RECRUITING OLDER VOLUNTEERS: FINDINGS FROM THE BELGIAN AGEING STUDIES

Year 2010, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 1 - 8, 01.06.2010

Sarah Dury Dominique Verté Tine Buffel Liesbeth De Donder Nico De Witte

Abstract

Although there is a significant body of work concerning voluntary work, hardly any attention is given to volunteering of older individuals. Moreover, the potential volunteers among older adults is even less examined. Next to volunteering among older adults, the neighbourhood becomes more salient when people age and this due to their more intense use and time spent in the neighbourhood. In response to these lacunae, the main purpose of this contribution is to examine the impact of subjective neighbourhood features on the recruitment potential for volunteering among older people. This study uses data collected from the Belgian Ageing Studies. 59.977 adults aged sixty and over living self-reliantly in 127 Flemish municipalities in Belgium participated in this study. A binary logistic regression is applied to analyse the key variables characterizing potential volunteers. Our findings stress the need for recognizing the crucial importance of the locality when recruiting older adults for volunteer activities

Keywords

volunteering, older adults, neighbourhood, environmental gerontology

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