Ethics of Voluntary Work

• Autor(a) principal: Barbosa, Adérito Gomes
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/cpedagogiasocial.2009.1940

We would, for a wider presentation of this question, need to look at voluntary work in all its trajectories: the target area of volunteers (need, poverty), ages groups of those who choose to volunteer (young and retired people), motivation, rights, duties, responsibilities, experiences, both inside and out. We are limiting ourselves however only to the ethics of voluntary work. We may, as assumptions, choose well-being today, inhospitability, the human being in relation to care and compassion. At a second stage, we can identify the ethics of voluntary work as the ethics of justice (minimum ethics) and the ethics of gratuity (maximum ethics). In the following point, we seek to present some of the main issues that may be involved in the ethics of voluntary work: cordiality and sociability; education of citizens and participation; an invitation to maximum ethics; the priority of giving over receiving; volunteering and giving. Voluntary work is not a gift that is individualistic or assistive, but rather a collective gift, in the sense of teaching to give, teaching to manage, teaching to respect, teaching commitment to others, teaching how to be hospitable (in relation to goods and services) to our fellow man.