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Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study

A majority of the workforce in the humanitarian aid consists of volunteers who partly suffer from health problems related to their voluntary service. To date, only a fraction of the current research focuses on this population. The aim of this qualitative explorative study was to identify burdening a...

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Autores principales: Josam, Isabel, Grothe, Sarah, Lüdecke, Daniel, Vonneilich, Nico, von dem Knesebeck, Olaf
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9324479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35886458
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148599
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author Josam, Isabel
Grothe, Sarah
Lüdecke, Daniel
Vonneilich, Nico
von dem Knesebeck, Olaf
author_facet Josam, Isabel
Grothe, Sarah
Lüdecke, Daniel
Vonneilich, Nico
von dem Knesebeck, Olaf
author_sort Josam, Isabel
collection PubMed
description A majority of the workforce in the humanitarian aid consists of volunteers who partly suffer from health problems related to their voluntary service. To date, only a fraction of the current research focuses on this population. The aim of this qualitative explorative study was to identify burdening and protective organisational factors for health and well-being among humanitarian aid volunteers in a Greek refugee camp. To this end, interviews with 22 volunteers were held on site and afterwards analysed by using qualitative content analysis. We focused on international volunteers working in Greece that worked in the provision of food, material goods, emotional support and recreational opportunities. We identified burdening factors, as well as protective factors, in the areas of work procedures, team interactions, organisational support and living arrangements. Gender-specific disadvantages contribute to burdening factors, while joyful experiences are only addressed as protective factors. Additionally, gender-specific aspects in the experience of team interactions and support systems were identified. According to our findings, several possibilities for organisations to protect health and well-being of their volunteers exist. Organisations could adapt organisational structures to the needs of their volunteers and consider gender-specific factors.
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spelling pubmed-93244792022-07-27 Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study Josam, Isabel Grothe, Sarah Lüdecke, Daniel Vonneilich, Nico von dem Knesebeck, Olaf Int J Environ Res Public Health Article A majority of the workforce in the humanitarian aid consists of volunteers who partly suffer from health problems related to their voluntary service. To date, only a fraction of the current research focuses on this population. The aim of this qualitative explorative study was to identify burdening and protective organisational factors for health and well-being among humanitarian aid volunteers in a Greek refugee camp. To this end, interviews with 22 volunteers were held on site and afterwards analysed by using qualitative content analysis. We focused on international volunteers working in Greece that worked in the provision of food, material goods, emotional support and recreational opportunities. We identified burdening factors, as well as protective factors, in the areas of work procedures, team interactions, organisational support and living arrangements. Gender-specific disadvantages contribute to burdening factors, while joyful experiences are only addressed as protective factors. Additionally, gender-specific aspects in the experience of team interactions and support systems were identified. According to our findings, several possibilities for organisations to protect health and well-being of their volunteers exist. Organisations could adapt organisational structures to the needs of their volunteers and consider gender-specific factors. MDPI 2022-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9324479/ /pubmed/35886458 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148599 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Josam, Isabel
Grothe, Sarah
Lüdecke, Daniel
Vonneilich, Nico
von dem Knesebeck, Olaf
Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study
title Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study
title_full Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study
title_fullStr Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study
title_full_unstemmed Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study
title_short Burdening and Protective Organisational Factors among International Volunteers in Greek Refugee Camps—A Qualitative Study
title_sort burdening and protective organisational factors among international volunteers in greek refugee camps—a qualitative study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9324479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35886458
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148599
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