Meaningful madness…

In our every day work where we get paid, we can live with the fact that not everything has a higher meaning. But the volunteer effort must matter in our close surroundings.

 

“There are three important factors that make up the driving force in a volunteer effort” Bjarne Ibsen says, professor at the University of Southern Denmark and scientist in mechanism in volunteer work. “First of all there has to be a need for the work to be done. The volunteer effort has to be understood as necessary. Secondly, the volunteer effort has to make sense for the individual. In our everyday life we do a lot of things because we get paid – not necessarily because we regard it as the most meaningful thing to do. We do volunteer work because we see a deeper meaning in it. And thirdly, the volunteer work has to be understood as fun for the individual” he says.

 

CCPA football schools were started in 1999 in Bosnia by Anders Levinsen. The idea was to use sports and playing games as a tool to reconsolidate and build up the social networks that were ruined after the civil war between Serbs, Bosnians and Croatians in the first half of the 1990ies.
It is very meaningful for humans who have experienced conflict and civil war to create the opportunities for their children to have an orderly existence, Bjarne Ibsen argues. Exactly as it is for Danish parents. “Let me give you an example: a mother, whose son plays football, might find herself in the position as a teamleader of her sons team. Earlier, she would probably never imagine herself doing this. But because her son cares about football, it suddenly makes sense to her that the team is functioning. It is something very down to earth; that makes her contribute voluntarily” Bjarne Ibsen says. This means that it is not a vision that volunteerwork in itself is something great that makes it work.
“The volunteer work takes place where humans are gathered around something that has their interest, and they have something in common and where they meet a need for a work to be done, that is meaningful for them to do” Bjarne Ibsens says. That is why he does not think that it was the wish for fraternization that attracted the volunteer leaders for the football schools from the very beginning: “They participate because they want to do something for their children. And because they like to play football”. This is characteristic for the contents of the technical language called ‘social capital’. Niels Thygesen, lector at Copenhagen Business School and expert in leadership, defines the term as “the added value generated in interrelation – a kind of goodwill-account”. “And it is not possible to get something in your goodwill-account through force. Only by giving something yourself” Niels Thygesen says.

 

He finds that the football schools generates to different kinds of value. One is all the visible, for example the immediate joy the participants get through joining the schools and by meeting former enemies in a fun setting. The other is a bit harder to notice and to estimate, that is the number of connections and network that the football school starts. In other words: The social capital.

 

Anders Levinsen recognises on one side, that there is no doubt it exists. And on the other side that it is very hard to measure and document.
“We do monitor what happens when we leave the community” he says and starts telling about one of his experiences in the Balkan: “I had been to Serbia and was on my way to Macedonia. By the Macedonian border, I was picked up by our local football leader. He said: Anders, our coaches for the seminar in Kumanova are gathered tonight, and we are eating together. Do you want to join in?” We went there, and there they were: Romans, Albanians and Macedonians – eating, drinking and singing together. Things like this are going on many places, but I have no chance to find out how often.” That is how it is with social capital, Bjarne Ibsen thinks: “Social capital is always built up as an added bonus. Fx. when people do something together, playing football or bowling – then the solidarity and community appears. It is not necessarily the purpose of the activity, but it happens because we get to know each other, appreciate each other and build up trust to each other”, Bjarne Ibsen says.
He is very interested in the part that the volunteer work has to play in regard to reconciliation and rebuilding a civil society in former conflict areas.

“There is a great tendency that we professionalize everything. Fx. in dealing with conflicts. We have established a culture in which we think that people with education are better. Fx. with regard to working with conflict, which takes a great education. But I think that it is a way of mind that has huge limitations, not least in the places CCPA works” Bjarne Ibsen says.

 

The danger by this is that the professional expert to a high degree will have his/her starting point in what he/she knows about the topic.
“On the other hand, my claim is that the moment where it is the volunteer effort that makes up the activity, automatically it will have its string point in the life worlds of the participants – the concrete life that they are living right now, right here in the concrete context that they are living in”, says Bjarne Ibsen.

 

Some of the first leader seminars were held in Denmark at Gerlev Sports School. At this time the war in Bosnia were still fresh in the memory, and the different ethnic groups were sitting in different part of the dining hall, as the principal of the sports school Finn Berggren tells. “But it was fascinating to me and have been ever since, that despite the fact that everyone knew they had been involved in a conflict, and had been shooting at each other, and might even killed each other families, then the matter of the cause was: to get each other children to meet around the football. And this was important enough to restrain themselves. It was an amazing experience, that it was possible to put something this unpleasant and stressful aside in the cause of something greater” Finn Berggren says.