The number of disasters and natural calamities has increased steadily over the past century. Environmental effects and climate change are some of the factors to which this trend has been attributed. This increase has necessitated new and innovative disaster management approaches. Volunteering allows people to be involved in the management of a disaster to restore the victims back to their previous livelihoods.
Volunteering has various advantages, one of which is to avail a virtually unlimited pool of resources in terms of manpower and financial resources to compliment the efforts of the disaster victims. Volunteers also assist emergency response staff in quelling disasters ( Alexander, 2006 ) . Volunteers also gain important skills that could be useful in the event of subsequent disasters. Volunteerism has also been included as part of educational requirements in numerous courses at various higher education institutions due to its ability to impart practical experience and build students character.
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Some of the drawbacks of volunteerism include the volunteers’ lack of skills, knowledge, and experience. Such volunteers may cause as much harm as good because they do not possess the necessary expertise to perform various tasks in which they are engaged in during a disaster (United States & Emergency Management Institute, 2010) . Secondly, volunteers may not necessarily be offering their services voluntarily ( Alexander, 2006 ) . They may instead do so merely in compliance to certain third party agreements, which may affect their level of commitment and the quality of services they offer. An example of this is the mandatory volunteerism carried out in some higher education institutions. Thirdly, volunteering may interfere with the ability of the disaster victims to recover from the disaster effects because most volunteer programs have difficulty in planning for the long term (United States & Emergency Management Institute, 2010) . Once volunteer efforts have ended, disaster victims often struggle due to their dependence on aid.
References
Alexander, D. (2006). Globalization of disaster: trends, problems and dilemmas. Journal of International Affairs , 1-22.
United States. & Emergency Management Institute (U.S.). (2010). Developing and managing volunteers .
