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Volunteering activities in the communities
Only one quarter knows what is going on in the community
Citizens’ volunteering activity in the community is an important part of their social responsibility. It includes participation at meetings where community issues are discussed (municipality, local community, house council etc.), voluntary participation in an activity useful for the community (e.g. cleaning the streets), or helping others from the community without any compensation for that.
Voluntary activities within communities are halved, according to the research results (in terms of 2004). Now 26.6% know about held meetings in their municipality (44.3% four years ago) and 22.8% (47.1% in 2004) about voluntary actions useful for the wider community in their municipality.
Unlike the responses to all other issues in the research, where there are no gender differences, the participation in the community activities (house council meetings, local communities, municipalities, as well as voluntary actions for benefit of the wider community) is experienced more as a men’s job (10% more men are informed and have taken part at meetings and 7% more men have taken part in actions). To the same questions there are no bigger deviations regarding age (middle-aged people, from 30 to 50 are less active than young and old people), ethnicity or party they belong to, household incomes, as well as the place of living. There are differences within housewives that are least familiar (10%) and partly within farmers and unemployed (under 20%), while the employed in the civic sector mostly follow what is going on in their community (70%). Deviations can be noticed regarding the educational structure – from those with incomplete primary education (11%), to those with primary (18%) who are quite under average (26%), to those with high education where 36% are informed.
Personal participation at meetings is also significantly decreased (18.3% against 26.5%) and participation in voluntary activities (12.8% in comparison with 32.6% in 2004).
Reduced voluntarism is noticed in the preparedness for personal engagement for any help to other people without compensation, and the minority of respondents expressed themselves on it (40,8%), whereas before it used to be the case for a big majority (74,1%) of them. Most of them have voluntarily been engaged for less than 4 hours in the period of one month.
Chart 1. Citizens’ participation in the community activities and meetings
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Activities |
Meetings |
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No activities/meetings |
49.1 |
16.7 |
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Once |
6.0 |
7.1 |
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A few times |
5.2 |
9.0 |
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Many times |
1.6 |
2.2 |
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I have not taken part
(I do not know) |
38.1 |
65.1 |
Chart 2. Being informed about collective activities in the community
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a) Meetings |
I do not know |
Yes |
No |
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34% |
27% |
39% |
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b) Voluntary actions |
I do not know |
Yes |
No |
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28% |
23% |
49% |
Aleksandar Krzalovski |
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