January 12, 2010
Diwan University workshop C8 at the 20th IAVE World Volunteer Conference, Panama 2008
Lighting up Life by Sharing and Serving: Perceptions of Volunteering in National Science and Technology Museum (NSTM)
Dr. Ling-ying Chou, Associate Professor
Director of Language and Culture Teaching Center, Diwan University cly@dwu.edu.tw
Introduction
Perceiving the importance of community participation, which will promote social prosperity and its development (Wu, 2001); in addition, fulfilling my will--the life takes service as a goal, I was involved in many voluntary services, and have been volunteering in National Science and Technology Museum (referred to as NSTM hereafter) for the past three years. Volunteering is a fundamental building block of civil society-allows me to exercise my rights and responsibilities as a member of my community. The precious experiences of volunteering in NSTM have lit up my life by sharing and serving as other volunteers have. In view of my personal voluntary services and observations of other volunteers in NSTM, I would like to take this opportunity to do the action research on their perceptions of volunteering in NSTM.
NSTM, formally established in 1997, is composed of two areas. The north area is exhibition halls with regular exhibits and special exhibits and the south complex includes library, conference rooms and collection area. The purpose of the museum is to preserve the Taiwanese scientific heritage as well as to engage visitors to experience the pleasure of science and technology. Currently it has more than 800 volunteers who are in need to help the museum in multi-dimensioned perspectives such as administrative service, tour-guided interpretation service, audience service, reader service, theater service, poster service, exhibition service, document management service, exhibit maintenance service, information service, and educational activity service. NSTM has well-organized volunteer managing system including check-in and check-out for job duty, asking for leaving, volunteers’ shift system, volunteers’ obligations and responsibilities, and volunteer management regulations; meanwhile, it provides volunteers with the platform for communicating and sharing, in-service educational training for improving themselves and self-development. There are youth volunteers, senior volunteers, and corporate volunteers based on different areas of services in NSTN, and their volunteering would follow the process of good volunteer system requiring the needs assessment, recruitment, interview, training, guidance, supervision, evaluation, and later, awarding if they have outstanding performance in the museum (Kuyper, Hirzy & Huftalen, 1993; Wang 2005).
In order to meet a great workforce and better service for the visitors of the museum, NSTM has recruited more volunteers and tried to make the best use of them to develop museum’s business. Thus, the volunteers, the treasured social resources, play an important role in the museum. Moreover, the volunteers’ performance could influence on how visitors feel about the museum, and their perceptions on the voluntary services would affect their performance as well. It was the researcher’s concern to find out their perceptions on their voluntary
services.
