Leadership in Senior Volunteer Community: The Transition of Social Capital of Female Elder in Taiwan

Abstract

As the trend of the increasing aging boomers, more and more women are willing to be the volunteers after their retirement. This research is an investigation of two volunteer communities in Taipei City and County. All the data were obtained through 〞in‐person depth interview〞 and 〞focus groups〞, indicating: (1) What really encourages their participation is the well‐being in spirituality, self‐esteem, companionship from others and the obligation to help others, which shows the aspects of altruism. (2) The challenges to hold back the female elder from community affairs is agerelated. Younger women withdraw from the community because they are disappointed about the community affairs and training curricula; while elder members drop out because of physical frailty. (3) All the female elder regain the energy in the community and cherish the opportunity to share with friends. (4) Leadership has to show intensive relationship of inter‐person and intra‐person. And the leader or instructor of the senior aging community should be the 〞catalyst〞 or 〞facilitator〞 in the community.