By Krista, Volunteer from Finlandia
Semarang, 4 April 2019, My task was to facilitate a two-hours session about motivation for the members of SEKARTAJI. The members of SEKARTAJI are volunteers who promote women rights and help the victims who have experienced for example sexual harassment, domestic or sexual violence. The principle of volunteerism is that person participates in her own free will, voluntary and without expecting any finanzial price as a reward. So why do these women want to participate in the activity of SEKARTAJI? Moreover, how we are able to commit them to the activity for long-term -period as well as have efficient group? The answer is in the motivation.
Volunteers have different kind of motives why they participate in voluntary work. Usually volunteers want to help, feel that they and their activity are meaningfull or contribute to an issue which they find important. Also volunteers may want to receive experinces or knowledge together with meeting new people. All of these motives were also mentioned by the members of SEKARTAJI during our session.
But why it is so important to know what kind of motives volunteers have? Volunteers have several reasons to participate and if these motive-related expectations are not met, they will simply quit. As they are not receiving these aspects that motivate them into action, they do not want waste their time and commit to the activity. The voluntary work organiser needs to know what kind motives volunteers have so that those motives can be strengthen. With strong motivation volunteers want to commit and are able to be more efficient to work.
After the members of SEKARTAJI found their the motives for participation, we started discussing what are the aspects that could either strengthen these motives as well as weaken them. At that part, the women got a bit confused. The language barrier was one of the reasons for the confusion but I also find that the women didn’t quite understand what aspects could affect to their motivation to participate in SEKARTAJI. They mentioned for example some cultural problems in Indonesia or how to promote the knowledge about women rights among their women communities. These issues are related to the actual volunteer work they are doing.
Now we have to focus especially how the SEKARTAJI can strengthen the motivation inside it’s members. For example, if the member’s motive is to learn new things, is she able to gain knowledge while participating SEKARTAJI? Is there enough trainings, discussion groups, professional advices from the staff of KJHAM, etc.? My proposal is to research these motives and both the aspects that could strengthen and weaken them. After this we could develop a strategy containing actual measures for offering motive-related activity and removing the ocstacles that are reducing the motivation. By doing so, SEKARTAJI would have a tool how to commit their members into activity.