Formation of the Volunteering Institute in Russia as an Indicator of the Civil Society Development

Abstract

In conditions of exacerbation of social problems, complexity of modern societies and the limited capacity of public authorities in their decision, attraction and activation of internal resources of the Russian society become urgent for social development. One of these resources is volunteering. Volunteer activities aimed primarily at helping needy segments of the population who can not help themselves due to objective circumstances and conditions (including elderly people, street children, people with disabilities or people who find themselves in the area of natural disasters and social cataclysms). The authors examine the legal conditions for the development of volunteering in Russia at federal and regional levels. They concluded that the potential for citizens’ involvement in volunteer activities, at both the regional and federal levels, is higher than the participation itself. The development of the institutional environment for volunteering, including increasing the efficiency of public institutions of social development, are crucial for the actualization and realization of the hidden, untapped potential. Thus, to solve the problems of social development system requires more than just external, but, primarily, internal additional resources, methods of their searching, and technologies of its attraction. Volunteering as a social institution meets the objective challenges of our time and necessity of social and political modernization of regional society and Russian society as a whole.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s5p402