Prof Dr Ana Adi from Quadriga University of Applied Sciences is running the project. She is often speaking about digital storytelling to communicators, marketers and scholars.
The Volunteering Histories project aims to collect, capture, display and analyse memories of volunteering from around the world as told by volunteers themselves in a manner that is personal and a form with which they are comfortable with.
Prof Adi’s various research projects had brought her close to volunteers (her research into the Olympic Games and later into corporate volunteering). She has always been interested in storytelling and she thought that the best way to capture the spirit of volunteering was through the memories and stories told by volunteers themselves and not by assessing their motivation through surveys or calculating their economic impact.
She ran a pilot study in 2013 with Dr Debbie Sadd from Bournemouth University, running in-depth and oral history interviews with volunteers to the London 2012 Olympic Games.
All those elements combined led to today’s project.
There are several sources of inspiration for this study.
They include Prof Dr Adi’s research into the Olympic Games, her pilot study with Dr Debbie Sadd interviewing volunteers to the London 2012 Olympic Games, Dr Debbie Sadd’s own experience as a volunteer and Prof Dr Adi’s research into corporate volunteering and storytelling to name a few.
The 1000voices, The Listerning Project and the Digital Storytelling community have also provided technical and methodological inspiration.
This is a non-profit academic study.
The insight gained from the stories captured in the project aims to inform:
- academia on the method of storytelling and the value of volunteering (through research articles, presentations and books and future students through courses using the platform and its content as an example);
- organisations who rely on volunteers on the importance of nurturing volunteers and the work they do and recognising the personal value volunteering has for their personal journey;
- institutions and policy makers to recognise the value (personal and long-term) of volunteering;
- communication/employer branding departments on the value of personal and hero-centred storytelling.
The volunteers sharing their stories here are the owners of their stories.
This is a non-profit academic study. There are currently no sponsors or grants covering for this study. This is undertaken as part of Prof. Dr. Ana Adi research attributions and time and is supported by Quadriga University of Applied Sciences and its team (such as the creation of this website).
Get in touch with Prof Dr Ana Adi, who is the lead researcher for the project. The two of you can explore ways in which you could share your story and contribute to the project.
Alternatively, check out the tutorials. The process of creating a story (whether blog post with/without images, uploading an audio file, or uploading a video) is rather intuitive, and we’d like to think, user friendly.
We welcome stories in a language that you are comfortable with. Having said this, we also need to be able to understand them. Prof. Adi for instance speaks English, French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, German and a little bit of Dutch but there are so many more languages she’d like to know.
So, please get in touch with Prof Dr Ana Adi, who is the lead researcher for the project. The two of you can explore ways in which you could share your story and contribute to the project.
You cannot use these stories for commercial purposes and WITHOUT the agreement of BOTH the member whose story you’d like to use and of Prof. Dr. Ana Adi, the lead researcher.
Should you want to reference the stories here make sure you always include:
- the member/username authoring it
- the story/post you refer to including its link
- the date it was published
- the platform www.volunteerhistories.info
To our knowledge, there are no other volunteering histories projects out there.
There are various volunteering communities and groups around the world, some open and some closed, specific mostly to the events they are related to – whether mega-sporting events, festivals or company-run projects.