Inspiring By Heart The Zeal For Life

Literatures on volunteers and voluntary service are a lot, but studies on individual volunteer career are few. The writer uses narrative inquiry methods, gathered six volunteers to participate in an open-ended interview, and selected one volunteer as the main subject. This paper presents a study about volunteers’careers and life stories, sketches out characteristics and significance of their work, and then reveals the relevant factors and influences of volunteer work.Based on the description arid analysis of the selected volunteer’s career, the volunteers and volunteer careers are expanded and refined, and here are the following conclusions:1. During the volunteer’s career development, her career and self-pursuing of value are growing to the same direction, and there are interactions between multi-level internal and external influence factors.2. The meaning of volunteer work:to individual person, the main influence are life status, working skills and accomplish life values, as for the society, volunteer work’s meaning is to satisfy vulnerable groups’needs and improve the standard of social moral.3. As for volunteers’characteristics, this articles summaries 6 motivational needs of volunteers, three learning skills and eight factors of volunteer work.4. In the comparison of volunteer work, entertainment activity and regular work, this article concludes the meaning of volunteer work itself, in order to provide some inspirations to individual and the society at large.