Volunteer Services In China

Because of its deep historical foundation and great social requirements, China's voluntary service, based on young volunteers, has made a remarkable development in a decade since it was initiated in the early 1990s. It has a positive and extensive effect on the political, economic and social fields. However, as a new thing, there are still some problems that need to be seriously addressed and solved in its development to bring its potential into full play. Therefore, some useful discussions are made in this paper.The basic characteristics of voluntary service are summarized from the voluntary service, volunteerism, volunteers, and other basic concepts. Through a comparative analysis of voluntary service development history and features in western countries and China, mature western voluntary approaches are refined to use for reference in China. Taking young volunteer service in Zhejiang Province as an example, current development situation of voluntary service is studied, achievements and experience are summarized and an objective and positive evaluation on the overall development situation is made. Meanwhile, problems existing in voluntary service in social transition are thoroughly analyzed, and approaches to improve the young volunteer service are proposed from four aspects, namely, to strengthen the awareness of voluntary service, to make full use of government resources, to vigorously get social support, to innovate in the management of voluntary service. This provides a clear thought to promote the healthy development of volunteer services.