social Policy, 40,1, 157-72