Abstract
What are the health impacts of volunteer activities? An example through scouting. There is little work linking health and engagement in volunteer activities. Can the volunteer environment be considered conducive to a better quality of life in general or is it more a question of personality variables related to individuals? If so, which ones? Can we imagine, for example, that some people are bound by a strong passion for their volunteer involvement? The objective of this article will be to explain and understand what volunteering is and its psychological impact with the example of scouting (a specific method of popular education). The prism of Vallerand's dualistic model of passion is used to try to identify the consequences of volunteering in scouting (and volunteering in general) on the perceived health of volunteers. After defining volunteering and scouting, this model is explained and it is shown how its use is an interesting contribution to the understanding of the impact of volunteering on perceived health. In France in 2019, according to Recherches & Solidarités, which publishes an annual barometer of commitment in France, 12.5 million French people will be engaged in a voluntary activity in 2019. That's one in four French people. Popular education is an educational model based on the education for all model of the Age of Enlightenment. At the time, it appeared to be necessary to educate people to fight against obscurantism and the Catholic Church's hold on society. Popular education is an educational method based on “education of the people by the people and for the people” whose objective is the improvement of the social system and individual and collective fulfillment. Scouting is a popular education movement with a specific method and mission. The mission of scouting is to contribute to building a better world by forming committed citizens, aware of the problems of their society and committed to solving them. Its method, the scouting method, is based on small group life, education by action, life in nature, symbolic framework, personal progression, adult support and commitment to its values and in the community. “Passion is that strength that leads a person to get involved in an activity that they love, that defines them and that is important to them. The passion for an engaging activity is composed of two dimensions: the harmonious passion that is globally positive for the health, perceived health and well-being of individuals and, conversely, the obsessive passion that is globally deleterious for the health, perceived health and well-being of individuals. With this article, a model has been designed that integrates the dualistic model of passion into the specificities of volunteering in scouting in order to detach potential explanations of the positive and negative impacts on individuals. An explanation of the disengagement of certain volunteers and hypotheses about a change in the type of passion were developed. With regard to the number of volunteers in scouting (and in popular education), it is important that this data be taken into account as a protective or aggravating factor in their health and well-being. These are real public health issues. It is a question of creating the conditions for the development and maintenance of a harmonious passion among volunteers in order to retain them and ensure that their commitment is conducive to their development.
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