Social and pedagogical aspects of the voluntariness focused on children's patients

The aim of this thesis is to document volunteer program s at children's clinics. It attempts to synthesize different people's opinions about volunteering and to highlight the importance ofthe activity. The thesis has two parts: theoretic and empiric. The first part, theoretic, is focused on basic terms, function, and principles of volunteering. The main point is to speciry the activities ofvolunteers in children's clinics. Special attention is given to a program called "The Volunteers in Hospitals", which is aimed at monitoring the influence of illness on a child' s mental development in addition to the impact on his or her friends and relatives. It also tries to define the basic set of skills for those who volunteer for this program. The aim of the second part is to learn the attitudes of volunteers and their reasons for volunteering by means of a questionnaire. The goal is to leam how they prepare themselves for volunteering, to exarnine their sociological and pedagogical background, and how volunteering affects their social life. A second questionnaire asks volunteer coordinators about prograrns at the hospitals they work at. In addition, it asks about benefits offered to volunteers. Finally, coordinators give their opinion about volunteering. Despite the fact that volunteering is increasing in our..